Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1879 — Treatment of Crime and'Criminals in the Future. [ARTICLE]

Treatment of Crime and'Criminals in the Future.

Basing his opinion on what he regards as the legitimate teaching of the doctrine of heredity, a writer in the Journal of Science believes that the criminal legislation of the future—unless dominated by those who pander to crime-will do something like this: The lineage and connections of every offender, especially of every habitual criminal, will be carefully scrutinized, and all surviving members will be subjected to an unobtrusive but penetrating scrutiny. The younger members of the race will be, as far as possible, surrounded by such moral and religious influences as will most effectually check and counteract their probable inbred tendency to crime. Courts of justice, he says, will have their criminal geneologists whose records will shed a new and most valuable light on not a few unsolved problems both of biology and of mental science. It is to be hoped that, when “the future” comes, it will be able to use such a power wisely and without malice. But the author is more radical still. “As for the man,” he continues, “who has once formally declared war against society, hoisting, so to speak, the black flag, care will be taken that he shall neither repeat his offense nor, after its commission, become a parent.” A man dying recently in St. Louis left SI,OOO to an individual who, years before, ran away with his wife. He said ip the will that fie nevAr forgot a favor,