Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/211

Rh cure of the sick and in the alleviation of the destitute even though they saw that the multiplication of the less desirable types of humanity might thus be encouraged. One consideration, however, made them hope that eugenic advantages would not infrequently spring from reforms intended to affect human surroundings. The philanthropist's efforts resulted in the more easily cured or reformed being separated out from those less amenable to environmental influences. As social reform proceeded, and as the unfit were thus more and more clearly marked out from the nation at large, the numbers to be considered with reference to eugenic reform would be proportionately diminished, and racial progress would thus be facilitated. Social reforms producing these eugenic by-products must be utilized, as for example the proposed changes in the treatment of the habitual criminal. Improvement in environment would, no doubt, cause a diminution in crime, but a remnant of habitual criminals would remain, whose strong natural tendencies, being subject to the laws of natural inheritance, would infallibly tend to reappear in their descendants. To lessen their fertility seemed, therefore, within the scope of eugenic reform. Crime had a marked tendency to run in families.

Individuals endowed with those natural qualities, mental or physical, which render resistance to crime more than ordinarily difficult, are often brought into bad surroundings, mental or physical; this bad environment reacted on them, dragging them down in body and mind, and this action and reaction continuing either in the individual or generation after generation, the final resultant of these forces often was a long series of short imprisonments. The aim of the social reformer was, when possible, to break the vicious circle by at once removing the link of bad environment; whilst the eugenist would at the same time also strive to strengthen the innate characters of the individuals composing the coining generations. This latter result might be obtained by selective breeding.

A study of criminal family statistics surely must make the believer in environmental effects demand the segregation of the criminal-parent, both to safeguard the lives of those children who have been born into foul surroundings and to lessen the numbers of those children who would be born to face the perils thus arising. In short that seemed to be the right policy to adopt from whatever direction they approached this subject.

Much would have to be done before the machinery established under the mental deficiency act would produce the best possible results, and unquestionably this was the field to which the eugenist could now most usefully turn his attention. They could not form any trustworthy estimate of the number of criminals who would be dealt with under the provisions of the act, and they would sooner or later be driven to enquire whether some steps ought not to be taken with regard to the remainder of their habitual criminal population. If he could only be proved to be either very stupid, very weak or utterly worthless, was the man who committed crime after crime to be allowed to go on breeding freely? Few who had studied these questions with care had any doubt that habitual criminals ought to be detained for longer periods than at present, whilst every effort should be made to make that detention more curative in its effects.

The foregoing considerations had led many criminologists to advocate the system of "indeterminate sentences" in the case of habitual criminals. A reform much more easily obtainable, and one which the eugenist ought to endeavor to promote, would be the amendment of the prevention of crimes act in such a manner as to make it more readily applicable to the man of many minor offences. This act could easily be amended so as to make it easier to increase the periods of detention of those