ABSTRACT
William Augustus Miles was a prominent commentator on the causes of (and remedies for) crime in the early nineteenth century. While trying to secure permanent paid government employment for himself, he conducted many interviews with juvenile offenders, police and prison officers. Following his investigative works, Miles was made an assistant commissioner of the 1839 Royal Commission on a Constabulary Force and later commanded the Sydney Police between 1841 and 1848. Regardless of the validity or otherwise of Miles’s views, his pronouncements were influential within government. In this position Miles conducted further detailed research into the state and causes of crime in England and, in 1839, all of Miles’s public pronouncements were published together as Poverty, Mendicity and Crime, edited by a barrister, H. Brandon. He discusses crime among juveniles in particular and draws clear links between lax morality and crime.
