It is indeed inevitable that laws, which in our day
merely represent a mode of contact between the most varied moral,
social and economic conditions of different localities, should
always be inadequate to social needs--too restricted and slow in
action for one part of the country, too sweeping and premature for
another part, just as the average convict's garb is too
long for those who are short, and too short for those who are
tall. Administrative federation with political unity (e pluribus
unum) would furnish us with an aggregate of penal substitutes,
restoring to each part of the social organism that freedom of
movement and development which is a universal law of biology and
sociology--for an organism is but a federation too lightly
appreciated by the advocates of an artificial uniformity, such as
ends by conflicting with unity itself.
III. In the Scientific Sphere.--The development of science,
which creates fresh instruments of crime, such as fire-arms, the
press, photography, lithography, new poisons, dynamite,
electricity, hypnotism, and so forth, sooner or later provides the
antidote also, which is more efficacious than penal repression.--
The press, anthropometric photography of prisoners, telegraphy,
railways, are powerful auxiliaries against crime.
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