Intelligence in Punishing Crime.
A student of prison affairs once said that the prison population consists of two classes—people who never ought to have been sent to prison and people who never ought to be allowed to leave it. It is unfortunate that students interested in either one of these classes are too often apt to forget the importance of the other.
There are many habitual criminals, weak persons readily giving way to temptation, who should not be classified as professionals. The professionals are only those who deliberately set about supporting themselves by crime. These are the ones who are among all criminals most unlikely to change their ways, and it was for their control that Detective Wooldridge suggested some years ago that after several convictions such criminals should be given a special trial to decide whether they were true professionals or not, and if they were, they should be imprisoned for life.
If more attention were given to professional crime and if harsher methods were used in protecting society from it, the result would be merciful in the end—merciful both to the citizens protected from such crime and to the men who, as conditions now are, graduate every year into such careers.