Crime, springing, as it does, from the selfishness and imperfection of
our nature, cannot entirely cease until we have a
perfect society, which must be composed of a perfected race: this we can
hardly hope for in our age and generation. But crime may be diminished by
the progress of civilization, which, within the sphere of our influence,
we may help or hinder, though in the world at large civilization is bounded
by great laws, operating in harmony with those which govern the changes
occurring in the material structure of the earth itself. The throng of European
emigrants of the poorer class, coming annually to our shores, seems to have
something to do with the volume of crime in our own country (as shown by
the statistics heretofore adduced), and may be regulated so as to secure
a more rapid and sure absorption of them among the native population; and
something may be done to distribute the dependent and dangerous classes
from the crowded marts to more thinly populated regions, thus doing away
with many incitements to crime, as far as they are concerned. The large
proportion of criminals living out of the family relation, and the low type
of family life of the rest, suggest the thought of some governmental control
of marriage, to make it honorable and desirable for the poorer classes,
and to prevent such unions as necessarily propagate disease and dangerous
tendencies; also to require and maintain suitable sanitary conditions for
the growth of a healthy people, with pure impulses. This latter seems the
more feasible, from the fact that so large a majority of criminals are under
thirty years of age, and therefore susceptible of improvement as a class.
That the labor question, in its numerous ramifications, bears directly upon
crime, is clearly indicated by the 82 per cent of the 100,000 prisoners
whose previous occupation was that of day laborers and servants—the
prevention of crime seeming to involve the necessity for better compensation
and better facilities for their education, the want of which is made painfully
apparent by the statistical statement given above. So, too, it would seem
a hopeless task to try to prevent crime without regulating and restraining
the vending of intoxicating liquors, when it is shown that 82 per cent of
criminals admit themselves to be intemperate. The department of prevention
also involves the compulsory education in common schools of those children
now excluded therefrom by their incorrigibility or indifference, and the
neglect or disregard of their parents and guardians; also of the children
and youth in jails, almshouses and dependent families, who are wholly or
in part the wards of the state, for here are found the seeds of much degradation,
and the source of much criminality. So, too, the system of temporary relief
for the indigent, as it is generally framed and administered, must be supplanted
by a better one, free from the degradation incident to receiving alms, and
supplied with some stimulus to exertion and to social elevation. The poor-houses,
many of them poor indeed, need to be replaced by state or district establishments,
with better appointments, and such administration as looks to the cultivation
of the inmates up to a self-sustaining point, instead of their stinted support
in statu quo; the iniquitous common jail system must be stricken
from the face of society, and some safe place be provided in each county
for the isolated imprisonment of alleged criminals before trial, and also
district industrial reformatories for the treatment of those convicted of
misdemeanors, fallen persons and laplings. The prevention of crime, therefore,
involves a change in public sentiment as to these matters. That sentiment
of society which lets alone the causes of crime leaves the criminal (out
of regard to falsely so-called personal rights) in unrestrained practices,
premonitory of the sure result, and then cries for punishment, vengeful,
vindictive. When no pity is felt for the forlorn wretch who is often the
victim of ancestral vices, vile parentage and poverty-stricken surroundings
in early life, the sentiment of society prevents the possibility of planting
a true prison system. There must be such an advance of civilization, such
virtue and intelligence in the state, that its chief officers, its legislature
and its courts shall have real regard for society, and hold all things subservient
to this sentiment. When all social questions are viewed from the partisan
stand-point and for partisan ends; when the administration of this department
of the public service is interfered with and its management attempted by
politicians who have no knowledge of its true nature and necessities; when
the judges of the courts are elected to place by the seeming riots of the
roughs and then let those to whom they are indebted for their elevation
slip through the meshes of the law, possibly reading religious homilies
to turn the public eye from the true character of the proceeding—then
only bastiles or bridewells are possible. Public sentiment
must be changed, kindlier feelings cultivated, and control of these matters
concentrated in some competent authority, free from partisan bias. The influence
of society at large and of the government must be enlisted in aid of these
efforts to interpose barriers to the growth of crime, preventing, so far
as possible, the crop of criminals now gathered as a harvest with every
returning court session, and restraining, educating, refining, reforming
such as sift through these preventive means, and come into prison establishments
for cure.
