Abstract

Science in Pursuit of Crime

This article focuses on the penal reforms inaugurated in Prussia and Mexico in 1929. These two states have astonished the world by announcing that they have no use for the way in which criminals have been handled in the past, that crime flourishes, that nothing effective is done to prevent crime and that they intend to see what hope lies in a scientific approach. This is especially interesting to people in the U.S. because all of the ideas underlying these reforms are current in the U.S. The convicted man is not sentenced by the judge. That in itself is revolutionary, for judges are nearly everywhere the sentencers of criminals, although in Prussia the proposal has seriously been made that judges have no business to sentence criminals, for judges know very little about the real nature of criminals or what will do them good.