Crime and the Man The American Criminal

Abstract

IN 1938, when Prof. E. A. Hooton had completed a survey of the bodily features of American criminals and compared them with observations made on corresponding samples of ‘unconvieted’ civilians, he was invited by the Lowell Institute to give lectures on the harvest he had reaped. These lectures have been published as a book under the title “Crime and the Man”; they give a clear and almost joyous account of a survey of the prison population of ten States, which occupied more than twelve years, included upwards of 17,000 individuals and involved the tabulation and statistical treatment of about 2J millions of measurements and observations. The criminals and their civil ‘control’ samples fall into four groups: (1) native whites born of parents who were also born in the United States; (2) native whites born of immigrant parents; (3) white immigrants; (4) citizens of African-or mainly African-origin. Each of these groups is to receive full descriptive and statistical treatment in a separate publication issued by the Harvard University Press under the title ‘The American Criminal: An Anthropological Study”, of which the first volume has now been published. It contains 309 pages of text and 482 pages of tables; vol. 2 will deal with groups 2 and 3; while vol. 3 will deal with the African group. Crime and the Man By Earnest Albert Hooton. Pp. xvi + 403. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford university Press, 1939.) 21s. 6d. net. The American Criminal An Anthropological Study. By Earnest Albert Hooton., with the collaboration of the Statistical Laboratory of the Division of Anthropology, Harvard University. Vol. 1: The Native White Criminal of Native Parentage. Pp. xvi + 309 + 482 + 15. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1939.) 56s. net.