Finally, there is the criminal class, over which the respective champions of heredity and environment have so often waged partisan warfare. There is probably no field in which restrictive eugenics would think of interfering, where it encounters so much danger as here--danger of wronging both the individual and society. Laws such as have been passed in several states, providing for the sterilization of criminals _as such,_ must be deplored by the eugenist as much as they are by the pseudo-sociologist who "does not believe in heredity"; but this is not saying that there are not many cases in which eugenic action is desirable; for inheritance of a lack of emotional control makes a man in one sense a "born criminal."[83] He is not, in most respects, the creature which he was made out to be by Lombroso and his followers; but he exists, nevertheless, and no ameliorative treatment given him will be of such value to society as preventing his reproduction. The feeble-minded who make up a large proportion of the petty criminals that fill the jails, must, of course, be excluded from this discussion except to note that their conviction assists in discovering their defect. They should be treated as feeble-minded, not as criminals.[84] Those who may have been made criminals by society, by their environment, must also be excepted. In an investigation, the benefit of the doubt should be given to the individual. But when every possible concession is made to the influence of environment, the psychiatric study of the individual and the investigation of his family history still show that there are criminals who congenitally lack the inhibitions and instincts which make it possible for others to be useful members of society.[85] When a criminal of this natural type is found, the duty of society is unquestionably to protect itself by cutting off that line of descent.