ABSTRACT
T He Annual Report of the Prison Commissioners for 1949 shows that in 1948, the last year before the Criminal Justice Act came into force, 17,485 males and 2,783 females aged 16 and over but under 21 were found guilty of indictable offences. In 1945 the numbers had been 21,133 and 2,919. These post-war years had shown an alarming increase in the volume of crime committed by young people as compared with 1939, when the equivalent figures were 13,655 and 1,780, and public opinion was deeply concerned as to the causes of this situation and the measures to be taken to deal with it. It is therefore satisfactory to note that the courts were not driven by this public concern to a more frequent recourse to imprisonment, and that in fact the percentage of imprisonments to convictions fell from 16 per cent in 1947 to 13–5 per cent in 1948.
