Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS. SOME ESSENTIALS OF CONSTRUCTIVE CRIMINOLOGY. DAVID COOMBS PEYTON, M. D., SUPERINTENDENT STATE REFORMATORY, JEFFERSONVILLE, INDIANA. These are the most chaotic and momentous years perhaps in the whole history of man. This epoch is either the beginning or the ending of civilization. The seething torrent of the social maelstrom is compounded of all the forces in life, ethical, material, economic, social, and all others that can be moved by human agency. We are now in the final struggle between autocracy and democracy, between idealism and materialism, between force and justice, between might and right, between good and evil, and this cataclysm has been precipitated by the mad ambition of one man--a regal neuropath, an hereditary degenerate. Its righteous ending, which no man can doubt, will leave the world topsy-turvy but sane and incomparably richer spiritually and mentally. Thinking men cannot have failed to note for some years the abnormal symptoms in the body politic. The unhealthy sentimentality, crass creeds, mountebank philosophy, loud mouthed political fakers with cure-all nostrums for the public weal. All these betoken a disease state. In the new renaissance, when peace shall have settled down over the earth, out of the horror of these turbulent years among the many evidences of improvement let us hope and believe will be a rejuvenation in the science of prison management, and this science must be founded upon the great underlying fundamental--common sense. The ideal prison will not so quickly appear, for indeed, in real life the ideal is never attained. Progress is measured in degree approximation to the ideal but the supreme end--the summum bonum--is never reached. In prison management there have...
