ANTISOCIAL behavior: DELINQUENCY AND CRIME 385 



Justice Rhodes, some twenty years ago turned to the 

 medical profession in an article in the British Medicaid ournal 

 and asked whether this deahng with offenders was, after 

 all, altogether a job for the law. Do not the facts of recidivism 

 prove that it is for scientists to cure criminal propensities? 

 He quoted Enghsh criminal statistics, showing that in an 

 ordinary year upwards of 10,000 of those convicted had 

 been previously convicted more than twenty times each, 



SIZE AND COST OF THE CRIME PROBLEM 



And perhaps another reason why scientists should be 

 interested in crime is the enormous size of it as an 

 unanswered problem in our civihzation, especially in our 

 modern American hfe. 



If we reckon costs in terms of money the Missouri Crime 

 Survey is worth considering, a careful piece of work showing 

 that the bill for crime in that state is about $100,000,000 

 a year, and Missouri is probably fairly representative, not 

 much better or worse than other states. Mr. Prentiss of the 

 National Crime Commission estimates the direct cost of 

 law enforcement alone at $4,000,000,000 a year in the 

 United States. If we need to say anything more about the 

 cost of actual crime, we could generahze and state that in 

 times of peace the greatest pubhc expense, next to that of 

 education, is by far that of combating crime, and this cost 

 does not take into account the various big losses sustained 

 through crime. 



Notwithstanding the enormous number of criminals who 

 are not apprehended or convicted, over ^o oi i per cent 

 of the population of this country at any given time is under 

 commitment for dehnquency and crime. That certain crimes 

 form almost a national pastime with us is shown by such 

 proportionate figures as the following: During 19 19 in St. 

 Louis there were 1087 highway robberies, and in Chicago 

 1862 were recorded. In the whole of France that year, it 

 is said there were but 29 such robberies. Homicides with us 

 have been statistically treated by Hoffman who shows 

 their enormous relative occurrence, not only in Chicago, 

 which figures so greatly in our newspapers as a center of 



