Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/538

 5l8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

study of the criminal, they deny its precedence. Instead, they empha- size the psychological and sociological, and hold that the criminal should be studied as a member of the social organism ; that he is equally the product of heredity and environment. Lacassagne, a prominent exponent of this school, has said : " Every society has the criminals that it deserves, and there is something radically wrong in the organization of the state." They deny that a criminal presents any peculiar anatomical characteristics, or that there exists a criminal t3'pe. They have less sympathy with the study of the body, physiog- nomy, speech, handwriting, sensibilities, etc., than with the study of social institutions and the environment and heredity. They believe the great causes of crime are to be found not so much in an innate tendency to commit crime as in a lack of resistance to the pressure of social and physical life. They assert that three-fourths of the criminals are such by occasion, and are not so born, and deny that crime is a disease, or is due to disease. In support of this denial they rely upon prison statistics, which show that 82- per cent, of the pris- oners incarcerated are in good health. They hold that the criminal is only slightly abnormal, and show that of those who are guilty of crimes as many are at large in society and are classed as normal as are incar- cerated in penal institutions, the ratio of convictions to crimes com- mitted being less than one-half. The French faction characterizes Lombroso's theory as " a revival of the empiric science of phrenology," and the Italian results are deemed inconclusive because "the series of observations is limited, processes defective, methods dissimilar, and the observers inexperienced." Little importance is attached to the theory of atavism or regression. Love of pleasure, aversion to labor, defective social institutions, bad financial administration, are among the alleged causes of crime. Consistent with these views is the fact that all social- ists interested in the work are adherents of the French school. No laboratory work has been done by this faction, as the causes are not

ments have been made, similar to Lombroso's recent one in a work upon Chirography, where he said it is possible to distinguish a criminal by his handwriting ; and also in a recent meeting, where it was declared that at no distant day a criminal might be recognized and convicted by his physiognomy and the shape of his cranium. What- ever may be the possibilities, science as such is not concerned with them, and the public is not prepared for the unauthenticated statements which in many instances are based upon meager observations of normal persons with which comparisons have been made. The hasty and extreme conclusions formed by this school have done much to bring the science into the disfavor which to some extent it possesses, and to characterize its members as inaccurate in their work.