The spectacular increase in recent years of serious crime, especially among young men, has created an inevitable reaction of disquiet, indeed of anger. The need, it is suggested (and not only by reactionary opinion), is for severe punishment, exemplary in its unpleasantness, which will dissuade the gangster and the man with the gun. And even lesser crimes of violence must be sharply punished: the restoration of the birch and the cat, it is argued, will achieve far more than the assumptions of a remedial penalty—whether it be probation or Borstal training.

Much of the propaganda for such measures is intelligible enough as a reflection of public indignation. But it is often irresponsibly expressed, as in a petition for the return to corporal punishment which was displayed in many Glasgow shops recently and immediately received hundreds of enthusiastic signatures. The case for such a grave step was not stated; no argument was offered but that of instinctive aggression. The Home Secretary has on several occasions resisted such proposals, and has pointed out that, even at the statistical level, there is no evidence that offences previously allowing for a sentence of corporal punishment have in fact increased since such punishment was abolished.

The Home Secretary, instead of giving way to the storm (which, it must be admitted, is by no means as spontaneous as some newspapers make it seem to be), has urged the need for much greater research into the causes of crime, and to that end the Cambridge Institute of Criminal Science is to have more substantial help for its work.