Excerpt from American Prisons in the Tenth United States Census: A Paper The statistics of crime in the United States are deplora bly meagre and inadequate. When compared with the criminal statistics of the nations of Europe, especially with the judicial statistics of Great Britain, they may almost be said to be disgraceful to us as a people. No function of government is of greater consequence than the prevention and repression of crime; and a government fully alive to its responsibilities in this direction would anxiously watch the indications of the growth or diminution of the tendency to crime, to be found in the criminal proceedings of courts of superior and inferior jurisdiction, and in the records of prisons of all grades, from the lowest to the highest. But, under our peculiar double system of federal and state government, the offenses which are punishable under the federal statutes are few in number. The list includes treason, mutiny, desertion, counterfeiting, and violations of the election laws, of the postal laws, and of the laws for the collection of revenues - smuggling, illicit distillation, and the like. The methods of dealing with crimes in general are, by our federal constitution, relegated to the individual states and territories. The congressional criminal code is in force only in the District of Columbia, and in such other territorial limits as are wholly within the jurisdiction of the general government. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.