Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/415

Rh, and conclusions unsparingly, and declares as the best opinion he has been able to form on a review of all the facts, and from the expressions of persons whose practical connection with the subject gives weight to their views, that crime is decreasing. He cites the returns of the prison population since 1877 as showing a continuous annual decrease, which none of the explanations offered adequately account for except those which ascribe it to the depression of trade cutting off the supply of money for drinking with, or to the growing dislike of a certain class of criminals for life in prison—both of which imply a decrease of crime. He ascribes the decrease to Christian philanthropy, which he says has never attained a higher development than now, when it is perhaps one of the principal features of the present stage of civilization.

It "has led to an entirely new way of dealing with crime—namely, by prevention instead of by punishment; and one of the principal results of this philanthropic idea is the establishment of industrial schools, in which young persons who seem likely to fall into crime and to develop into adult criminals may be trained into a better way and made into useful members of society.

"It has led to those movements for providing better dwellings, and otherwise raising the condition of those who are sometimes called 'the disinherited,' sometimes 'the submerged,' which help to remove temptations to crime, and purify the atmosphere in which those who may develop into criminals have been compelled to live.

"It is perhaps one of the most curious features in the proof offered of the increase of crime that the adoption and development of the very means by which it is diminished are cited as corroborations of the doctrine that it has increased—among them being the increase in the number of juveniles committed to industrial schools. To show this we are given the number of those committed to 'reformatories and industrial schools' added together. The reformatories are penal and reformatory institutions for young persons convicted of crime, and correspond, therefore, to prisons. The industrial schools, on the other hand, are preventive institutions for children who have not been convicted, but might fall into crime for want of proper care and training. To mix the two together obviously obscures the facts, and the more thoroughly because the committals to reformatories have decreased during the last ten years, so that the increase in the united numbers is solely due to the development of the distinctly preventive institutions, to which there is little doubt the decrease in crime and criminals is largely due, and which are the product of the Christian civilization of which Rousseau thought so little. In fact, mixing the two together is as if an increased prevalence of small-pox was proved by adding together the