ity to venture far-reaching deductions on the strength of available information.

What underlies the situation? Merely indifference to the importance of knowing elementary facts about one of our greatest and most difficult social problems, or have we here only another instance of official neglect? To put the blame upon the federal government for not producing acceptable statistics of crime has become a habit even with some people who should know better. Doubtless, the government should be far more active than it is; but under our dual form of official existence, a bureau like that of the census is greatly handicapped in collecting criminal statistics. Not commanding any of the sources of information, it must depend upon the material available in the different states. For example, the federal government cannot compel returns in a specified form from the various criminal courts (the most important means of knowledge), and since such returns are not centrally assembled by the states, it is confronted by the enormous and almost prohibitively expensive task of sending its own agents through the length and breadth of the land to collect the facts where they are originally entered. An added difficulty is that the records to be consulted are often imperfect, have not in any sense been standardized, thanks largely to the diversity of criminal codes and court systems, and seldom meet a modest minimum requirement in regard to raw material from which criminal statistics may be obtained.

But when all allowances are made for the inactivity of federal and state authorities, let us say honestly that the root-difficulty is that we do not fully appreciate how necessary to intelligent legislative and practical endeavor it is to have systematically collected and thoroughly sifted facts about one of the most pressing and obvious problems common to the whole world. Is this not rather characteristic of us as a people? A learned man discoursed the other day upon the predominance in this country of the feminine type of mind, one manifestation of which is a disregard for fact, or at least for the painstaking assembling and comparative examination of facts. To be sure, it is a national habit to demand the facts about all manner of things and conditions. But we show little patience about working for them. Or we want to use facts merely as a spring-board from which to jump at conclusions, or facts are sought that shall point a theory. Perhaps this is what led Dr. Crothers to make

his celebrated remark about statistics as "the most useful fertilizer for the product known as fallacies."

The writer has no delusions about the magic of statistics as a solvent of our problem. It is merely a method of finding out about things; and the burden of this article is that we are not yet thoroughly alive to the necessity of knowing the facts about the crime situation. While this condition prevails, little is accomplished by examining what there is of statistical material unless it were to puncture the spurious articles which too often pass current. There are, however, distinctly hopeful signs. The topic of criminal statistics has come much to the fore in recent years. Organizations like the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology are actively pushing it forward. Best of all, the bar and the judiciary are beginning to recognize the need of systematic information about their own work. Mention was made above of the recent establishment of a bureau of criminal statistics in Illinois. Massachusetts is considering a law charging its efficient bureau of statistics with the duty of gathering criminal judicial statistics. In other states, the subject is receiving more or less attention.

At least it has become recognized that we cannot be content merely with returns from prisons, and that we must look to the records of the criminal courts as the best sources of knowledge. To be sure, even when these are fortified by police and prison reports, they do not provide a perfect instrument even for measuring crime quantitatively; but they can be made to meet all practical requirements. They should help us to an understanding of the different manifestations of criminality and of the different classes of criminals. Above all, the immediate need would be met for accurate information about the instrumentalities whereby we seek to repress crime, foremost among which are the criminal courts themselves. Are the systems and methods in vogue wholly adequate? Do our long-standing theories upon which they rest prove themselves by the results? It is not asking over-much that such simple questions should be answered.

Of the different items that go to make up competent criminal court records there is not space to speak in detail, except to say that such records must give an account of the judicial process and of the human element in each case. It is more worth while to emphasize that the situation will not mend if we rely solely upon the federal government to provide us with statistics of crime. Each state must see to it

that the federal government is placed in position to do its work. The collection of vital statistics furnishes an analogy. Not until each state passes an adequate law for the registration of births, marriages and deaths and makes it effective, can the federal bureau in charge gather for that state vital statistics. The federal government can, however, pave the way by instigating legislation, by directing attention to the subject and by affording practical demonstrations.

A consideration of the wider applicability of criminal statistics, how necessary they are to different intensive studies, etc., is beyond the scope of this article. First let us acquire the elementary facts and then it will be timely to speak of their refinements. Meanwhile, the most necessary, if somewhat disagreeable task, is to hammer it into the consciousness of those concerned with the crime question that we grope blindly so long as we are without the guidance of accurate knowledge, not only about the extent and manifestations of crime, but about the very means by which we try to stop it. The European finger of scorn has long been pointed at us, even if in polite disguise, for our neglect to inform ourselves in this respect. True, we labor under difficulties from which other countries are spared, but it is frankly humiliating that we do so little to overcome them.

There is much crass ignorance about crime, and some are prone to grow hysterical over it. But does the popular notion about a rampant criminality in this country, about ineffective means of repressing it, of a prostitution of law whereby offenders escape, square with the evidence? It is vital to know the truth. Some day we shall arrive at the dignity of exhibiting it in orderly array, and no longer be dependent upon a newspaper for statements in regard to the rate of homicide in the United States. Meanwhile, one can at least write safely about crime from a statistical viewpoint without producing any statistics!

CRITIQUE ON RECORDING DATA CONCERNING

CRIMINALS

BY WILLIAM HEALY,

Director, Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, Chicago.

To a student dealing with the practical aspects of criminalism it appears quite patent that almost no assistance towards solutions, general or in the individual case, is to be derived from the type of data officially recorded concerning criminals. And not only in the attempt to discern actual means of halting or forfending criminal careers is this inefficiency of accumulated fact perceived, but also it is evident that the people of the law, whether engaged in the administration of police, penal or court affairs, feel themselves in nowise influenced by the statement of collected figures. In fact the criminal law itself has not been modified to an appreciable extent by any growth of learning or experience that one might expect to find centering about actual observation in its own field. In this certainly there is

wide divergence from latter-day advance in other arts, sciences and professions.

This astonishing lack of impulse to progression from observational data does not characterize our country alone. The German scholarship which in recent years has been deeply concerned with proposed reform of the entire criminal code, finds almost no reason to even refer to such data as may be found, and the discussion still nearly all turns upon theoretical considerations-it is the philosophy of ethics, of crime, of punishment, even as conceived by the ancients, which is thrashed over and over. The fact is that data at all adequate for showing the road to better things, notwithstanding European supremacy in statistics, are still lacking, there as here.

One might well consider if our remarkable national innocence of criminal statistics is not considerably due to a vague, half-formulated and rather shrewd conception of cui bono. We have not been so slow about undertaking studies of many other matters of public welfare, or of vastly less costly departments of governmental administration. Realized or not, however, it is the truth that the collection of mere general figures concerning conclusions leads almost no distance along

the road to betterment of the situation. Since nationally we have nothing but the barest census statistics-those only by decadesand nothing much better in local reports, let us look at the carefully worked-up English judicial statistics, readily obtainable by all readers, and published for each year. There we find matters set forth which ought to arouse immense public interest, but yet which entirely fail to do so. Partly, one might think, because of no showing that things are not as they have been for generations past, but probably mostly because the figures do not show the slightest indication of any solution of the difficulty, such as at least might be suggested by comparative statistics relating to labor, agriculture, transportation, and so on.

Letting alone the collection of figures in this Blue Book by localities and courts and months and crimes, which cover many large pages, and which are of use, if at all, mostly for administrative adjustment, some larger issues are clearly presented. Take the question of recidivism, to my mind one of the three or four cardinal points of criminalism. We have this set forth in startling array, and as we would like to see it worked up for America. But what does this recidivism mean, and from these naked statistics what possible clue is there to what can be done about it?

From such figures questions of efficiency may well be raised, efficiency of court procedure, of penal and reformatory institutions. Of course it is on just such statistics as these-20 per cent of 168,000 prisoners convicted upwards of ten times previously-that efficiency studies may be urged, but no fair answer is in anywise forthcoming from the mere statement. Take your Elmira Reformatory "graduates," and study the outcome of efforts made during their institutional life. What do individual findings or total figures mean, if no account is taken of causes of either earlier or later success or failure, if no estimation is made of the qualities of the human material that was treated? No judgment in the realms of criminology is possible without knowledge of mental and physical capacities and stresses, as well as the bare facts of law breaking.

Fundamental for the development of that systematic recording of data concerning criminals which shall prove really valuable in indicating any way out of the costly failure of our present methods, is the assuming of a business-like and scientific attitude towards the whole matter. Where such tremendously varying units are the ac