If You Want Less Crime

"Every crime is born of necessity.  If you want less crime, you must change the conditions.  Poverty makes 
crime.  Want, rags, crusts, misfortune - all these awake the wild beast in man, and finally he takes, and takes 
contrary to law, and becomes a criminal.  And what do you do with him?  You punish him.  Why not punish a man 
for having consumption?  The time will come when you will see that that is just as logical.  What do you do with 
the criminal?  You send him to the penitentiary.  Is he made better?  Worse.  The first thing you do is to try to 
trample out his manhood, by putting an indignity upon him.  You mark him.  You put him in stripes.  At night you 
put him in darkness.  His feeling for revenge grows.  You make a wild beast of him, and he comes out of that 
place branded in body and soul, and then you won't let him reform if he wants to."

Robert G. Ingersoll      (1833-1899) American lawyer

Robert G. Ingersoll speaks with arrogant pomposity.  He has much criticism to offer.  
Yet he offers no solutions.  RD