ABSTRACT
One example is Adolphe Quetelet’s (1796-1874) enumeration and subsequent interpretation of crime. Ian Hacking calls Quetelet “the greatest regularity salesman of the nineteenth century” (ibid.: 105), “fond of numbers, and happy to jump to conclusions” (ibid.: 106). With a background in astronomy, Quetelet hoped to discover the social mechanics, the underlying statistical laws governing crime (Beirne 1993: 77). When he interpreted the collected crime statistics, he found exactly what he had been looking for. Despite variations by up to 10 percent, he was stunned by an “alarming regularity” and a “surprising constancy with which the numbers of the statistics of crime are reproduced annually” (Quetelet 1996/1842: 15). He explained this “regularity” and “constancy” with a reference to the principle that “effects are proportionate to their causes, and that the effects remain the same, if the causes which have produced them do not vary” (ibid.: 16). He concluded that “the crimes which are annually committed seem to be a necessary result of our social organization, and [ . . . ] the number of them cannot diminish without the causes which induce them
undergoing previous modifi cation [ . . . ]. Society prepares crime, and the guilty are only the instruments by which it is executed.” (ibid.: 28, italics in original).
