ANTISOCIAL behavior: DELINQUENCY AND CRIME 387 



there is a centralized effort to know and deal with crime and 

 criminals, identification of criminals being vastly easier 

 on account of this; the temper of the people in general being 

 totally different with regard to its feehng about law breaking, 

 a more subtle but a most important factor. Or if we take 

 Germany, another country where crime is much less a prob- 

 lem than with us, we have conditions similar to those of 

 England, plus such facts as the universal registration of 

 population and the development of a specially well-trained 

 poHce force. 



From the foregoing, it should be clear that our own 

 national situation with regard to crime and dehnquency is 

 sui generis, and that the extent of crime with us can be 

 accounted for by some conditions and sets of conditions 

 that are conceivably modifiable and by some that are 

 not. As a matter of social environment, we might think 

 of our present immense handicap of politics as in so many 

 places it permeates the field of dealing with crime, and 

 consider whether or not this might be changed. And then 

 the facts that our judges are so untrained in criminalistics, 

 that there are great weaknesses in our police systems, that 

 there is so much ineffective, half-spirited and uninstructed 

 parole and probation work which should be constructive 

 and preventive, that there exist miserable moral contagions 

 in prison life — these are to be pondered over. Are they 

 alterable, if a different spirit were breathed into our national 

 combat against crime? 



But on the other hand, we cannot change the fact of the 

 newness of our civilization, nor immediately modify traits 

 and habits of the various races and nationalities that make 

 up our population, traits and habits that among a mixed 

 people so readily engender antisocial behavior, nor can we 

 easily diminish the spirit of restlessness and recklessness that is 

 inevitable in a fast growing country, so rich in its resources 

 that many opportunities are given for changing occupations 

 and moving about. Then the size of our country is an 

 unescapable circumstance, bearing on the crime problem, 

 especially in this age of rapid transportation and easy 

 chance for flight, in most important ways. The independence 

 of our separate states in dealing with crime and criminals 



