--Many of the causes of crime would be nipped in the bud by
checking degeneration through physical education of the young, as
well as by preventing demoralisation by means of the education of
abandoned children, at such institutions as the workhouse, ragged
and industrial schools, so well developed in England--or, still
better, by the boarding out of children, so as to avoid over-
crowding.--One class of inducements to crime would be
eliminated by restrictions imposed on scandalous publications
which concern themselves exclusively with crime, having no other
object than to trade upon the most brutal passions, and which are
allowed to exist under an abstract conception of liberty, save
that the responsible conductors are punished when the evil has
been done.--Similarly there ought to be some restriction upon the
right of admission to police-courts and assizes, where our women
hustle each other as the Roman women of the decline scrambled to
be present at the imperial circus-shows, and where our young men
and our hardened criminals receive lessons in the art of
committing crimes with greater smartness and precaution.
The instances which I have given, and which might be multiplied
into a preventive code as long as the penal code, prove to
demonstration how large a part is played by social factors in the
genesis of crime, and especially of occasional crime.
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