great importance in view of the atavistic origin of
crime. There exist whole tribes and races more or less given to crime,
such as the tribe Zakka Khel in India. In all regions of Italy, whole
villages constitute hot-beds of crime, owing, no doubt, to ethnical
causes: Artena in the province of Rome, Carde and San Giorgio Canavese
in Piedmont, Pergola in Tuscany, San Severo in Apulia, San Mauro and
Nicosia in Sicily. The frequency of homicide in Calabria, Sicily, and
Sardinia is fundamentally due to African and Oriental elements.

In the gipsies we have an entire race of criminals with all the passions
and vices common to delinquent types: idleness, ignorance, impetuous
fury, vanity, love of orgies, and ferocity. Murder is often committed
for some trifling gain. The women are skilled thieves and train their
children in dishonest practices. On the contrary, the percentage of
crimes among Jews is always lower than that of the surrounding
population; although there is a prevalence of certain specific forms of
offences, often hereditary, such as fraud, forgery, libel, and chief of
all, traffic in prostitution; murder is extremely rare.

ILLNESSES, INTOXICATIONS, TRAUMATISM

These causes, although apparently as important as heredity, are in fact,
decidedly less so. Both disease and trauma may intensify or call forth
latent perversity, but they are less frequently the cause of it. There
are, however, certain cases in which traumatism meningitis, typhus, or
other diseases that affect the brain have undoubtedly evoked criminal
tendencies in individuals hitherto normal. Twenty out of 290 criminals
studied by my father with minute care had suffered from injury to the
head in childhood; and recently a case came under his notice in which a
youth of good family and excellent character received an injury to his
head at the age of fourteen and became epileptic, developing
subsequently into a gambler, thief, and murderer. Such cases, however,
are not very common.

There is one disease that without other causes--either inherited
degeneracy or vices resulting from a bad education and environment--is
capable of transforming a healthy individual into a vicious, hopelessly
evil being. That disease is alcoholism, which has been discussed in a
previous chapter, but to which I must refer briefly again, because it is
such an important factor of criminality.

Temporary drunkenness alone will give rise to crime, since it inflames
the passio