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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: paramount duty is to look at facts and not appearances.
But whether criminality is keeping pace with the growth of
population or not it is a problem of great magnitude all
the same, and it will not be solved, as Professor Ferri points
out, by a mere resort to punishments of greater rigour and
severity. On this matter he is at one with the Scotch
departmental committee appointed to inquire into the best means of
dealing with habitual offenders, vagrants, and juveniles. As far
as the suppression of vagrancy is concerned the members of the
committee are unanimously of opinion that ``the severest
enactments of the general law are futile, and that the best
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