The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1893-03-26
THE PREVENTION OF CRIME - RESCUING
CHILDREN.

The question of what to do with chill
dren who are being brought up in an
atmosphere of vice and crime is one of
the most important and perplexing of
social problems. 1t resolves itself into
two other questions. viz: What the
State has right to do, and how it may
best exercise the right so as to secure
the best results.
1t needs no argument to- prove that
the prevention of crime is far more
sensible and humane than its punish
ment. In all cases prevention is better
than cure, and in a very large proper
ton of criminal cases punishment does
not cure. Prevention does not merely
strike at the root of the disease, but it
seeks to forestall the disease itself.
Prisons and reformatory schools are
necessary institutions, and useful in
their way. but at best they aim only at
punishment or reformation.
Society has an undoubted right to pro-
tect itself against crime In whatever
way it may seem best. Since the Begin
ming of human government it has
sought to do this In various ways. For
long time and until comparatively re-
cent years the treatment of criminals
was in the highest degree not only pun
tive. but vindictive.. For a long time
there was little or no effort to prevent
crime or reform criminals. Now these
are the ruling ideas. Hand in hand with
them goes the idea that society has a
right to protect itself against critne in
every possible way. One of the best
follows that society, in other words the
State, has a right to adopt aud enforce
any measures it may deem best for the
prevention of crime. The right to pun
ish includes the right to prevent. If the
State may spend money to convict a
man of crime and to imprison him for
term of years or for life, it may spend
money to prevent him from becoming a
criminal. In this case prevention is not
only better than cure, but it is easier.
cheaper, and far more humane.
In every large city there are many
children who are growing up in an at
mospbere of vice and crime. There are
children who are reared from infancy
amid surroundings containing every
conceivable element of degradation, de-
pravity and vice. OF such children it
has been said "they begin life with in
herited physical and moral faint. They
imbibe impurity and whisky with their
mothers milk. The first words to
which their ears are accustomed are
| blasphemOus and obscene. The foul
air which they breathe is made fouler by
the infamous orgies of which they are
the involuntary witnesses. All the evil
within them is developed with marvel
Gus rapidity. With wits sharpened by
the daily struggle for existence, they
become apt pupils in every species of
wickedness. Tender only in years, be-
fore they have reached their teens they
are known to the police as 'toughs.'"
This is the class from which the ranks
of crime are recruited. Every policeman
in Indianapolis knows of localities
which are nurseries of crime, and scores
| of children who are growing up to be
criminals as inevitably as water runs
| down hill. There is an ever increasing
host of such children in the United
States. Comparatively innocent to- day,
! they are the desperate and hardened
criminals of twenty or thirty years
hence. To-day they can be saved;
twenty-five years hence they will be
past all hope or cure. To-day the State
can protect itself against them by edu-
eating and caring for them; twenty five
or thirty years hence it can only protect
itself against them by making war on
them and by imprisoning or hanging
them. The conclusions inevitable that
| the State has q right to adopt any