Ogden Evening Standard | 1911-07-15 | Page 10 | Measuring Waves of Crime

00 MEASURING WAVES OF CRIME. There aro three main divisions of the records In regard to crime, complaints, com-plaints, arrests and convictions, The police records In regard to arrests and convictions In Npw York city aro accurnto and well tabulated The records rec-ords of complaints received at tho precinct station-houses, the detective bureaus and police hondquarters appear ap-pear to be in a chaotic condition. This fact was noted in the report of ono of the grand juries which investigated investigat-ed the so-called crlmo wave ft la obvious that when the efficiency efficien-cy of the police is questioned the number of arrests and convictions will never be an accurate barometer of the prevalence of crime. Nothing but a complete record of complaints i (Will give oven an approximate Idea as to whether crime is increasing or decreasing. de-creasing. It is a fact that all complaints com-plaints received are, or should be, recorded upon the station-house blot- I lers, and also upon the propor records rec-ords at the detective bureaus and I at headquarters, Copies of the po- j lice blotters are. or should bo. turned Into police headquarters. The Iron- ' I bio appears to be that there Is no adequate system of compiling and grouping these statistics by months, days, weeks, crimes, localities, otc, so that at any time it could bo readily scon whether criminal offenses of any sort were Increasing In any given iierlod or distrlrt, Henry "Farrar 'Griffin in7 the Outlook I .11 ' J O I'Lk "