CRIMINALS: The inmates of prisons, penitentiaries,
reformatories, and similar places of detention numbered 111,609 in 1910;
this does not include 25,000 juvenile delinquents. The jail population
is nearly all transient; one must be very cautious in inferring that
conviction for an offense against the law indicates lack of eugenic
value; but it is worth noting that the number of offenders who are
feeble-minded is probably not less than one-fourth or one-third. If the
number of inebriates could be added, it would greatly increase the
total; and inebriacy or chronic alcoholism is generally recognized now
as indicating in a majority of cases either feeble-mindedness or some
other defect of the nervous system. The number of criminals who are in
some way neurotically tainted is placed by some psychologists at 50% or
more of the total prison population.
Add to these a number of epileptics, tramps, prostitutes, beggars, and
others whom the census enumerator finds it difficult to catch, and the
total number of possible undesirable parents becomes very large. It is
in fact much larger than appears in these figures, because of the fact
that many people carry defects that are latent and only appear in the
offspring of a marriage representing two tainted strains.
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