How the Great War Reduced Crime in the UK

Great Britain had a notorious spike in criminality during the Second World War. Horace Rumpole's favorite clients, the notorious Timpson Clan, must have had a glorious time in those days. Too bad for them Horace was serving with the RAF during the hostilities. What happened in WWI was just the reverse, however.

An Empty Cell in a British Prison

While crime in Great Britain had been declining from the start of the 20th century, arrests and convictions simply crashed once war started. A 1918 paper, "Crime and the War" by Edith Abbott, reported that in England: "Convictions per 100,000 of the population had fallen . . . to 369 per 100,000 in 1913-1914, the year before the war began. Since the war the decline has been abrupt, falling to 281 per 100,000 in 1914-1915, to 159 per 100,000 in 1915-1916 and to 118 per 100,000 in 1916-1917."  This constituted a 59% reduction in crime in two years.

Similar trends were reported for Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.  For example: 

Commitments to Prison in Scotland

1914       43,535
1915       27,340
1916       19,946

What's the behind this?  Several reasons are cited by Abbott:

(1) The enlistment of many habitual petty offenders; 

(2) The restrictive orders issued by the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic) and those made by the justices and by the military authorities; 

(3) The great demand for labor, rendering employment easy and well paid, and resulting in ability to pay fines, this latter being greatly aided by the operation of Section 1 of the Criminal Justice Administration Act of 1914.

One anomaly to the general pattern involved an increased number of arrests of females for drunkenness.  Many more of them were working, few had left for the continent to serve, and they had more quid to spend in the pubs while be able to avoid incarceration by simply paying fines, as allowed by the 1914 Act. Otherwise, however, the overall downward trend in criminality held for all categories of violations and regions, and for both sexes.

The article's second half included a worried discussion of the likely postwar bounce back to old numbers around this theme: "Now the importance of all this at the present time is the fact that every belligerent nation must be prepared for a grave increase in crime after the war and that the obligations upon society were never greater than they are today to see that every effort is made to save men convicted of minor offenses from the demoralization of a prison term."

As to what actually happened when the troops came home, I've found only anecdotal evidence that the feared return of higher crime rates did not occur.  However, if any readers would like to post some more specific data in the comments section, I'd be happy to add it to this article.