re
likely to resume their depredations on society when they are released
from prison.

For over fifty years--since 1862--there has been accumulating a library
of biography on which prison governors and police officials have worked,
which must by now include every living criminal by profession who has
enjoyed the hospitality of the State.

The files--immense, dirty brown covered albums--each containing 6,000
photographs--overflow through room after room and corridor after
corridor. There are smaller volumes with duplicate photographs, 500 in
each, which give particulars of marks or physical peculiarities.
Hundreds of thousands of records are kept, mostly illustrated by the
inevitable full and side face photographs, and each is kept up-to-date
with scrupulous care.

The Convict Supervision Office, with its subsidiary Habitual Criminals
Registry, has within the last year or two been amalgamated with the
Finger-print Section under the general title of the Criminal Record
Office. Although the two departments work in unison and are, to a
certain point, interdependent, their work has to be conducted in
sub-departments.

The Habitual Criminals Registry--I retain the old title for
convenience--is a sort of British Museum of crime. It is a central
bureau that is constantly being consulted from all parts of the kingdom,
and not seldom from all parts of the world. It has to be ready at any
moment to lay its hands on the record of any criminal that may be
demanded, and in this it is immensely helped by the Finger-print
Department, which can usually identify the person and supply the number
by which he is known.

It sometimes happens, however, that no finger-prints are available. Then
search has to be made under the old system. The records are grouped by
the height of their subjects and the colour of their eyes and hair.
Thus, if a prisoner on remand is five feet nine, with blue eyes and
brown hair, the margin of search is limited to those indexed under those
characteristics.

The records include photographs, descriptions, and particulars not only
of licence-holders and supervisees, but of every person who has been
convicted twice or more times of any crime, with a few exceptions, and
of all persons sentenced to hard labour for a month or more.

They are a veritable "Who's Who" of the criminal world, and go even
further than that useful work of reference in supplying intimate details
of the appearance and idiosyncrasies of