Chapter 2

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

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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.