812 KEPORT — 1891. 



view is approaching- preneral acceptance. But what the writer wishes to impress 

 is not that criminality is hereditary, that now being generally admitted, but the 

 indisputable fact that it is interchangeable with other degenerate conditions, such 

 as idiocy, epilepsy, suicide, insanity, prostitution, scrofula, drunkenness, &c., and 

 that it is a mere chance whether the insanity or drunkenness, say, of the parent 

 will appear as such in the child, or be transmuted in transmission to one or other 

 of the above mentioned degenerate conditions. 



Mode of I'ransmission. — Criminality here follows the same lines as other states 

 of decay. In some cases it is transmitted through several generations unchanged, 

 but this is rare. Occasionally a generation of criminals will appear in a decaying 

 famil)' as a generation of deaf-mutes or epileptics at times appears in the family of 

 the scrofulous or insane diathesis. But in the majority of cases crime only appears 

 in one, two, or three members of the family, the others showing the taint in various 

 ways — e.g. one will be scrofulous or a deaf-mute, another insane, idiotic, or a 

 prostitute, as the case may be. 



Chief Sources of Instinctive Criminality . — All deteriorating influences are 

 liable to result in crime as in other form of degeneration in the offspring. Alco- 

 holism, however, is its most fruitful source. Rossi puts the percentage of drunken- 

 ness in parents of criminals at 43-6, Marro at 41, Wey at 38'7, and Tarnowsky, in 

 the parents of prostitutes, at no less than 82-66. Here the environment must have 

 an efi'ect ; but as education and example cannot account for the idiocy, epilepsy, 

 deformity, iSrc, in the children of the drunkard, neither can it be held largely 

 responsible for the crime and prostitution. Insanitj', epilepsy, and suicide are 

 often transmuted to crime in passing to the children. Of all persons convicted of 

 murder in England and Wales in the decade 1879-88, 32 per cent, were found 

 insane, and 32 per cent, more had their sentences commuted, many on the ground 

 of mental disorder. A neurotic family history was found in criminals in Elmira 

 Reform in 13'7 per cent, (parents alone) ; at Auburn, in 2303 ; Rossi, 35. 



Tubercular Disease is another cause. Great numbers of criminals are them- 

 selves tubercular — almost as many as of idiots — and it is common in their families. 

 Tarnowsky found a phthisical parentage in 44 per cent, of prostitutes. 



Senility and Immaturity of Parents are also fruitful sources of crime in the 

 enfeebled descendants, as is proved by the statistics of INIarro, Korosi, and others. 



True Positioji of the Criminal. — He is not a free agent. He is as helpless 

 against his instinct to crime as is the epileptic against his convulsion, or the 

 suicide against the instinct which impels him to self-destruction. The great 

 stumbling-blocks to the recognition of the criminal's true position are the doctrine 

 of ' free-will,' and the belief that all come into the world with a certain regular 

 quantum of moral sense. These are fundamental errors. When we accept the 

 fact that moral feeling and volitional power are not imvarying gifts, but depend 

 as much upon the proper development and healthy action of the higher nervous 

 centres as does the exercising of any other intellectual function whatever, we shall 

 see that the suicide without reasonable cause, his sister who becomes a prostitute, 

 his brother who does murder at the command of a voice from heaven, and the 

 other member of the family who is an incurable thief, are all equally the victims 

 of a vicious organisation. This has been practically admitted by the recognition 

 of the dipso- and klepto-maniac ; but if justice is to be done, the system must be 

 largely extended. 



Present Treatment. — The present system has proved a disastrous failure. 

 Short periods of punitive imprisonment can have no etiect upon the instinctive 

 criminal, either curative or deterrent. The records I'ead in our courts daily prove 

 this, and the present system must go after the whip and chain of the maniac. 



Proposed Treatment. — Everything points in the direction of prolonged or inde- 

 finite confinement of the instinctive criminal and habitual drunkard in industrial 

 penitentiaries. Upon detection as such, they would be permanently contined, as 

 our imbeciles and incurable lunatics are at present, but with this difference. lu 

 these homes the inmates would be taught trades, &c., and would receive, with 

 liberty to spend in any reasonable way, all they might earn over and above the 

 cost of their maintenance. This would not only protect society against its anti- 



