The teacher needs to know something about this subject also, because the young person whom the schools fail to educate properly has his chance of becoming a criminal increased many fold. The schools are not entirely or even chiefly responsible for the existence of the criminal class, because there are many other causes besides, such as physical defects, bad homes and neighborhoods, economic injustice, crooked politics, indulgence in liquor, and so on. But it is the business of the schools to see that every child is educated to overcome as far as is reasonably possible the defects of his physical and social inheritance. In a sense, therefore, every member of the criminal class represents a failure of the schools. Then, too, in the great majority of cases, it was when he was a child of school age that the criminal acquired his distinctive character.

. . . Each year has deepened the conviction that ignorant, injurious, mistaken treatment of children is the real cause of crime. The writer's experience with ten thousand children is conclusive in its indication that the reason why the prisons are full dates back to the early lives of these men and women whom the world calls criminals. . . .

The crime committed has hitherto held the center of the stage. It is more important to learn, however, why it was committed. To guard and properly guide every child in the formative years of life, to prepare him to meet temptations of every kind, but to protect him from meeting them until he is strong enough to resist them - this is the constructive work demanded of parents, teachers and the state.

Crime can only be prevented as the causes which contribute to making the criminal are fully understood and removed. The belief that certain people constitute a criminal class and that society must take their existence for granted and provide for them has hitherto tended to impede any reduction in criminality. - Schoff, The Wayward Child, author's Introduction.

Hunting for the criminal, are you? . . . I can tell you where to find him. He is not the other fellow but the other me. . . . The criminal me is hidden away in each and every one of us. He may be bound with chains and secreted in the darkest recesses of our soul, or he may be quietly sleeping in some open doorway. But he is there in every one of us, awaiting a call or a temptation that is strong enough to set him free-----

... I have known them intimately, and well, and never have I been able to discover any difference between them and their more fortunate brethren. They entertain in their hearts the same ideals, the same hopes and the same ambitions as do average men.

Those who commit crime as a matter of choice are few indeed. Many follow it as a means of livelihood because it is the only vocation open to them. . . . These are the men who have chosen crime as a vocation, because their talent and training equipped them for that career, just as you may have chosen the law or the field of high finance for similar reasons. ... - The American Magazine, Vol. 77, p. 82, from two prize answers to the question "What is a Criminal?"

. . . The criminal is a sick man, the prison is his hospital and the judge who sentenced him is his physician. . . .

... I would have all prison sentences indeterminate. A prisoner should be kept in the penitentiary until the trained criminologist says he is ready to be released. - The Survey, Vol. 36, p. 53, Dr. Victor C. Vaughn.

I will conclude by repeating that the delinquent and the truant come from a social medium which is inferior and out of which they must make a fresh start for themselves, they receive an education inferior to that of their fellows, and are handicapped physically and mentally. ... - The Child in the City, p. 178, D. P. MacMillan, "Why We Have Truants and Delinquents."

From this table [cause of condemnations in the juvenile reformatories of this country], it appears that of the above offenses, truancy is the first juvenile offense to be punished by sentences to these institutions, and that these cases constitute the youngest class, more of whom are thirteen than any other age. Fourteen is the maximal age for incorrigibility and malicious mischief and trespass; fifteen for petty larceny, vagrancy, disorderly conduct and assaults; sixteen for larceny, burglary, and public intoxication; and seventeen for fornication. . . .

Juvenile crime shows thus the great difficulty which youth finds in making adjustment to the social surroundings, and so far as the law takes cognizance of it, it very often begins as the outcrop of the vagrant instinct which the requirements of the modern school bring out in a strong light. Next and closely connected with the reversion to nomadic life, in the evolution of the antisocial life of crime, comes resistance to the institution of property. . . . Third, and later, as a rule, are evolved crimes against person. - Hall, Adolescence, Vol. I, pp. 332-334.