Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 96
Cities Breeding Spots of Crime.
ОглавлениеThe true explanation of this unsatisfactory state of things is not far to seek. It is almost entirely to be attributed to the growing tendency of the community to become concentrated in large cities. A highly concentrated population fosters lawless and immoral instincts in such a multitude of ways that it is only an expression of literal exactitude to call the great cities of today the nurseries of modern crime. Statistics of all kinds show this, but it can easily be ascertained without the aid of any figures. The aggregation of large multitudes within a very limited area must increase the chances of conflict, and consequently multiply the occasions for crime.
A population in this crowded condition has also to be restrained and regulated at every turn by a huge network of laws, and as every new law forbids something which was permitted before, a multiplication of laws is inevitably followed by an increase of crime.
The prevention of crime should be the great object with the philanthropist. The obvious remedy is, if possible, to aid the individual in overcoming the temptation to evil or to crime. The remedy must be general, gradual, and constant. It consists in religious, moral, intellectual, and industrial education of the children, especially of the poor and unfortunate and the weakling classes. The most certain preventive is the early incarnation of good habits in children, which, becoming part and parcel of their nervous organization, are an unconscious force when passion, perplexity, or temptation tend to make them lose self-control. Little can be expected from palliative remedies for social diseases so long as this educational remedy is not thoroughly carried out.