The causes of crime are primarily in the person, secondarily in the circumstances
that surround him. The quality of 
being
that constitutes a criminal cannot be clearly known, until observed as belonging
to the class from which criminals come, for the peculiarities of an individual
may be purely personal, indicating nothing definite as to the law that governs
his actions; while the same facts, found to follow a class, would reveal
at least the existence of a law, though possibly not yet definable. The
science of man forms the foundation of all systems for his government. A
true prison system, therefore, should take cognizance of criminal classes
as such, for purposes of investigation, to bring to bear such forces as
may modify their common character, thus diminishing the tendency to crime.
Surely, much may be gained for repression of crime in a community, through
facility of access to, and information concerning, the criminal class, and
also much for finding the true principles of prison administration, when
we can classify society and designate the conditions that develop criminal
practices. See the significance of the following facts, gathered from an
examination of 100,058 prisoners from 15 different prison establishments,
as well county prisons for the confinement of those convicted of misdemeanors,
as state prisons for felons: 53,101 were born in foreign countries, leaving
46,957 natives; but of these, full 50 per cent were born of foreign parents,
making over 76 per cent of the whole number, whose tastes and habits were
those of such foreigners as emigrate to this country. The inmates of the
two classes of prisons, viewed apart in this particular, show that, while
61 per cent of the county prisoners were actually foreign born, only 39
per cent of the state prisoners are so reported, thus exactly reversing
the ratio. Of this 100,058 prisoners, 58,159 were living without the influence
of family life, and 41,899 laid claim to family connections. Now, if we
consider, in connection with this, what we know as to the life of these
latter—the low type of their family relations—we have another
social fact in reference to criminals, of much importance. Again, of the
same aggregate, 16 per cent were between the ages of 16 and 20 years, 42
per cent between 20 and 30 years, and 42 per cent over 30. Or, 58 percent
were under 30 years of age, and 42 per cent over; in the county prisons
52 per cent were under 30, and in the state institutions 70 per cent. The
following facts as to the previous occupation of this 100,000 prisoners
convicted of crime point unmistakably to its prolific conditions, viz: 82
per cent were laborers and servants, 16 per cent only were artisans, less
than 2 per cent "professional loafers," and only 874 of the whole
number from the educated professions. It is known, too, that the education
of prisoners generally consists in the ability to read and write simply;
but few can do any mathematical work, and not one per cent are classically
educated, and these but superficially so. The statistics in my possession
show 27 per cent not able to read; 17 per cent read a little, but do not
write; thus 44,000 of the number under consideration are without education,
and the remaining 56,000, being able only to read and write, are without
systematic mental culture. If we add to the above one other fact, viz.:
that 82 per cent admit themselves to be intemperate, in bondage to their
animal appetites, only 18 per cent claiming to be temperate, while many
of these were committed for crimes, the consequence of their excesses, we
have an array of statistical information as to the social condition of the
classes from which criminals come, and inferentially as to the constitutional
condition of criminals, that cannot be ignored by any prison system justly
entitled to the name, and certainly not by the true ideal system.
Not only does there devolve upon the department of criminal administration
the gathering and arrangement of social statistics that bear upon crime,
but the duty of generalizing them. No sound prison system can be devised
until examination is had of antecedent social phenomena. Whence these unfavorable
conditions among men? Why does crime follow in their train? What is the
molecular condition or quality of those who gravitate to vicious and criminal
society and practices? How is the mind affected by a degraded physical organism?
How are the tastes formed, the purposes and desires moulded, and the moral
sense obscured by such a mind? Do men make themselves what they are voluntarily,
or is there a law of transmission pervading the moral and intellectual nature,
as well as the physical? What kind of culture intensifies the natural tendency?
What cures and tones up? How can a system be planned, a department of state
government formed, to cure criminals, to stamp out crime, and to heal the
social disease thus developed, without first obtaining a diagnosis of it?
