The victims are easy to forget. Social science tends steadily to mark a preference for the troubled, the abnormal, the problem case. Whether it is poverty, mental disorder, delinquency or crime, the " patient material" monopolizes the interest of increasing groups of people among the most generous and learned. Psychiatry and moral liberalism go together; the application of law as we have known it is thus coming to be regarded as an historic prelude to social work, which may replace it entirely. Modern literature makes the most of this same outlook, caring only for the disturbed spirit, scorning as bourgeois those who pay their way and do not stab their friends. All the while the determinism of natural science reinforces the assumption that society causes its own evils. A French jurist, for example, says that in order to understand crime we must first brush aside all ideas of Responsibility. He means the criminal's and takes for granted that of society. The murderer kills because reared in a broken homeor, conversely, because at an early age he witnessed his parents making love. Out of such cases, which make pathetic reading in the literature of modern criminology, is born the abolitionist's state of mind: we dare not kill those we are beginning to understand so well.
受害者往往容易被忽视。社会科学总是对那些被认为是罪犯精神有毛病、不正常或有问题的案件给予优先考虑，无论是贫困，是精神失常，是过失，还是罪恶，这种"病情资料"始终是一批批越来越多的最宽宏大量和最有学问的人的兴趣所在。精神病学和道德自由主义密切配合，于是我们所熟悉的执法问题开始被视为社会工作的一种历史序曲，而社会工作终究会将它完全取而代之。现代文学作品也充分地表明了这种观点。这些作品只关心所谓精神上的混乱，而把那些从不贪占他人钱财、不捅朋友一刀的人斥之为中产阶级。自然科学的决定论始终强调犯罪行为是由社会本身造成的说法。例如，一位法国法律学家说：为了了解犯罪，我们必须首先去掉一切责任观念。他所指的是要免除罪犯的责任，而把责任推向社会;杀人犯之所以杀人，是因为他成长于一个破裂的家庭，或反之，是因为他正当小小年纪便目睹了父母的性行为。那些在现代犯罪文学作品中令人产生恻隐之心的案件，造成了废除派这样一种心理：我们可不能将那些正在开始为我们真正理解的人杀掉。