ABSTRACT
THE proper subject of mankind’s study is enshrined in an old and trite saying. And yet students of every science which bears in any way upon man have an apparently irresistible tendency to wander from this, their proper goal. It would be impossible to enumerate all the examples of this tendency. But nowhere is it more strongly marked than in the study of offenders. What should be done to offenders has been the subject of much consideration by the makers and administrators of laws from time immemorial. But the fact that they were dealing with individuals seems to have been practically overlooked, until comparatively recent times. Mediaeval theories on this subject are not much in point at the present day, for they were permeated by the predominance of the idea of “free-will” in its most extreme form. It has been well said that the old idea assumed the offender to be in the position of a fig tree which had wilfully and of malice aforethought decided to produce, not figs, but thistles, and that for this most outrageous conduct he naturally deserved condign “punishment”. There is, however, even at the present time, so much 2diversity of opinion on the subject of the treatment of offenders that it is necessary to devote a short space to a consideration of what an offender is and of what we mean by “crime”.
