ANTISOCIAL behavior: DELINQUENCY AND CRIME 389 



These are facts which must make us for some of the 

 explanations of crime turn from theoretical considerations, 

 whether of the schools of criminology or of the legahsts, to 

 these very practical issues which confront our civihzation. 

 Some of the causations he right in the spirit of the com- 

 munities themselves, as exemphfied by their patterns of 

 pohtical and other community behavior, and in the different 

 modes of treatment of offenders. The social environment is a 

 very large part of the story of crime. 



LAW VERSUS SCIENCE IN TREATMENT OF CRIME 



The lack of understanding between science and the law 

 with regard to the knowledge of and treatment of the prob- 

 lems of crime has not been very favorable to the develop- 

 ment of any satisfactory haison between the two. Jurists 

 and other legally trained people, so far, have shown but 

 shght awakening to the possibility of the apphcation of 

 scientific method to the great task of protecting society 

 from criminahsm. Indeed, one can fairly say that there 

 has not been the introduction of even any business-hke 

 methods of taking account of profits and losses, successes 

 and failures, that accrue through treatment of crime by the 

 methods in vogue under the law. One has yet to see any 

 study coming from a jurist which undertakes to set forth 

 the results of what has been accomplished by what he has 

 prescribed. Such a tracing of results or outcomes is funda- 

 mental, of course, in the sciences which aim to have control 

 of material or of situations, but since the law has grown to 

 what it is through slowly developing theory and tradition, 

 it has found no reason for introducing the methods of 

 business or science. 



On the other hand, science has never advanced to the 

 stage of undertaking any thorough-going treatment of 

 offenders with the aim of ascertaining, perhaps by experi- 

 ment, what can be accomplished through any treatment. 

 Very meager attempts have been made here and there 

 to do something concerning some one feature of the total 

 situation in individual cases, such as attention to the health 

 or to trade training of offenders, but there have been practi- 

 cally no well-rounded efforts to check the careers of criminals 



