anity and death; in short, as it
affects all life. More crimes of violence are committed after wars or
during heated political campaigns than at other times; more of such
crimes when, either by climatic or other conditions, feelings are
intensified or aroused and less subject to control. Likewise there are
more crimes committed by young men between seventeen and twenty four or
five years of age than at any other age. Neither the very young nor the
old commit crimes, except in rare cases. All the old people could be
safely dismissed from prisons. Some few of the senile would need
attention, and many need support and care, but none is dangerous to the
community. There can be no question that practically all criminals are
poor. Even when bankers get into prison they almost never have much
money when they start that way, and none when they arrive. They are sent
for something that would not have happened except for financial
disaster. There is no longer any question that a large number, say
probably from ten to twenty per cent of the convicted are, in fact,
insane at the time the act was committed, and that the demented, the
imbecile, and the clearly subnormal constitute many more than half of
the inmates of prisons. Most of the rest can be accounted for by
defective nervous systems, excessively strong instincts in some
directions, weak ones in another, or a very hard environment. Add to
this the facts that only a few have ever had any education worthy of the
name, that most of them have never been trained to make a fair living by
any trade or occupation, that almost all have had a poor early
environment with no chance from the first, and most of them have had a
very imperfect heredity. In short, sufficient statistics have been
gathered and enough is known to warrant the belief that every case of
crime could be accounted for on purely scientific grounds if all the
facts bearing on the case were known.

Is there anything unreasonable in all of this? Is it outside of the
other manifestations of life? Let us take disease. Clearly this is
affected by heat and cold; beyond question it is largely the result of
inherited susceptibilities. Poverty or wealth has much to do with
disease. Many poor people die of tuberculosis, for instance, where the
well-to-do would live. The span of life of the rich is greater than that
of the poor. The long list of diseases from under-nourishment is mainly
from the poor. Age affects disease, increasi