On the other hand, there is no doubt that our criminal statistics, to be
useful, must be handled in a rather different fashion. We saw, in
studying the statistics of suicide, that inferences with regard to
individual cases could be drawn only when the material had been studied
carefully and examined on all sides. But our criminological statistic is
rarely examined with such thoroughness; the tenor of such examination is
far too bureaucratic and determined by the statutes and the process of
law. The criminalist gives the statistician the figures but the latter
can derive no significant principles from them. Consider for once any
official report on the annual results in the criminal courts in any
country. Under and over the thousands and thousands of figures and rows
of figures there is a great mass of very difficult work which has been
profitable only in a very small degree. I have before me the four
reports of a single year which deal with the activities of the Austrian
courts and criminal institutions, and which are excellent in their
completeness, correctness, and thorough revision. Open the most
important,--the results of the administration of criminal law in the
various departments of the country,--and you find everything
recorded:--how many were punished here and how many there, what their
crimes were, the percentage of condemned according to age, social
standing, religion, occupation, wealth, etc.; then again you see endless
tables of arrests, sentences, etc., etc. Now the value of all this is to
indicate merely whether a certain regularity is discoverable in the
procedure of the officials. Material psychologically valuable is rare.
There is some energetic approximation to it in the consideration of
culture, wealth, and previous sentences, but even these are dealt with
most generally, while the basis and motive of the death-sentence is
barely indicated. We can perceive little consideration of motives with
regard to education, earlier life, etc., in their relation to
sentencing. Only when statistics will be made to deal actually and in
every direction with qualities and not merely with quantities will they
begin to have a really scientific value.
Topic II. KNOWLEDGE.
Section 34.
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