CHAPTER II.
THE DATA OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Value of criminal statistics, 51—The three factors of crime, 52— Anthropological factors, 53—Physical factors, 53—Social factors, 53—Crime a product of complex conditions, 54—Social conditions do not explain crime, 55—Effects of temperature on crime, 58— Crime a result of biological as well as social conditions, 59—The measures to be taken against crime are of two kinds, preventive and eliminative, 61—The fluctuations of crime chiefly produced by social causes, 61—Steadiness of the graver forms of crime, 63— Effect of judicial procedure on criminal statistics, 64—Crimes against the person are high when crimes against property are low, 64—Is crime increasing or decreasing? 64—Official optimism in criminal statistics, 67—Density of population and crime, 73— Conditions on which the fluctuations of crime depend, 77— Quetelet's law of the mechanical regularity of crime, 80—The effect of environment on crime, 81—The effect of punishment on crime, 82—The value of punishment is over-estimated, 82— Statistical proofs of this, 86—Biological and sociological proofs, 92—Crime is diminished by prevention not by repression, 96—Legislators and administrators rely too much on repression, 98—The basis of the belief in punishment, 99—Natural and legal punishment, 103—The discipline of consequences, 104—The uncertainty of legal punishment, 105—Want of foresight among criminals, 105—Penal codes cannot alter invincible tendencies, 106—Force is no remedy, 107—Negative value of punishment, 109. II. Substitutes for punishment, 110—The elimination of the causes of crime, 113—Economic remedies for crime, 114—Drink and crime, 116—Drunkenness an effect of bad social conditions, 120—Taxation of drink, 120—Laws against
<p xi> PAGE
drink, 121—Social amelioration a substitute for penal law, 121— Social legislation and crime, 122—Political amelioration as a preventive of crime, 124—Decentralisation a preventive, 126— Legal and administrative preventives, 128—Prisoners' Aid Societies, 130—Education and crime, 130—Popular entertainments and crime, 131—Physical education as a remedy for crime, 131—To diminish crime its causes must be eliminated, 132—The aim and scope of penal substitutes, 134—Difficulty of applying penal substitutes, 137—Difference between social and police prevention, 139—Limited efficacy of punishment, 140—Summary of conclusions, 141.