Study of the Criminal Personality from the Materials of Criminological Research

We are all aware of the vast practical and scientific significance of the problem of studying and preventing crime and of researching its causes and the conditions giving rising to it. That is why one of the principal provisions of Soviet criminal procedure is the demand that the reasons and conditions making possible the commission of the crime be determined in each criminal case, and that measures be taken to eliminate them. But if the most characteristic, the most typical features in the development of criminality are to be discovered, and if its essential causes and conditions are to be determined (and this is a most important task of criminology), we cannot rely upon the study of individual cases and persons. Because these typical, essential characteristics in the realm of criminality manifest themselves in the form of statistical regularities, criminology must therefore make use of the statistical method on the very largest scale, i.e., it must base its conclusions upon mass-scale observations.