Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/871

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 857

The Cost of Crime. To the end of arousing a more general interest in the means employed to diminish crime, an estimate of the pecuniary loss on account of crime in the United States is given. This estimate must include that part of national, state, county, town, and city taxation chargeable to crime and its prevention, and also the loss inflicted on the people by acts of crime. In the cost through taxation there should be included, not only the cost of maintenance of prisons, police, and courts, but also a part of the cost of legislation, of the judicial and military expenses, and of charities. The estimates are largely without direct statistical foundation, and are entitled to weight only as the carefully formed opinions of men who have given serious study to the subject of crime.

Taking New York, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans as representative cities in which the statis- tics are fairly complete, and inferring the condition of the rest of the cities fron the condition of these, the conclusion is reached that the average cost of crime through taxation is not less than #3.50 per capita of the entire city population. From general considerations it seems probable that the rate in rural communities cannot be more than $i per capita. Accepting these rates, we reach a final computation of the annual cost of crime in the United States in the following summary:

City and county taxation chargeable to crime 30,000,000 inhabitants at $3.50 each - - $105,000,000 Town and county taxation chargeable to crime 45,000,000 inhabitants at $i each - 45,000,000

Federal and state taxation chargeable to crime, not less than 50,000,000

Total -- $200,000,000

But this is only the beginning of the cost of crime. Estimating the average annual income of habitual criminals at $1,600, and the number of such criminals at 250,000, we have an aggregate annual income of the criminal class of $400,000,000, which, added to the $200,000,000 yearly taxation caused by crime, gives the enormous total of $600,000,000. But the end is not yet. Four hundred million dollars repre- sents only the net profits of crime, not the loss and actual damage caused by crime. It does not include the malicious destruction of property, the money value of life and labor, nor the cost of locks, bolts, bars, safety deposit vaults, and burglar alarms. While these items cannot be estimated with any degree of accuracy, they are none the less real counts in the cost of crime.

Even if the computation made in this paper seems to be based on conjecture, there is absolutely no doubt as to the real existence of all the elements of cost that have entered into the computation, nor as to the significance and magnitude of the final aggregate. EUGENE SMITH, "The Cost of Crime," Report prepared for the International Prison Commission, in House Document ^97, Fifty-Sixth Congress, Sec- ond Session. R. A.

Intellectual Anarchy. About the middle of the eighteenth century there arose in France a school whose religion was freedom of thought, and whose God was the one word " liberty ;" a word which they interpreted for the public to mean illimitable promises of all good things, but for themselves to mean the right to say anything, to dare anything, and to take anything, without having to render account to anyone. Though excesses have been committed in the name of liberty, yet it has a legitimate place in the language. It cannot be considered a generative principle of our acts, or a metaphysical entity ; and still less can it be placed in the social categories of religion, family, and private property. It is, however, the result of an inherent prin- ciple in man. This principle is conscience, the origin of moral law. To be in accord with morality, as interpreted by conscience, is to be free. He alone is free who finds within himself, in the very fundamental law of his nature, the motives of his acts.

Conscience is innate and can never be superimposed upon man through the instrumentality of religion. All religions serve, in varying degrees, to be sure, to develop this faculty, if such it can be called. Any religion, however barbarous or depraved, is better than no religion. But, above all, the Christian religion has made man free indeed. It has removed all the hindrances to moral freedom. In condemn- ing all his vices, it has rendered man capable of all liberty.

A so-called liberal school that ranked Frederic II., Catherine II., and Napoleon I. among its gods, that canonized Danton and Robespierre, tried to crush all religious