still maintain, that it is due to the combined effects of temperature
and social conditions, if crimes against property increase in winter.
For lack of employment, the want of food and shelter, intensify the
misery and lead to attacks on property. On the other hand, the cold by
itself reduces sexual crimes and personal assaults. And those who claim
that the longer intercourse between people in summer time has also a
social influence, are also partly in the right.

The most eloquent fact in this respect was mentioned by Murro, when he
pointed out that this change in the frequency of bloody crimes, greater
in the warm months than in winter, applied also to prisoners. Statistics
show that breach of discipline is most frequent in hot seasons. The
social factor does not enter there, because the social life is there the
same in winter and in summer. This is, therefore, a practical proof of
the influence of climate, and it is re-enforced by the fact that
delirium and epilepsy in insane asylums are also more frequent in hot
than in cold months. The influence of the telluric factors, then, cannot
be denied, and the influence of the social factor intensifies it, as I
have already shown by its most drastic and characteristic example, that
of want. One can, therefore, understand that a man, whose morality has
been shaken by the pressure of increasing want, may be led to commit a
crime against property or persons.

It is certainly quite evident, that economic misery has an undeniable
influence on criminality. And if you consider, that about 300,000
criminals are sentenced in Italy every year, 180,000 of them for minor
crimes, and 120,000 for crimes which belong to the gravest class, you
can easily see that the greater part of them due mainly to social
conditions, for which it should not be so very difficult to find a
remedy. The work of the legislator may be slow, difficult, and