they earn, and
whether the child is legitimate or not. A similar method to the one
adopted with Reformatory children ought to be instituted, with
suitable modifications, in European prisons and convict
establishments. It is, at the present time, being advocated by almost
all the most eminent criminal authorities,[1] and more than one scheme
has been drawn up to show the scope of its operation.

[1] See Appendix I.

In addition to the service which a complete personal and family record
of convicted prisoners would render as to the causes of crime, such a
record would be of immense advantage to the judges. At the present
time a judge is only made acquainted with the previous convictions of
a prisoner; he knows nothing more about him except through the
evidence which is sometimes adduced as to character. An accurate
record of the prisoner's past would enable the judge to see at once
with what sort of offender he was dealing, and might, perhaps, help to
put a stop to the unequal and capricious sentences which, not
infrequently, disgrace the name of justice.[2]

[2] In his interesting work, "Die Beziehungen zwischen
Geistesstoerung und Verbrechen," Dr. Sander shows that out of a
hundred insane persons brought up for trial, the judges only
discovered the mental state of from twenty-six to twenty-eight
per cent. of them.

Passing from this point, we shall now inquire into the possibility of
establishing some system of International Statistics, whereby the
volume of crime in one country may be compared with the volume of
crime in another. At the present time it is extremely difficult to
institute any such comparison, and it is questionable if it can ever
be properly done. In no two countries is the criminal law the same,
and an act which is perfectly harmless when committed in one part of
Europe, is considered in another as a contravention of the law. Each
country has also a nomenclature of crime and methods of criminal
procedure peculiar to itself. In each country the police are organised
on a different principle, and act in the execution of their duty on a
different code of rules. In all cases, for instance, of mendicancy,
drunkenness, brawling, and disorder, the initiative rests practically
with the police, and it depends almost entirely on the instructions
issued to the police whether such offences shall figure largely or not
in the statistics of crime. A proof of this fact may be seen in the