Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1883 — The Heredity of Crime. [ARTICLE]

The Heredity of Crime.

“The principles of hereditary descent seem to hold good as to counterfeiting. Of course, there are many exceptions. Here we have a criminal whose ancestry seems to have been perfectly pure and honest. Here we have one whose ancestry is one continuous chain of jailbirds. But, in general, the rule holds good. Bad parents produce ‘bad children, and parents who are counterfeiters breed counterfeiters.” “Have you any cases where the crime runs through several generations?” “Yes, many. I have now in my mind a family in Indiana who, for three generations, haye been practicing counterfeiting. I believe the fourth will follow in the footsteps of the preceding ones. All along the line thev have been detected and punished, but they plot and replot, and are no sooner but pf prison for one crime than they are in again for another. They are bright, intellectually, and could make a good living in other i ways, but villainy. seems bred in their ' bones, and it comes out in the flesh, generation after generation. We have . a number of other cases where the crime has existed m whole families for ! two generations, ami seems to be fairly

progessing towards a third. It often runs througli a whole connection, and fathers and Sons, brothers and sisters are now in prison for not the same but successive and different crimes.—lnterview with Secret Service Officer.