A further illustration of this significant truth is to be witnessed in
the Antipodes. In no quarter of the world is there such wide-spread
prosperity as exists in the colony of Victoria. All writers and
travellers are unanimous upon this point. Nowhere in the world is
there less economic excuse for the perpetration of crime. Work of one
kind or another can almost always be had in that favoured portion of
the globe.
Even in the worst of times, if men are willing to go "up country," as
it is called, occupation of some sort is certain to be found, and
trade depression never reaches the acute point which it sometimes does
at home.
Nevertheless, on examining the criminal statistics of the colony of
Victoria, what do we find? According to the returns for 1887, one
arrest on a charge of crime was made in every 30 of the population,
and on looking down the list of offences for which these arrests were
made, it will be seen that Victoria, notwithstanding her
widely-diffused material well-being, is just as much addicted to
crimes against person and property as some of the poor and squalid
States of Europe. It may be said in extenuation of this condition of
things, that Victoria contains a larger grown-up population, and
therefore a larger percentage of persons in a position to commit crime
than is to be found in older countries. This is, to a certain extent,
true, but the difference is not so great as might at first sight be
supposed. Assuming that the criminal age lies between 15 and 60, we
find that in the seven Australasian colonies 563 persons out of every
1,000 are alive between these two ages. In Great Britain and Ireland
559 persons per 1,000 are alive between 15 and 60. According to these
figures the difference between the population within the criminal age
in the colony, as compared with the mother country, is very small, and
is quite insufficient to account for the relatively high percentage of
crime exhibited by the Victorian criminal statistics.
All these considerations force us back to the conclusion that an
abundant measure of material well-being has a much smaller influence
in diminishing crime than is usually supposed, and compels us to admit
that much crime would still exist even if the world were turned into a
paradise of material prosperity tomorrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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