Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri
page 29 of 307 (09%)
page 29 of 307 (09%)
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For Italy I have found that the highest percentages of relapse are afforded by persons convicted of theft and petty larceny, forgery, rape, manslaughter, conspiracy, and, at the correctional courts, vagrancy and mendacity. The lowest percentages are amongst those convicted of assault and bodily harm, murders, and infanticide. For France, where legal statistics are remarkably adapted for the most minute inquiry, I have drawn up the following table of statistics from the lists of persons convicted at the assize courts and correctional tribunals, taking an average of the years 1877-81, which is not sensibly affected by the results of succeeding years. It will be seen that the average of relapses for crimes against the person is higher than the average for the most serious cases of murderous and indecent assault, which are clearly an outcome of the most anti-social tendencies (such as parricide, murder, rape, inflicting bodily harm on parents, &c.). Thus homicide and fatal wounding, though relapse is very frequent in these cases, still display a less abnormal and more occasional character by their lower position in the table, as shown in the cases of infanticide, concealment of birth, and abandonment of infants. As for the very frequent occurrence of relapse in special crimes, such as assaults on officials and resistance to authority, which rarely come before the assize courts--though even there they tend to support the higher numbers in the tribunals--these are offences which may also be committed by criminals of every kind, and which, moreover, depend in some measure on the social factor of police organisation, and frequently on the psycho-pathological state of |
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