Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Individual Factors Of Crime. Seldom or never do the various causes of crime act independently of each other, but the one ever present and continuing factor is the individual factor. Cosmic and social influences must unite in their operation upon an individual character in order to produce a criminal, and those influences are relatively of greater or less importance according to the strength or weakness of the moral and physical character of the individual. Hence it is that the thoughtful student of crime and its prevention is forced to conclude with Lydston, that, "the nearer we get to the marrow of criminality, the more closely it approximates pathology." This subject was discussed at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Convention of the American Academy of Medicine, which convened at Minneapolis, June 13, 1913. It was shown that positive results had PLATE III.—A "KIT" OP BURGLAR'S TOOLS. This is said to be the most complete collection in existence. (Courtesy St. Louis Police Department.) been obtained by the medical and surgical treatment of criminals. The frequent recurrence of the phenomena of atavism and heredity has led many eminent investigators to withhold their concurrence from the view that crime is a disease. This is true of some Europeans, where the existence of a criminal type is best established. Arthur MacDonald1 is also of the same opinion; but MacDonald's conclusions are based, as he says, upon reports from the various penitentiaries in the United States, indicating that an overwhelming proportion of the convicts therein confined are in an excellent state of health. However, these reports emanate necessarily from prison wardens and boards whose official relation is wholly casual and incidental to a career of politics, and a great number of whom...