Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/406

402 against the person is found in the rural sections (34.2 per cent.), while those against property predominate in the professional (40.9 per cent.) and the clerical and official (49.8 per cent.) ranks.

These figures present material for the politico-social and economic philosophers, with whom it is left to discover the true points of causal relations and to trace the relative virulence of the social disease as it approaches those great active centers where the struggle for existence grows constantly more intense. In short, the want line focuses the brunt of battle, and here, whatever specific form it assumes, the overt act (that constitutes crime) is most pronounced whether manifested under the world-old principles of greed against need, or in the more purely sporadic form, in either case the burden of the attack may be said to be committed by those who stand nearer the want end of the economic problem, hence the solution must fall more largely to the social and economic phases of the question.

No clear understanding of the criminological problem from either a concrete or academic standpoint is possible without a table of recidivists. This has been omitted from the twelfth census. It renders it valueless to the student of crime. The recidivist table is a method by which we may roughly measure (approximately) the bulk of the criminal aggression and presents the only stable criterion upon which anything like a reliable estimate of the force of the criminal disease may be based with any degree of certainty. Upon its figures alone both the protective and corrective agencies may be said to operate with perfect safety. The repeater has earned his place in the criminal category by inherent right. Recidivism is the classification in the rough by which he is assigned sui generis. The generalization may be crude and not always fair, but it presents the only rule possible under the circumstances. The subtler psychological conditions that underlie human conduct escape utterly any and every analytical process. Every attempted classification upon the basis of accredited conduct must of necessity be but crudely inductive, but it is the only feasible method whereby to differentiate the true criminal from the offender by circumstance.

The latter may not repeat the same act under similar conditions, his inhibitory powers coming to the rescue, the former is almost certain to do so, owing to their lack, or total absence. It is the demarcation between the instinctive and accidental malfeasant. The separation may waste some gold in the process, but in the main the method is correct. At any rate, it is necessary to a complete understanding of the criminal problem and the tentativeness of criminal and corrective measures. It clarifies the former and helps to simplify the latter. The first offender represents an invasion upon the healthy social tissue; the recidivist stands for the already diseased, hence their