Increase of Crime by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 14, 1858

Increase of Crime.

By Editor

THE principal among our leading contemporaries of the daily press, including the Herald, Tribune, Courier and Inquirer, and Sun, have lately directed their attention to the subject of the increase of crime in our midst. They have at length discovered that the speciality on which the Police Gazette has been engaged for years is worthy of attention. Crime they all agree has increased, is increasing, and should be diminished. In this we entirely agree with them and shall be happy and prompt to co-operate in working out a remedy and reform: whether they adopt suggestions of ours, or we are called on to fall in with their lead, they will find us equally zealous, leading or following.

As to the facts we all agree. The city swarms with desperadoes of every name and kind. Murders occur weekly, burglaries nightly, and the lesser offences hourly. Our streets swarm with pickpockets. They “work” up and down our principal thoroughfares in the open day and use their supple fingers on the street corners, at the crossings, and about the hotel doors, as if they were pursuing a legitimate and recognized calling. Sometimes they are arrested—more frequently not. The new police stand gaping in ignorant innocence of the character of the men they are especially appointed to look after, gloriously in the dark as to their present operations and their bad antecedents. The number of arrests in proportion to the offences may be as two to ten; and of the two, it is more than probable, that one will be released by the magistrate before whom he is brought if he has not already provided for his liberty by composition and sharing of the plunder with the M. P.

There must be a root to a tree of such noxious power and spreading dimensions. What and where is it? It lies in one word—our elective judiciary. We have no reproaches nor special detractions against our present judges. Most of them we know personally; in their individual characters they are upright, honorable men: and as judges we are willing to believe they do not intend to err: but is it human nature for a man in an honorable and influential office to send to prison the very agents who are to be among the principal supports in keeping him in his comfortable place?—National Police Gazette.