786 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
criminal anthropology ; the physical elements, as climate and tempera- ture ; and the social conditions. Until all these factors are dis- tinguished and measured the problem of cause remains unsolved. An attack is made upon the optimism which reads into statistics a belief in the decrease of crime. Severe criticism is directed against those who are comfortably satisfied to meet an increase of lawlessness merely by intensifying the severity of penalty. It is historically shown that severity brutalizes, and that reliance on punishment diverts attention from adequate social changes. So far as certain offenses have in some countries diminished the cause was not cruel penalties but economical or educational improvements.
This conclusion, that penalties cannot diminish crime, leads to a discussion of substitutes for punishment. Examples of such substi- tutes are given from five spheres, economic, political, scientific and technical, legislative and administrative, and educational. Reasonable import duties broke up smuggling. Taxes on alcohol diminish drunk- enness. Since crime increases with drunkenness and this rises with the good vintage years and seasons, a check on the use of alcohol is a preventive of crime. Cooperative benefit societies diminish theft. Inspection of workshops check indecent assaults more than penal servitude will do.
Political crimes disappear when the government represents the will of the people. Popular suffrage is a safety-valve for dangerous pas- sions. Technical advance outwits culprits, as in the case of " Marsh's preparation," which has diminished the use of arsenic as a poison. Photographs of persons drawing large sums on cheques make forgery less common. Cheap and easy processes of law make personal vindi- cation of rights less frequent. Revenge is frequently the result of despair of justice.
Educational methods of prevention must go beyond book educa- tion, and include serviceable knowledge, technical training, prepara- tion for specific work, physical discipline, refined entertainments, suppression of gambling places and of licentious publications. Cor- rectional penalties will continue, but they will gradually be displaced by such preventive measures as those here cited. Professor Ferri thus shows the necessity, in dealing with a particular social problem, of knowing the relation of all social institutions and forces to that prob- Jem. Criminal sociology he regards as a specialized branch of general sociology. His own field of study is anthropology and criminal law,
