I.
Criminal statistics show that crime increases in the aggregate,
with more or less notable oscillations from year to year, rising
or falling in successive waves. Thus it is evident that the level
of criminality in any one year is determined by the different
conditions of the physical and social environment, combined with
the hereditary tendencies and occasional impulses of the
individual, in obedience to a law which I have called, in analogy
with chemical phenomena, the law of criminal saturation.
Just as in a given volume of water, at a given temperature, we
find a solution of a fixed quantity of any chemical substance, not
an atom more or less, so in a given social environment, in certain
defined physical conditions of the individual, we find the
commission of a fixed number of crimes.
Our ignorance of many physical and psychical laws and of
innumerable conditions of fact, will prevent us from obtaining a
precise view of this level of criminality. But none the less is
it the necessary and inevitable result of a given physical and
social environment. Statistics show us, indeed, that the
variations of this environment are always attended by
consequential and proportional variations of crime.
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