There is no reason
to believe that a perfectly just social organization which did not
attempt to control heredity and the moral character of individuals would
succeed in eliminating crime. On the contrary, biological variation
alone arising from influences independent of the environment would
produce a certain amount of crime. Crime, in other words, is, to a
certain extent, like pauperism, an expression of the elimination of the
inferior variants in society, and will continue to exist as long as we
allow the process of evolution by natural selection to go on.
Nevertheless, it is true in a certain sense, as Lacassagne says, that
"every society has the criminals it deserves;" that is, every society
could, by taking proper means, practically eliminate crime and the
criminal class. This would have to be done, however, by something more
radical than a mere reorganization of human society in an industrial
way. Three things are necessary for society practically to eliminate
crime: first, the correction of defects in social conditions,
particularly of economic evils in society; second, the proper control of
physical heredity by a rational system of eugenics; third, the proper
education and training of every child for social life from infancy up.
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