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various misdeeds, and we have just seen that the majority of them did not attend school. But the
official document which gives us this information also informs us that as soon as they enter, these
children are forced to become model students, and a table shows us the rapid progress of their
knowledge by the time they leave: 70 percent know by then at least how to read, write, and do
arithmetic, and the proportion of illiterates has fallen to 5 percent. But—the sad confession of penal
statistics—despite their increased knowledge and with ever-increasing rapidity they fall back into
delinquency.
Summarizing these statistics, the Bulletin de la Société des prisons says, 9 “In 1888 recidivists
made up 11 percent of the imprisoned boys; in 1889, 13 percent; in 1890, 14 percent; in 1891, 15
percent; in 1892, 17 percent.” We may add that in 1893, it was 19 percent. “The proportion of
recidivist girls, which until 1890 did not rise much above 8 percent, rose rapidly to 12 percent in
1891, to 15 percent in 1892,” and to the same total in 1893. The writer from whom I am borrowing
this summary points out the correlation of this increase in recidivism among children with no family
life or whose parents have the greatest frequency of negligence, immorality, and bad examples. For
the girls there is no doubt on this point. “The proportion of orphan girls without one or both parents,
which was only 49 percent in 1890, rose to 52 percent in 1891, and 56 percent in 1892; that of
illegitimate girls from 21 percent in 1890 and 1891 to 25 percent in 1892; that of daughters of
habitual criminals—39 percent in 1891—attained in 1892 a figure never before achieved or even
approached: 51 percent. I must further add that the proportion of girls having no formal education
upon entering penitentiary school, rose from 70 percent to 75 percent in 1892.” As for the boys, the
figures are perhaps less clear. It is nonetheless verified that “the departments with the largest number
of children in correctional educational establishments are those with large centers of population, or
those departments which produce alcohol and have the greatest amount of taxed alcohol—thus all the
places where one can safely presume that, because of intemperance or vice, the parents habitually
render themselves incapable of raising children properly. It is the same everywhere. At the congress
of the Union du Sauvetage de l’enfance, which took place in Berlin in May 1896, two reporters 10
confessed that “the creation of houses of education and reform (in Germany) have not brought about a
noticeable decrease in criminality,” a euphemism for saying that they did not prevent an increase in
criminality even more alarming than in France. According to them, this was due to “the gaps in
legislation. It would be necessary to be able to remove morally abandoned children more easily from
the authority of unworthy parents.” The same situation holds true for America; the statistics of the
Elmira reformatory tell us that of the parents of youths detained in this reform school, 38 percent are
alcoholics; 54 out of 100 times the “domestic environment is very bad”; 38 or 39 percent of the time
it is bad. In brief, according to Mr. Alimena (Imputabilitá, vol. 2, p. 279) “a good domestic
environment is found only 7 to 8 percent of the time.” And, since the efficacy of the morally
therapeutic methods put into practice in this celebrated penitentiary has been much vaunted, there is
some merit in pointing out, with Mr. Garofalo, that “20 percent of those freed from Elmira are
recidivists 6 months after their departure.”
It is thus abundantly proved that as far as the world of potential small-time miscreants is
concerned, schools have been neither a moral brake, since they do not prevent recidivism, nor a
moral spur, since everyone agrees on delinquents’ cowardice and weakness of character. But rising
above this sad group to consider the whole of the child population, is there cause to think that school
is a moral brake or spur of much strength? Alas, no. It is no more than an intellectual stimulus, a
mental aperitif—and that is not enough.
It is something, however, and it would be a great deal if the appetite or curiosity it aroused found