The prevention and repression of crime : being a report of the fifth section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893 / edited by Frederick H. Wines.

Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The prevention and repression of crime : being a report of the fifth section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893 / edited by Frederick H. Wines. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    SO short that it was impossible, if we had wished to do so, to provide elaborate essays prepared on paper to be read before you ; and second, we have a profound conviction that closet thouglits, elab- orated in private, formulated on paper, and then read before us, with the scattered application which the working of so many minds in different places would necessarily bring, is not and can not be the most profitable method of employing our time. We have believed that, if we could bring together here a number of minds devoted to the consideration of these questions, and if these minds would earnestly go to work upon the burning question of the times, upon the living thoughts which are stirring men through the world to-day in connection with this question, then, by the friction of these minds, one upon another, we could develop every strong truth that lies in them and accomplish far more than by any cut-and-dried preparation. We have believed, therefore, that the wiser way is to come together for a real conference, for discussion; each of us to contribute his best thoughts in order that they may be compared with the best thoughts of others—cut to pieces, if you please, but at anv rate treated honestly, manfully and candidly by the other minds that are here—so that the truth upon which we finally unite may remain with us as a possession and a heritage. And after our conference, if it is as fruitful as we hope it shall prove, we shall not only be each of us more deeply interested, but the proceedings of this congress will prove a worthy contribution to the world's thought. Now, this is the outline of the plan before us; and in this plan I ask your earnest co-operation. Our subject is the methods adopted by society in dealing with crime and the criminal classes, with a view to the elimination of crime as a social factor. Now, the method in which society has treated crime heretofore is one with which all of you are more or less familiar. But we are awakening in this age to the conviction that the treatment of crime by society hitherto has been controlled by a narrowness of thought, a limitation of experience, an imperfection ol grasp of the subject, which has permeated all penal legislation. There is now stirring in the general mind, among prison managers, among legislators in all countries, and above all in those minds w hich, however misjudged by the world at large, however written down as cranks and fanatics, as trimmers, as obstructionists, as mere unprac- tical philosophers, are yet the compass-needles that point the way everywhere to the world's progress—I mean the minds of noble-
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