Juvenile Prisoners.
Under normal surveillance 51 51 13%
Under,, weak surveillance,, 90 158 41%
Under,, impotent surveillance,, 44
Under,, brutal surveillance,, 24
Morally abandoned 98 145 38%
Completely abandoned,, 47
Excited to crime by the example of parents 15 31 8%
Having committed crime under the instigation and with the complicity of parents 16
Total 385 385 100%

Only 13% among them enjoyed a normal education (and who could say how far it was really good?), while 87% had an education [[495]]insufficient or bad. The author arrives at the following conclusion: “… the population of the ‘quartier correctionnel’ of Lyons, more unfortunate than guilty, has been recruited for more than 16 years from families the majority of which bore within themselves, by reason of the vices of their constitution, the principle of disintegration; whose morality was detestable or very doubtful, and whose means of subsistence were insufficient or totally lacking.

“It is to these different causes that the young delinquents owe first their deplorable antecedents, then their recklessness at the moment of the crime, their perversity, their corruption, and finally, their arrest.”[236]

The opinion of M. Grosmolard, of great value because of the competence of the author, who has been attached to the penal institutions of Lyons, is entirely in accord with what has just been quoted. After having spoken of the strong influence of poverty upon juvenile criminality, Grosmolard continues thus: “Besides material poverty, and as an auxiliary to this factor, we find the moral poverty of the home, manifested by the disorganization of the family. Whether it is due to the misconduct of the father or of the mother, or of both, the disruption, whether private through separation of the couple, or officialized by divorce, has no less deplorable consequences for the children. There is always the depressing spectacle of domestic disputes, the abandonment of the home, the weakening of parental discipline.”[237]

Concerning 400 children in a parental school in Paris we have the following figures:[238]

There were:
Natural children 11.25%
Half orphans 35.00%
Full orphans 10.00%
Children whose parents had disappeared or been convicted 13.25%
Whose parents had separated or been divorced 16.25%
Coming from a normal family 14.25%
100.00%

These results agree, therefore, with those of the official statistics and of Raux. The normal families were those which did not present any of the external marks of demoralization, and it is more than probable that their “morality”, in many cases was only apparent. [[496]]

Out of 600 families from which juvenile criminals had issued, studied by Dr. L. Albanel, 303 (50.5%) had been disorganized by death, divorce, desertion, etc. In 268 (44.6%) families the fathers and mothers worked away from home and the children were entirely neglected; 291 children (48.5%) were confided to persons outside of the family; and 41 (6.8%) were brought up by their grandparents, etc.[239]

Finally, there is the following fact about the children undergoing correction in Paris during the period 1874–1878: nearly 68% of them received visits from no one at all, not even from their parents. What complete misery! Out of 100 children 68 in whom no one was interested, not even when they were in prison.[240]

The results obtained by correctional education (probably no more perfect in France than elsewhere) prove the correctness of what has been advanced. If the thesis that the environment is the cause of the criminality of minors is true, the conduct of most of those set free ought to be good. Here are the results obtained in the “Quartier correctionnel” of Lyons:[241]