Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/335

 PRISON LABORA TORIES 3 2 1

be a natural part of institution regime, as natural a requirement as a bath or a change of clothes upon arrival. Suspicion and superstition are thus averted. (5) Sometimes tests need to be repeated under different conditions, and this requires longer residence.

Naturally and properly the administrative officers of prisons will ask where competent directors of such institutions can be found. It is vital to the permanent success of this movement that the first appointees be in all respects suitable. The techni- cal qualifications are a training in laboratories of anthropology and of physiological psychology, with a certain additional expe- rience in studies of normal and defective persons in a wider range. The director must be able to formulate and apply sched- ules of questions which will bring out the social forces which tend toward crime. From the standpoint of the sociologist, this is the most interesting part of the investigation. Having sub- mitted this conservative suggestion to an eminent authority 1 in physiology, the author is directly authorized by him to make an even stronger statement than, as a student of sociology, he would venture to make in a field where he is a layman. This state- ment is to the effect that the inherited physiological and psychical traits are of minor, even of insignificant, importance, as causes of crime, save in the rare and exceptional cases of depleting disease or insanity ; that defective social conditions, economic, industrial, domestic, and educational, are the supreme maleficent forces ; that it is even positively misleading and harmful to dwell much, if at all, on bodily and mental traits, because we thus divert public attention away from social reforms and amelio- ration which are within human power to control, and which alone are capable of preventing a criminal career.

But even if these physical and psychical records prove to be unimportant in the explanation of causes of crime, their practical value as means of identification, as guides in physical training and making of dietaries, and as helps in the selection of suitable methods of training, would remain. Certainly the dif- ference in crime due to sex is chiefly due to biological and not

1 These points are illustrated and confirmed in a forthcoming work of PROFESSOR JACQUES LOEB, Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology.