NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 283
selection, it is to be remarked that the existence, amount, and results of the elimina- tion of types by their failure to produce their kind constitute a problem which only statistical inquiries can settle, and if the doctrine is to be used as an excuse for evad- ing certain obvious facts in human history, it is perhaps time that it should be questioned.
" So far as present facts go, the probability is against natural selection in the case of fertility in man. The contrary hypothesis, that a stock like an individual has a birth, growth, senescence, and death; that, apart from the onslaughts of rivals or the privations of a hard environment or the suicide of universal debauchery, races die a natural death of old age, lends itself very well to the interpretation of human his- tory, and perhaps to the history of animal forms as well. It leaves the causation of this race life and death as a mystery. But a mystery is less objectionable than a con- tradiction." EDWARD L. THORNDIKE, in Popular Science Monthly.
J. D.
Juvenile Criminality. After a study of statistics and from personal observation of the size of the families from which the young offenders came, and of the incomes of these same families, I am persuaded that crime among children is the product of their surroundings and misery rather than of heredity. I have sought in vain for that type described by Lombroso. I have seen youths bearing many marks of degeneracy, adolescents deeply perverted, wilfully rebellious against discipline, capable of every excess, evidencing complete contempt for authority, but I have never found that type that is said by the Italian school to be the immediate product of heredity. I do not deny that heredity may have an influence, but the origin of the tendency to crime has wretchedness (mistre) for the prime factor. I am absolutely convinced of its predom- inating influence. The child is not born a criminal; he becomes a criminal.
The wretchedness that is so fruitful of crime may be resolved into lack of good food, and often of any kind of food ; lack of clothes ; lack of room, light, ventilation, and soap ; absence of any moral influence in the home and no parental supervision. Children are pushed out into the streets to earn a penny ; no questions are asked by the parents of their whereabouts. The salvation of this class can be found only in a system of schools under the management of correctional and penal institutions, or perhaps in the state taking the place of parents to these children. The great prob- lems in giving these children a school training are in providing the means and the method of separating them into groups or classes according to their intellectual and associational needs.
From statistics on repeated arrests grouped according to ages ; from statistics on arrests distributed among different ages; from a classification of offenses according to ages of the offenders ; from experiences with various "colonies" of correction; and remembering that groupings must be for averages rather than extremes, I believe that the age at entrance into these schools should be made the basis of classification. Promotions and " demotions " can easily be made when evidently demanded. Because there is a close parallelism between the age and the viciousness of the criminal tend- ency, such a classification promises best to protect the younger from the hurtful influence of the older. There is seemingly a closer relation between age and criminal tendency than between literacy and criminal tendency. Where the isolation of younger from older has been best carried on in France there has been a gratifying decrease in criminality among the younger. More perfectly to isolate the older group from fourteen to sixteen years of age it would seem advisable even to have entirely separate institutions.
Another change that would be quite helpful in the effort to reclaim these youths and children is a system of juvenile courts in which the individual boys should be regarded and large discretion be given the judge, and the method be such as not to belittle, but to encourage, the boy brought before the court.
The results of the efforts in France in the direction of schools and reformed judicial procedure seem to be a decrease in the extent of juvenile crime, but not a corresponding change in the character of the offenses. Indeed, the average of offenses seems to grow worse. This is explained by the cutting off the minor offenses of the younger; and the greater difficulty of reforming the older and worse offenders. M. GROSMOLARD, "Criminality juvenile," in Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, April and May, 1903. T. J. R.
