PRINCIPLES OF REFORM IN PENAL LAW 257 



partly on rounders or habitual misdcmeananls, fic(|uently on 

 the younj:; who have for once im{)ulsively or even inadver- 

 tently gone wrong;. Now, while the uselessness and harmful- 

 ness of such sentences are well understood, and while the 

 courts, under the pressure of public opinion, are increasingly 

 loath to inflict them, the number of offenses to which they are 

 legally assigned is steadily increasing. 



As society grows in complexity and the standard of social 

 conduct is raised, there is a constant increase in the recognized 

 obligations of the individual. New rights and new duties 

 emerge, and the violations of them become new crimes. It is 

 often observed that the improvement of public order and of 

 the general conscience are marked by an increase in the num- 

 ber of legal offenders. For many acts are now prohibited as 

 offenses upon which the laws w^ere formerly silent. Thus the 

 business of criminal courts and prisons may be greater than 

 before, when there is much less of real or serious crime. It 

 has even been suggested that the increase of crime l^ecomes 

 in this way a mark of advancing civilization. But the paradox 

 is superficial, and turns upon an ambiguous use of the word 

 crime. 



It is a fact, however, that legislatures in their desire to 

 suppress any practice which is pernicious or inconvenient are 

 prone to define it as a crime, and to make it punishable by a 

 term in jail. Thus New York, within five years, has added 

 about thirty to the list of offenses which the penal code de- 

 nounces as worthy of imprisonment. Any person who lends 

 or gives to another a newspaper chiefly made up of police re- 

 ports must be sent to jail for at least ten days. One who 

 sells a cigar on Sunday, or eats peanuts in a religious meetmg, 

 or, bemg a nonresident, gathers oysters m the state, may be 

 imprisoned for a few days or weeks. A multitude of acts 

 which may easily be committed by mere inadvertence are made 

 misdemeanors and may be punished by incarceration for any 

 fraction of a year. The mother of a child whose eye is red 

 from any cause, who does not at once inform a phj'sician ; the 

 brakeman who couples a freight car after a passenger car; the 

 citizen who advises his friend to leave the railroad service 

 rather than wear a uniform; the layman who has an ounce of 



Vol. 10—17 



