Note 23 — Chapter V · THE BIO-SOCIOLOGISTS.

“It is useless, or worse than useless, to occupy ourselves with methods for improving the treatment of criminals, so long as the conditions of life render the prison a welcome and desired shelter. So long as we foster the growth of reckless classes we foster the growth of criminality. So long as there are a large body of women in the East of London, and in other large centers, who are prepared to say, ‘It’s Jack the Ripper or the bridge with me. What’s the odds?’ there will be a still larger number of persons who will willingly accept the risks of prison. ‘What’s the odds?’ Liberty is dear to every man who is fed and clothed and housed, and he will not usually enter a career of crime unless he has carefully calculated the risks of losing his liberty, and found them small; but food and shelter are even more precious than liberty, and these may be secured in prison. As things are, the asylum and the workhouse, against which there is a deep prejudice, ingrained and irrational, would have a greater deterring effect than the prison. There are every morning in Paris 50,000 persons who do not know how they will eat or where they will sleep. It is the same in every great city; for such the prison can be nothing but a home. It is well known that the life of the convict, miserable as it is, with its dull routine and perpetual surveillance, is yet easier, less laborious, and far more healthy than that to which thousands of honest working-men are condemned throughout Great Britain.”23