into practice,
with the brilliant results shown by the Reformatory at Elmira, the
Probation System, Juvenile Courts, and the George Junior Republic. They
also initiated the practice, now in general use, of anthropological
co-operation in every criminal trial of importance.

For this reason, and in view of the fact that America does not possess a
complete translation of my works--_The Criminal, Male and Female_, and
_Political Crime_ (translation and distribution being alike difficult on
account of the length of these volumes)--I welcome with pleasure this
summary, in which the principal points are explained with precision and
loving care by my daughter Gina, who has worked with me from childhood,
has seen the edifice of my science rise stone upon stone, and has shared
in my anxieties, insults, and triumphs; without whose help I might,
perhaps, never have witnessed the completion of that edifice, nor the
application of its fundamental principles.

PART I

THE CRIMINAL WORLD

CHAPTER I

_THE BORN CRIMINAL_

A criminal is a man who violates the laws decreed by the State to
regulate the relations between its citizens, but the voluminous codes
which in past times set forth these laws treat only of crime, never of
the criminal. That ignoble multitude whom Dante relegated to the
Infernal Regions were consigned by magistrates and judges to the care of
gaolers and executioners, who alone deigned to deal with them. The
judge, immovable in his doctrine, unshaken by doubts, solemn in all his
inviolability and convinced of his wisdom, which no one dared to
question, passed sentence without remission according to his whim, and
both judge and culprit were equally ignorant of the ultimate effect of
the penalties inflicted.

In 1764, the great Italian jurist and economist, Cesare Beccaria first
called public attention to those wretched beings, whose confessions (if
statements extorted by torture can thus be called) formed the sole
foundation for the trial, the sole guide in the application of the
punishment, which was bestowed blindly, without formality, without
hearing the defence, exactly as though sentence were being passed on
abstract symbols, not on human souls and bodies.

The Classical School of Penal Jurisprudence, of which Beccaria was the
founder and Francesco Carrara the greatest and most glorious disciple,
aimed only at establishing sound judgments and fixed laws to guide
capricious and often und