Southwest-sentinel. [volume] (Silver City, N.M.) 1883-189?, 1893-05-30

The cost 10 society Of crime in
al degrees and phases is enot-
NOUS and can only be roughly es-
timated. To the loss arising from
the destruction Of life and prop
erty by illegal acts is to be added
the expenses Of preventing, detect
ing and furnishing crime. II is
only this latter item hat can be
even approximately calculated.
In the United States there are
80 large penitentiaries, with equip
ment, workshops &c. There are
over 1900 county iails and nu-
merous police stations and city
prisons. 1t is calculated that $780,
100000 would be a low estimate
of the cost of erecting these insti-
t%utions. This is all dead capital.
Placed at FIVE per cent. interest
this sum would produce a yearly
income of S25, 100000. But even
this yearly waste sinks into insig-
nifcance when compared with the
cost of maintaining these institu-
tons, and of our penal system gen.
orally, including the maintaining
of courts and police forces. At
the last Prison Congress it was
stated that the amount of money
now spent by society for the de-
lection and punishment of crime
amounts to over $500, 600, 900 an
nually, an amount sufficient, if ex-
pended in a scientific manner, to
Danish absolute want from the
midst of us. One would think
that with this enormous expendi-
ture for the prevention of crime,
there would surely be a diminu-
ton of the evil. Instead of this
as we have seen, criminality is in
creasing.
Facts, such as have been given,
have naturally attracted the seri-
Gus attention of so~ciologists, and
within recent years has arisen a
new school of criminologists, the
members of which have set them
selves earnestly to work upon the
solution of the problem of crimi-
nality and its increase. This new
school termed Criminal Anthro-
biologists, by following entirely
new. methods, has arrived at con-
illusions as to the nature and caus-
es of crime differing radically from
those which have been formerly
held, and which, if they be proven
true, must result in revolutionary
change in our present penal meth
DDS. Reversing the former meth
cd, this school has studied the
criminal rather than the crime,
and the result of the investigation
carried on along this line has been
to bring into prominence the con-
ception of the criminal as a being
physically and psychically degen-
crate. Every crime, no matter by
whom committed, or under what
circumstances, is to be explained
in but two ways: either as to the
act of the individuals free will, OF
as the necessary result of physi-
cal causes. Our present methods
of punishment are based upon the
first idea, that a crime is the free
act of a person who deliberately
contravenes the law, actuated by
motives of gain oil passion. Now
| and then is raised in our courts
the plea of insanity or temporary
alteration of mind or kleptoma.
: MIA, but in the vast majority Of
8 cases the criminal is considered as
not differing in body or mentality
d from honest men. He is consid.
cred as wholly responsible for his
own act and is punished accord.
ingly. Punishment and retribu-
ton to society have thus been the
!. controlling ideas in our pena.
methods. According to the est.
l mated enormity of the offense, the
: convicted criminal is sentenced TOT
= period of Imprisonment, at the ex.
U piration of which he is again lib.
Grated and allowed to mix with
society. The idea is, of course
. that the punishment inflicted will
prove a warning to the offender.
and will deter him and others from
u the commission of like acts.
According to the new school Of
criminal anthropologists this theo.
> ry of crime and its punishment is
radically wrong. Crime, they say.
is in the great majority of cases
: due TO disease, to a mental state
9 of the criminal which p~redisposei