380 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



The ordinary dictionary definitions of crime are: "An 

 omission of a duty commanded, or the commission of an 

 act forbidden, by pubHc law." "Gross violation of human 

 law — in distinction from a misdemeanor or trespass or other 

 shght offense." Procedure under the criminal law generally 

 makes no attempt to define crime, but the New York Penal 

 Code says that a crime is an act or omission forbidden by 

 law and punishable by death, imprisonment, fine, or removal 

 from office. Delinquency, as the term is used in America, 

 means offense against the law committed by an individual 

 of juvenile court age, up to seventeen or eighteen years in 

 most states. 



One of the most important points for consideration by 

 those who study delinquents and criminals scientificially 

 for the purpose of correlating physical or mental peculiarities 

 with special conduct proclivities is that criminals, after 

 all, are only the caught and convicted offenders against the 

 law. Who or what are those who commit crime and remain 

 for long or even permanently undetected, hence figuring 

 very little or not at all in any studies of persons rated as 

 criminals? Some suggestion of what the answer to this 

 might be is in the following: I remember once in the Juvenile 

 Court of Chicago a mentally defective boy appeared in 

 court for the third or fourth time, having been readily 

 apprehended each time after a minor burglary in his neigh- 

 borhood. Next came two active high school boys who 

 together had perpetrated some fifty or sixty burglaries or 

 larcenies without apprehension. They had hugely enjoyed 

 their adventures; their stories were corroborated by dis- 

 covered loot. 



Then, next, for the sake of more fundamental considera- 

 tions in the science of human nature, it is worth everything 

 steadily to insist on the very plain fact that, compared to 

 crime, much that is not rated as crime is as injurious, or 

 even more injurious, and bespeaks as much deviation from 

 the ideals of social welfare. Those who have to deal with 

 the problems of family life come to know of many cases of 

 frightful misbehavior that are not punished and that are 

 hardly punishable under the law. Cruel dominations and 

 frictions in the family that bring about great unhappiness, 



