fact, the potential criminal is in every man, and no one was ever so
abandoned that some friend would not plead for him, or that some one who
knew him would not testify to his good deeds.

The criminal is not hard to understand. He is one who, from inherited
defects or from great misfortune or especially hard circumstances, is
not able to make the necessary adjustments to fit him to his
environment. Seldom is he a man of average intelligence, unless he
belongs to a certain class that will be discussed later. Almost always
he is below the normal of intelligence and in perhaps half of the cases
very much below. Nearly always he is a person of practically no
education and no property. One who has given attention to the subject of
crime knows exactly where the criminal comes from and how he will
develop. The crimes of violence and murder, and the lesser crimes
against property, practically all come from those who have been reared
in the poor and congested districts of cities and large villages. The
robbers, burglars, pickpockets and thieves are from these surroundings.
In a broad sense, some criminals are born and some are made. Nearly all
of them are both born and made. This does not mean that criminality can
be inherited, or even that there is a criminal type. It means that with
certain physical and mental imperfections and with certain environment
the criminal will be the result.

Seldom does one begin a criminal life as a full-grown man. The origin
of the typical criminal is an imperfect child, suffering from some
defect. Usually he was born with a weak intellect, or an unstable
nervous system. He comes from poor parents. Often one or both of these
died or met misfortune while he was young. He comes from the crowded
part of a poor district. He has had little chance to go to school and
could not have been a scholar, no matter how regularly he attended