| State of Education | Men. | Women. | ||
| Number. | % | Number. | % | |
| Good | 4,394 | 51 | 764 | 48 |
| Mediocre | 4,125 | 47 | 750 | 48 |
| Reading only | 146 | 2 | 66 | 4 |
| Total | 8,665 | 100 | 1,580 | 100 |
The redactor of the official statistics of Switzerland observes that there are no figures to determine the number of illiterates among the non-criminal population, but the statistics of recruits for the years 1891 to 1895 show that about 19% of the recruits had a higher education.
I am of the opinion that the statistics which I have quoted,[118] including, as they do, millions of criminals, are very significant: the illiterates supply, in general, a great proportion of the criminals, a proportion much greater than that of the illiterates in the general population. (In countries with a relatively small number of illiterates, like England, the Netherlands, and Prussia, for example, the difference is naturally much greater than in a country like Italy where the percentage of illiteracy is great. In Prussia for instance, there are [[434]]thirty-six times as many illiterates among the recidivists as among the recruits.)
However, most of the statistics, aside from the figures for illiteracy, give others which show how many persons really educated are to be found among the criminals. And then we note that a very great majority of criminals are ignorant and untrained. In England, for example, there is among male criminals only 1 to 1,000 who knows more than how to read and write well, and among the women not even 1 to 1,000; in Austria there are a little more than 4 to 1,000; and in France a little more than 20 to 1,000 among the men, and between 4 and 5 among the women. The relation between ignorance and criminality cannot, then, be contradicted. But it is impossible to fix exactly the extent of the influence of the one upon the other, or it is difficult to separate ignorance from other factors with which it is ordinarily found, as poverty, for instance.
The ancient idea that crime is only a consequence of ignorance need not be treated of, for morality and intellect are two distinct parts of the psychic life, even though there exists a certain relation between them.
The first reason why ignorance and the lack of general culture must be ranked among the general factors of crime is this: the person who, in our present society, where the great majority of parents care very little for the education of their children, does not go to school, is deprived of the moral ideas (honesty, etc.) which are taught there, and ordinarily passes his time in idleness and vagabondage.
The second reason which makes ignorance a factor of crime, is that generally an ignorant man is, more than others, a man moved by the impulse of the moment, who allows himself to be governed by his passions, and is induced to commit acts which he would not have committed if his intellectual equipment had been different.
In the third place, it is for the following reasons that ignorance and the lack of training fall within the etiology of crime. The mind of the man whose psychic qualities, whether in the domain of the arts, or of the sciences, have been developed, has become less susceptible to evil ideas. His intellectual condition constitutes thus a bridle which can restrain evil thoughts from realizing themselves; for real art and true science strengthen the social instincts. The figures cited above furnish only a slight contribution to this question. There is no doubt that if we had figures showing how many criminals there are any part of whose life is taken up by art or science, we should find the number very small. It could not be objected that the cause of this is [[435]]in the innate qualities of the criminals; certainly one man is born with greater capacity than another, but everyone is born with some capacities which, if developed, may become a source of happiness; and a happy man, says the proverb, is not wicked.
Finally ignorance is in still another way a factor in crime. Very often the author of a crime conceives and executes it in so clumsy a fashion and with so little chance of success, that we may be certain that he would not have committed it if he had not been an ignorant person, without knowledge of the forces with which he had to do.
When the Italian school is reproached with making their researches upon prisoners only, and not upon criminals and their free equals, the implication is that it is only the stupid and ignorant criminals that are in prison, while the others, the shrewd and tricky, remain at liberty. There is assuredly much truth in this assertion.