PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 



The object of issuing these essays is to invite criticism, if the subjects 

 and their treatment entitle them to notice. They are purely tentative, the 

 results of two special inquiries, the first of County Jails in 1874, the last of 

 State Prisons in 1875, ordered by resolution of the Prison Association of 

 New York. 



" The Jukes " is a pseudonyme used to protect from aspersion worthy 

 members of the family therein studied, and for convenience of treatment, 

 to reduce the forty-two family names included in the lineage to one ge- 

 neric application. An author who, under such circumstances, puts forth 

 a work requiring great precision of statement and freedom from precon- 

 ceived bias, is bound to state : 



First : the reason for the inquiry, — Sig. M. Beltrani-Scalia, In- 

 spector of Prisons in Italy, asking what is crime in those who commit it ? 

 says : " Until we shall have studied crime in its perpetrators and in all its 

 relations and different aspects, we will never be able to discover the best 

 means to prevent or correct it, nor can we say that penitentiary science 

 has made any great progress. Convicts must be studied in their outward 

 manifestations, because, by examining all the surrounding circumstances, 

 we shall discover what we aim at — truth. Leaving aside all abstract specu- 

 lations and uncertain theories, it is requisite that in moral science, we 

 should follow the same path that has been so advantageously taken in the 

 study of natural science * * * because moral facts, as well as those 

 which are called natural facts, have a cause so to be." After going over 

 the history of the discussions on penitentiary reform for the last fifty years, 

 he adds : " The study of the prisoner is the greatest need still felt after 

 so many years of toil and debate. We have just reached that point where 

 we should have commenced, because, after so much labor, we have only 

 reached an empty space." 



Second : the authority on which his statements rest ; — These are for 

 genealogies, intemperance and social habits, the testimony of old resi- 

 dents who have known the older branches, of relatives, of employers, of 

 records and of officials. For diseases : physicians and poor-house records. 

 For pauperism : the poor-house records. For out-door relief : the books of 

 town poor-masters. For crimes : the records of the county clerk's office, 

 the sheriff's books and prison registers. No other testimony has been 

 accepted for crime and pauperism except that of official records ; and as 

 many of these could not be obtained, the facts in these respects are great- 

 ly understated. 



Third : the manner in which the facts have been gathered. — In the 

 genealogy of the "Jukes," the method employed has been to avoid method 



