. This share becomes still smaller when we eliminate infanticide, in
view of the fact that the guilty parties in nearly all such cases should
be classed as criminals from passion. In Austria, crimes committed by
females barely constitute 15% of the total criminality; in Spain 11%;
and in Italy 8.2%.

However, this applies only to serious crimes. For those of lesser
gravity, statistics are at variance with the results obtained by the
Modern School, which classes prostitutes as criminals. According to this
mode of calculation, the difference between the criminality of the two
sexes shows a considerable diminution, resulting perhaps in a slight
prevalence of crime in women. In any case, female criminality tends to
increase proportionally with the increase of civilisation and to equal
that of men.

_Age._ The greater number of crimes are committed between the ages of 15
and 30, whereas, outbreaks of insanity between these ages are extremely
rare, the maximum number occurring between 40 and 50. On the whole,
criminality is far more precocious than mental alienation, and its
precocity, which is greater among thieves than among murderers,
swindlers, and those guilty of violence and assault is another proof of
the congenital nature of crime and its atavistic origin, since precocity
is a characteristic of savage races.

Seldom do we find among born criminals any indication of that so-called
criminal scale, leading by degrees from petty offences to crimes of the
most serious nature. As a general rule, they commence their career with
just those crimes which distinguish it throughout, even when these are
of the gravest kind, like robbery and murder. Rather may it be said that
every age has its specific criminality, and this is the case especially
with criminaloids. On the borderland between childhood and adolescence,
there seems to be a kind of instinctive tendency to law-breaking, which
by immature minds is often held to be a sign of virility. The Italian
novelist and poet Manzoni describes this idea very well in his _Promessi
Sposi_, when speaking of the half-witted lad Gervaso, who "because he
had taken part in a plot savouring of crime, felt that he had suddenly
become a man."

This idea lurks in the slang word _omerta_ used by Italian criminals,
which signifies not only to be a man but a man daring enough to break
the law.

CHAPTER II

_THE PREVENTION OF CRIME_

The curability of crime is an entirely novel ide