Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/621

Rh are above all to be found in reformatories, to be commended in initial idea but to be condemned in the manner this idea is usually executed. Here, he holds, the young get to know vagabonds and idlers, whom they are drawn to copy by that instinct for imitation that exists in the youthful mind. The children associated in such places are often foundlings or the offspring of immoral families, or of parents incapable or unable to educate them. When these are brought together with children of good, honest families the latter are too frequently pushed into vice by bad example, by acquaintances made in undesirable places. It is undoubtedly our duty to care for the orphan and the foundling, but we must be careful above all to prevent their being dragged into guilt as well as to lift up those that may have fallen into it. It is from this very aim, as Lombroso knows, that has arisen the idea of reformatories and houses of custody for the young, which in France receive annually 7,685, in Italy 3,770, in Belgium 1,473, in Holland 161, and in America 2,400 individuals. But their utility, the professor holds, is not apparent. They have been founded in a frame of mind more benevolent than well informed as to the criminal nature. Too many and too complex are the causes, multiplied by mutual contact, of the evil they would cure, and this too at an age not tender enough to model, yet young enough to be expansive and inclined to imitation, especially of evil.

The over-agglomeration for economical reasons of individuals, and the admission into public reformatories of the worst subjects expelled from private establishments, annul every attempt at reform. Statistics show but too plainly the falling back into evil courses of the inmates of such institutions. The diminution in England of twenty-six per cent, which is attributed to the one hundred and seventy-two reformatories which she owns, Lombroso would assign instead rather to the diffusion of the twenty-three thousand so-called "ragged schools" that take care of millions of young people during the most dangerous age. In Italy, says Lombroso, it is too easy for fathers and guardians to place sons and wards in reformatories under pretext that they are wicked; and certainly it is not there that they will amend, since in such places there can not be carried into effect the nightly cellular system and the enforced silence which are an absolute necessity for rigid discipline, and to counteract the worst vices of the young criminal. From his own observations Prof. Lombroso is convinced that even in the so-called best-managed reformatories there prevail the worst sexual vices, not to mention theft, the camorra, such as is carried on in the penal hulks, the learning of the criminal jargon, the tricks of the trade, tattooing, and all other distinctive vices of criminal men. What remedy lies to hand? Prof. Lombroso writes, in his Uomo Delinquente,