Crime
Finger-printing was introduced in 1901, and the following year would see the first conviction on finger-print evidence - of Harry Jackson at the Central Criminal Court (the 'Old Bailey') in London. While stealing billiard balls from a house, he had left his thumb print on a window-sill that had just been painted.

Violent crime was not as much of a concern in 1901 as it is today and was seen as falling. A report by the Criminal Registrar, published in 1901, noted that the period had 'witnessed a great change in manners: the substitution of words…for blows…an approximation in the manners of different classes; a decline in the spirit of lawlessness'. This was partly due to policing: the historian V.A.C. Gatrell has argued, in his article in The Cambridge Social History of Britain, that the Edwardian working classes were heavily regulated and that the falling indictable crime rate between 1860 and 1914 reflected a period when policing was able to obtain 'a peculiar and transient advantage…over ancient forms of popular lawlessness visible on the street'.

Follow this link to a Metropolitan police officer.

Punishment
In 1901, imprisonment was the commonest form of punishment; at the time this could involve hard labour. 199,875 people were sent to prison in 1901, nearly 75% of whom were men. Statistics for 1900 show that 52% of those convicted of indictable offences were sent to prison, a proportion that would fall to 18% by 1950, but rise again to 23% in 1998. Fines were imposed on 22% of such offenders in 1900 and a further 9% were punished by whipping.

In 1901, juvenile offenders could be sent to reformatories or industrial schools (replaced by borstals in 1908). Stockport Industrial School admitted 32 children aged between 9 and 13 in 1901 for offences such as 'frequenting company of reputed thieves'; 'beyond [parental] control; 'larceny'; 'found habitually wandering and not under proper control'; 'stealing rabbits'; 'non-attendance [at school]'; and 'refractory in workhouse'.