Wherever the woods are not traversed by railroads or tramways,
brigandage carries on its criminal trade. But wherever railroads and
tramways exist, brigandage is a form of crime which disappears. You may
insist on death penalties and imprisonment, but assault and robbery will
continue, because it is connected with geographical conditions. Use on
the other hand the instrument of civilization, without sentencing any
one, and brigandage and robbery will disappear before its light. And if
human beings in large industrial centers are herded together in
tenements and slum hotels, how can a humane judge aggravate the
penalties against sexual crimes? How can the sense of shame develop
among people, when young and old of both sexes are crowded together in
the same bed, in the same corrupted and corrupting environment, which
robs the human soul of every noble spark?

I might stray pretty far, if I were to continue these illustrations of
social hygiene which will be the true solution of the problem and the
supreme systematic, daily humane, and bloodless remedy against the
disease of criminality. However, we have not the simple faith that in
the near or far future of humanity crimes can ever be wholly eradicated.
Even Socialism, which looks forward to a fundamental transformation of
future society on the basis of brotherhood and social justice, cannot
elevate itself to the absolute and naive faith that criminality,
insanity, and suicide can ever fully disappear from the earth. But it is
our firm conviction that the endemic form of criminality, insanity, and
suicide will disappear, and that nothing will remain of them but rare
sporadic forms caused by lesion or telluric and other influences.

Since we have made the great discovery that malaria, which weighs upon
so many parts in Italy, is dependent for its transmission on a certain
mosquito, we have acquired the control of malarial therapeutics and are
enabled to protect individuals and families effectively against malaria.
But aside from this function of protecting people, there must be a
social prevention, and since those malarial insects can live only in
swampy districts, it is necessary to bring to those unreclaimed lands
the blessing of the hoe and plow, in order to remove the cause and do
away with the effects. The same problem confronts us in criminology. In
the society of the future we shall undertake this work of social
hygiene, and thereby we shall remove the epidemic