here is the fact that education teaches the criminal, by assisting him
to the reading of police-court reports and sensational storyettes, to be
more wary.

Besides these, there is the important consideration that by far the
larger number of young persons guilty of offences of various kinds are
not prosecuted at all. This is due to two causes: firstly, to the fact
that in the majority of cases they are not found out; and secondly, that
many people are reluctant to bring youthful offenders within the meshes
of the criminal law, as a conviction, whether or not it be followed by
punishment, generally spells ruin to the person who has been found
guilty.

There may be, and there probably are, many other and even more
substantial reasons for discrediting statistics that are commonplaces to
experts in crime. But those that have been cited, and which are at once
suggested by common sense, fully suffice to show the impossibility of
arriving at satisfactory conclusions on the basis of statistical tables
published by the authorities.

The Blue-book containing the latest judicial returns attempts to deal
with this question of the increase or decrease of juvenile crime;
figures being only available, however, from the year 1893. 'To answer
this question,' it is stated, 'it is necessary to ascertain the
proportion which youthful offenders bear to the total number of
convicted persons. This is given in the following table, where it will
be seen that the proportion of offenders under the age of twenty-one
remains almost constant:

'PROPORTION OF YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS CONVICTED OF INDICTABLE OFFENCES TO
TOTAL NUMBER OF PERSONS CONVICTED.

+---------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| Age. | 1893. | 1894. | 1895. | 1896. | 1897. | 1898. |
+---------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| |Per cent.|Per cent.|Per cent.|Per cent.|Per cent.|Per cent.|
| Under 12 | 4.6 | 4.9 | 4.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 |
|12 and under 16| 15.0 | 15.2 | 13.4 | 14.5 | 14.0 | 14.5 |
|16 and under 21| 21.2 | 22.0 | 21.8 | 19.7 | 19.5 | 20.2 |
| | | | | | | |
+---------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|Total under 21 | 40.8 | 42.1 | 39.8 | 39.8 | 39.1 | 40.3 |
+---------------+---------+------