cades from 1850 to 1900 (1904) include data
relative to the number of prisoners in this country. The returns for
1904 omitted certain classes previously enumerated so that for
comparative purposes the figures given have to be corrected. On the
corrected basis these reports show that the total number of prisoners
in the United States increased from 6,737 in 1850 to about 100,000 in
1904, while the total population increased during the same time only
from twenty-three to eighty millions (Fig. 2). The ratio of prisoners
to the total population is of course the significant relation here,
and this increased from 29 per 100,000 in 1850 to 125 per 100,000 in
1904. Not all of this increase can be attributed to more rigid
enforcement of the law or raised standards of morality; there is some
reason for thinking that whatever change there has been in these
respects has tended to have the opposite effect. We should note, in
considering such data as these, that the penologist generally assumes
that of the total number of offenders, actually only about ten per
cent are in prison at any one time.

During the last century, in France, many parts of Germany, and in
Spain the increase in criminality was terrifying. In the United
States the number of murders and homicides per million of the entire
population has nearly trebled in the last fifteen years (Fig. 2). The
average for the five years from 1885 to 1889 inclusive was 38.5 per
million, and for the five years from 1902 to 1906 it became 110 per
million.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Relative and absolute numbers of
prisoners in the United States from 1850 to 1904.

- - - - Number of prisoners per 100,000 of total population.

------- Total number of prisoners (figures to the right are
to be read as thousands here).

-.-.-.- Number of murders and homicides per million of the
total population.]

England's "defective" classes during the 22 years between 1874 and
1896 increased from 5.4 to 11.6 per thousand of the total; that is,
more than doubled in that brief period. Rentoul has collected careful
information regarding the number of insane or mentally defective and
degenerate in Great Britain. In England the number of "officially
certified" insane, which is far less than the actual number, increased
from one to every 319 of the total population, to one to 285, in the
nine years preceding 1905. In Ireland comparison of the years 1851 an