Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/492

 478 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

11 classes " to be named are found in all the " component societies " mentioned above. In case of the classes to be cited we have again three factors of a social technology a natural group already investigated statistically, a body of experts representing the best judgments of normal social members, and a growing and con- sistent set of regulative maxims for community dealings with the class.

Without going into many details we may designate some of these classes and the name of a branch of social technology already recognized as a legitimate field for scientific specializa- tion.

Thus society has long been compelled to recognize and dis- tinguish the antisocial or criminal class. The criminal anthro- pologists and psychologists have devoted immense labor to minute and protracted studies of the criminal traits and character physical and psychical. Jurisprudence devotes to this class a vast literature of criminal law and procedure, which of late is pro- foundly influenced by studies of the criminal himself, and of sociology in general. Penologists have formed associations, national and international, for a careful investigation of the methods of treatment of all classes of offenders, in prison and elsewhere, with a view to their welfare and the good of the entire community, contemporary and future.

One of the men who have studied our American system of reformatories presented to the last International Prison Congress a long and able paper whose central plea was for a sociological treatment of the subject, since the methods of economics, juris- prudence, and prison science, taken separately, break down in detail before a closely and logically connected system can be constructed. 1

We already have works written from this point of view. 2

The dependents are also recognized as a class by the statisti- cians, and the numbers of the various subclasses have been counted in the census. The biological, medical, economic, and

' PROFESSOR W. MITTERMAIER, Heidelberg, Bulletin de la Commission ptniten- tiaire international, 4 C se"rie, liv. Ill, 1900, Vol. Ill, p. 465.

3 FERRI, Criminal Sociology; W. D. MORRISON, Juvenile Offenders.