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Kinberg's comprehensive discussion of Basic Problems of Criminology is a most stimulating work and it might be well if it could be read by judges of the courts, by district attorneys, and by prison administrators. He has an admirable grasp of the subject and a wide personal experience, and he deals both with the everyday issues of crime as they come before the police department and with the philosophical considerations upon which principles must be founded.
He starts off his work with a discussion of free will, that bane of the moralist and the criminologist which has puzzled man for centuries. He perhaps, of course, does not answer the questions involved but he is at least of the opinion that indeterminism is not heuristic, and he leaves the reviewer with the feeling that determinism may be accompanied by a feeling of freedom which is perhaps one of thpse devices of the mind which help its possessor to preserve his amour propre under circumstances that would not be conducive to that end. At the same time he also acknowledges that the only real freedom consists in conformity, because if one wishes to do what the conventions subscribe to them truly he is not at war either with himself or them.
The author speaks of the “supreme stupidity of the prison system” and “the utter absurdity of the existing system”, and in such words