164 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



way. The departmental system would have this advantage, that sets 

 of rules could be made for the government of each separate depart- 

 ment and would thus more nearly meet the conditions and needs of each 

 separate group of prisoners. But such a classification is urged only 

 in cases where the solitary system is practically impossible. In close 

 connection with this classification might be considered the question 

 of hereditary treatment. Every prisoner who enters any prison 

 whatever should be carefully studied as to his past history and 

 present life, in order to ascertain his own nature and the elements 

 of manhood within him which are possible of development. A 

 careful record of every prisoner, his past life, the crimes he has 

 committed, his education, his conditions and associations should be 

 carefully considered. This record will enable those who have 

 charge of prisoners to study their character, and not only enable 

 them to manage them better as a disciplinary means, but also furnish 

 a means for such reform as the prisoners are capable of. It may do 

 more even than this, in the study of the influence of heredity in 

 crime. There are those who hold that not much can be made out of 

 the fact that criminal fathers are more apt to have criminal chil- 

 dren than others. But no one who has made a careful inquiry into 

 hereditary taints can question that there is a great tendency in 

 hereditary crime. The subject has not been studied sufficiently far 

 to give data enough to warrant us in drawing mathematical conclu- 

 sions. But cases have been cited where criminals have married 

 and intermarried and large numbers of children have become crimi- 

 nals through many generations. An interesting fact is to be noted 

 here, however, that a large number of the so-called hereditary 

 crimes arise out of existing conditions rather than from blood taint; 

 thus a child whose parents are thieves, and the companions of whose 

 parents are thieves, grows up with his early life biased in this direc- 

 tion; all about him are men engaged in these corrupt practices and 

 the early life is impressed with the supposition that this is a normal 

 state of affairs and he naturally grows up to follow the calling of his 

 parents and neighbors, just as an individual who is brought up to 

 know nothing but farming, and considers this the legitimate calling of 

 his father and neighbors, would seem likely to take to it as a liveli- 

 hood rather than to something else with which he is less familiar. 



The investigations of such men as Charles Booth in London * 

 would seem to indicate that crime arises chiefly out of conditions, 

 examples, and habits, rather than from the assumption that men are 

 born to crime through any inherent psychological tendency. In this 



* Life and Labor of the People of London, by Charles Booth, 3 vols. 



