BY
ENRICO FERRI
PROFESSOR OF CRIMINAL LAW
DEPUTY IN THE ITALIAN PARLIAMENT, ETC.
PREFACE.
The following pages are a translation of that portion of Professor Ferri’s volume on Criminal Sociology which is immediately concerned with the practical problems of criminality. The Report of the Government committee appointed to inquire into the treatment of habitual drunkards, the Report of the committee of inquiry into the best means of identifying habitual criminals, the revision of the English criminal returns, the Reports of committees appointed to inquire into the administration of prisons and the best methods of dealing with habitual offenders, vagrants, beggars, inebriate and juvenile delinquents, are all evidence of the fact that the formidable problem of crime is again pressing its way to the front and demanding re-examination at the hands of the present generation. The real dimensions of the question, as Professor Ferri points out, are partially hidden by the superficial interpretations which are so often placed upon the returns relating to crime. If the population of prisons or penitentiaries should happen to be declining, this is immediately interpreted to mean that crime is on the decrease. And yet a cursory examination of the facts is sufficient to show that a decrease in the prison population is merely the result of shorter sentences and the substitution of fines or other similar penalties for imprisonment. If the list of offences for trial before a judge and jury should exhibit any symptoms of diminution, this circumstance is immediately seized upon as a proof that the criminal population is declining, and yet the diminution may merely arise from the fact that large numbers of cases which used to be tried before a jury are now dealt with summarily by a magistrate. In other words, what we witness is a change of judicial procedure, but not necessarily a decrease of crime. Again, when it is pointed out that the number of persons for trial for indictable offences in England and Wales amounted to 53,044 in 1874-8 and 56,472 in 1889-93, we are at a loss to see what colour these figures give to the statement that there has been a real and substantial decrease of crime. The increase, it is true, may not be keeping pace with the growth of the general population, but, as an eminent judge recently stated from the bench, this is to be accounted for by the fact that the public is every year becoming more lenient and more unwilling to prosecute. But an increase of leniency, however excellent in itself, is not to be confounded with a decrease of crime. In the study of social phenomena our 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 results have been obtained by the milder provisions of more recent statutes.” They also speak of the “utter inadequacy of the present system in all the variety of detail which it offers to deter the habitual offender from a course of life which devolves the cost of his maintenance on the prison and the poorhouse when he is not preying directly on the public.” The committee state that they have had testimony from a large number of witnesses supporting the view that “long sentences of imprisonment effect no good result,” and they arrive at the conclusion that to double the present sentences would not diminish the number of habitual offenders. In this conclusion they are at one with the views of the Royal Commission on Penal Servitude, which acquiesced in the objection to the penal servitude system on the ground that it “not only fails to reform offenders, but in the case of the less hardened criminals and especially first offenders produces a deteriorating effect.” A similar opinion was recently expressed by the Prisons Committee presided over by Mr. Herbert Gladstone. As soon as punishment reaches a point at which it makes men worse than they were before, it becomes useless as an instrument of reformation or social defence.
The proper method of arriving at a more or less satisfactory solution of the criminal problem is to inquire into the causes which are producing the criminal population, and to institute remedies based upon the results of such an inquiry. Professor Ferri’s volume has this object in view. The first chanter, on the data of Criminal Anthropology, is an inquiry into the individual conditions which tend to produce criminal habits of mind and action. The second chapter, on the data of criminal statistics, is an examination of the adverse social conditions which tend to drive certain sections of the population into crime. It is Professor Ferri’s contention that the volume of crime will not be materially diminished by codes of criminal law however skilfully they may be constructed, but by an amelioration of the adverse individual and social conditions of the community as a whole. Crime is a product of these adverse conditions, and the only effective way of grappling with it is to do away as far as possible with the causes from which it springs. Although criminal codes can do comparatively little towards the reduction of crime, they are absolutely essential for the protection of society. Accordingly, the last chapter, on Practical Reforms, is intended to show how criminal law and prison administration may be made more effective for purposes of social defence.
W. D. M.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE DATA OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Origin of Criminal Sociology, –Origin of Criminal Anthropology, –Methods of Criminal Anthropology, –Relation between Criminal Anthropology and Criminal Sociology, –Criminal Anthropology studies the organic and mental constitution of the criminal, — The criminal skull and brain, –Criminal physiognomy, –Physical insensibility among criminals, –Criminal heredity, –Criminal psychology, –Moral insensibility among criminals, –The criminal mind. II. The data of criminal anthropology only applies to the habitual or congenital criminal, –The occasional and habitual criminal, –Comparison between the criminal and non-criminal skull, –Anomalies in the criminal skull, –The habitual criminal, –The crimes of habitual criminals, –The criminal type confined to habitual criminals, –The proportion of habitual criminals in the criminal population, –Forms of habitual criminality, –Forms of occasional criminality, — Classification of criminals, –Criminal lunatics, –Moral insanity, –Born criminals, –Criminals by acquired habit, –Criminal precocity, –Nature of juvenile crime, –Relapsed criminals, –Precocity and relapse among criminals, –Criminals of passion, –Occasional criminals, –Differences between the occasional and the born criminal, –Criminal types shade into each other, –Numbers of several classes of criminals, — Value of a proper classification of criminals, –A fourfold classification.
CHAPTER II.
THE DATA OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS
Value of criminal statistics, –The three factors of crime, — Anthropological factors, –Physical factors, –Social factors, –Crime a product of complex conditions, –Social conditions do not explain crime, –Effects of temperature on crime, — Crime a result of biological as well as social conditions, –The measures to be taken against crime are of two kinds, preventive and eliminative, –The fluctuations of crime chiefly produced by social causes, –Steadiness of the graver forms of crime, — Effect of judicial procedure on criminal statistics, –Crimes against the person are high when crimes against property are low, –Is crime increasing or decreasing? –Official optimism in criminal statistics, –Density of population and crime, — Conditions on which the fluctuations of crime depend, — Quetelet’s law of the mechanical regularity of crime, –The effect of environment on crime, –The effect of punishment on crime, –The value of punishment is over-estimated, — Statistical proofs of this, –Biological and sociological proofs, –Crime is diminished by prevention not by repression, –Legislators and administrators rely too much on repression, –The basis of the belief in punishment,–Natural and legal punishment, –The discipline of consequences, –The uncertainty of legal punishment, –Want of foresight among criminals, –Penal codes cannot alter invincible tendencies, –Force is no remedy, –Negative value of punishment. II. Substitutes for punishment, –The elimination of the causes of crime, –Economic remedies for crime, –Drink and crime, –Drunkenness an effect of bad social conditions, –Taxation of drink, –Laws against drink, –Social amelioration a substitute for penal law, —
Social legislation and crime, –Political amelioration as a preventive of crime, –Decentralisation a preventive, — Legal and administrative preventives, –Prisoners’ Aid Societies, –Education and crime, –Popular entertainments and crime, –Physical education as a remedy for crime, –To diminish crime its causes must be eliminated, –The aim and scope of penal substitutes, –Difficulty of applying penal substitutes, –Difference between social and police prevention, –Limited efficacy of punishment, –Summary of conclusions.
CHAPTER III.
PRACTICAL REFORMS
Criminal sociology and penal legislation, –Classification of punishments, –The reform of criminal procedure, –The two principles of judicial procedure, –Principles determining the nature of the sentence, –Present principles of penal procedure a reaction against mediaeval abuses, –The “presumption of innocence,” –The verdict of “Not Proven,” –The right of appeal, –A second trial, –Reparation to the victims of crime, –Need for a Ministry of Justice, — Public and private prosecutors, –The growing tendency to drop criminal charges, –The tendency to minimise the official returns of crime, –Roman penal law, –Revision of judicial errors, –Reparation to persons wrongly convicted, — Provision of funds for this purpose, –Reparation to persons wrongly prosecuted, –Many criminal offences should be tried as civil offences, –The object of a criminal trial. II. The crime and the criminal, –The stages of a criminal trial, — The evidence, –Anthropological evidence, –The utilisation of hypnotism, –Psychological and psycho-pathological evidence, –The credibility of witnesses, –Expert evidence, –An advocate of the poor, –The judge and his qualifications, — Civil and criminal judges should be distinct functionaries, –The student of law should study criminals, –Training of police and prison officers, –The status of the criminal judge, –The authority of the judge. III. The jury, –Origin of the jury, –Advantages of the jury, –Defects of the jury, –The jury as a protection to liberty, –The jury and criminal law, –Juries untrained and irresponsible, — Numbers fatal to wisdom, –Defects of judges, –Difference between the English and Continental jury, –Social evolution and the jury, –The jury compared to the electorate, –How to utilise the jury. IV. Existing prison systems a failure, –Defects of existing penal systems, –The abuse of short sentences, –The growth of recidivism, –Garofalo’s scheme of punishments, –Von Liszt’s scheme of punishments, –The basis of a rational system of punishment, –The indeterminate sentence, –Flogging, –The indefinite sentence for habitual offenders, –Van Hamel’s proposals as to sentences, –The liberation of prisoners on an indefinite sentence, –The supervision of punishment, –Conditional release, –Good conduct test in prisons, –Police supervision, — Indemnification of the victims Of crime, –The duty of the State towards the victims of crime, –Defensive measures must be adapted to the different classes of criminals, –Uniformity of punishment, –The prison staff, –Classification of prisoners, –Prison labour. V. Asylums for criminal lunatics, –The treatment of insane criminals, –Crime and madness, –Classification of asylums for criminal lunatics, –The treatment of born criminals, –The death penalty, –Extension of the death penalty, –Inadequacy of the death penalty, –Imprisonment for life, –Transportation, — Labour settlements, –Establishments for habitual criminals, –Criminal heredity, –Incorrigible offenders, — Cumulative sentences, –Uncorrected or incorrigible criminals, –Cellular prisons, –Solitary confinement, –The progressive system of imprisonment, –The evils of cellular imprisonment, –The cell does not secure separation, — Costliness of the cellular system, –Labour under the cellular system, –Open-air work the best for prisoners, –The treatment of habitual criminals, –The treatment of occasional criminals, –The treatment of young offenders, — Futility of short sentences, –Substitutes for short sentences, –Compulsory work without imprisonment, –Conditional sentences, –Conditional sentences in Belgium, –Conditional sentences in the United States, –Objections to conditional sentences, –When the conditional sentence is legitimate, — The treatment of criminals of passion, –Conclusion.
INTRODUCTION.
THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINAL LAW.
During the past twelve or fourteen years Italy has poured forth a stream of new ideas on the subject of crime and criminals; and only the short-sightedness of her enemies or the vanity of her flatterers can fail to recognise in this stream something more than the outcome of individual labours.
A new departure in science is a simple phenomenon of nature, determined in its origin and progress, like all such phenomena, by conditions of time and place. Attention must be drawn to these conditions at the outset, for it is only by accurately defining them that the scientific conscience of the student of sociology is developed and confirmed.
The experimental philosophy of the latter half of our century, combined with human biology and psychology, and with the natural study of human society, had already produced an intellectual atmosphere decidedly favourable to a practical inquiry into the criminal manifestations of individual and social life.
To these general conditions must be added the plain and everyday contrast between the metaphysical perfection of criminal law and the progressive increase of crime, as well as the contrast between legal theories of crime and the study of the mental characteristics of a large number of criminals.
From this point onwards, nothing could be more natural than the rise of a new school, whose object was to make an experimental study of social pathology in respect of its criminal symptoms, in order to bring theories of crime and punishment into harmony with everyday facts. This is the positive school of criminal law, whereof the fundamental purpose is to study the natural genesis of criminality in the criminal, and in the physical and social conditions of his life, so as to apply the most effectual remedies to the various causes of crime.
Thus we are not concerned merely with the construction of a theory of anthropology or psychology, or a system of criminal statistics, nor merely with the setting of abstract legal theories against other theories which are still more abstract. Our task is to show that the basis of every theory concerning the self-defence of the community against evil-doers must be the observation of the individual and of society in their criminal activity. In one word, our task is to construct a criminal sociology.
For, as it seems to me, all that general sociology can do is to furnish the more ordinary and universal inferences concerning the life of communities; and upon this canvas the several sciences of sociology are delineated by the specialised observation of each distinct order of social facts. In this manner we may construct a political sociology, an economic sociology, a legal sociology, by studying the special laws of normal or social activity amongst human beings, after previously studying the more general laws of individual and collective existence. And thus we may construct a criminal sociology, by studying, with such an aim and by such a method, the abnormal and anti-social actions of human beings–or, in other words, by studying crime and criminals.
Neither the Romans, great exponents as they were of the civil law, nor the practical spirits of the Middle Ages, had been able to lay down a philosophic system of criminal law. It was Beccaria, influenced far more by sentiment than by scientific precision, who gave a great impetus to the doctrine of crimes and punishments by summarising the ideas and sentiments of his age.[1] Out of the various germs contained in his generous initiative there has been developed, to his well-deserved credit, the classical school of criminal law.
[1] Desjardins, in the Introduction to his “Cahiers des Etats Generaux en 1789 et la Legislation Criminelle,” Paris, 1883, gives a good description of the state of public opinion in that age. He speaks also of the charges which were brought against the advocates of the new doctrines concerning crime, that they upset the moral and social order of things. Nowadays, charges against the experimental school are cited from these same advocates; for the revolutionary of yesterday is very often the conservative of to-day.
This school had, and still has, a practical purpose, namely, to diminish all punishments, and to abolish a certain number, by a magnanimous reaction of humanity against the arbitrary harshness of mediaeval times. It had also, and still has, a method of its own, namely, to study crime from its first principles, as an abstract entity dependent upon law.
Here and there since the time of Beccaria another stream of theory has made itself manifest. Thus there is the correctional school, which Roeder brought into special prominence not many years ago. But though it flourished in Germany, less in Italy and France, and somewhat more in Spain, it had no long existence as an independent school, for it was only too easily confuted by the close sequence of inexorable facts. Moreover, it could do no more than oppose a few humanitarian arguments on the reformation of offenders to the traditional arguments of the theories of jurisprudence, of absolute and relative justice, of intimidation, utility, and the like.
No doubt the principle that punishment ought to have a reforming effect upon the criminal survives as a rudimentary organ in nearly all the schools which concern themselves with crime. But this is only a secondary principle, and as it were the indirect object of punishment; and besides, the observations of anthropology, psychology, and criminal statistics have finally disposed of it, having established the fact that, under any system of punishment, with the most severe or the most indulgent methods, there are always certain types of criminals, representing a large number of individuals, in regard to whom amendment is simply impossible, or very transitory, on account of their organic and moral degeneration. Nor must we forget that, since the natural roots of crime spring not only from the individual organism, but also, in large measure, from its physical and social environment, correction of the individual is not sufficient to prevent relapse if we do not also, to the best of our ability, reform the social environment. The utility and the duty of reformation none the less survive, even for the positive school, whenever it is possible, and for certain classes of criminals; but, as a fundamental principle of a scientific theory, it has passed away.
Hitherto, then, the classical school stands alone, with varying shades of opinion, but one and distinct as a method, and as a body of principles and consequences. And whilst it has achieved its aim in the most recent penal codes, with a great, and too frequently an excessive diminution of punishments, so in respect of theory, in Italy, Germany, and France it has crowned its work with a series of masterpieces amongst which I will only mention Carrara’s “Programme of Criminal Law.” As the author tells us in one of his later editions, from the a priori principle that “crime is a fact dependent upon law, an infraction rather than an action,” he deduced–and that by the sheer force of an admirable logic–a complete symmetrical scheme of legal and abstract consequences, wherein judges are compelled, whether they like it or not, to determine the position of every criminal who comes before them.
But now the classical school, which sprang from the marvellous little work of Beccaria, has completed its historic cycle. It has yielded all it could, and writers of the present day who still cling to it can only recast the old material. The youngest of them, indeed, are condemned to a sort of Byzantine discussion of scholastic formulas, and to a sterile process of scientific rumination.
And meantime, outside our universities and academies, criminality continues to grow, and the punishments hitherto inflicted, though they can neither protect nor indemnify the honest, succeed in corrupting and degrading evil-doers. And whilst our treatises and codes (which are too often mere treatises cut up into segments) lose themselves in the fog of their legal abstractions, we feel more strongly every day, in police courts and at assizes, the necessity for those biological and sociological studies of crime and criminals which, when logically directed, can throw light as nothing else can upon the administration of the penal law.
CHAPTER I.
THE DATA OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.
The experimental school of criminal sociology took its original title from its studies of anthropology; it is still commonly regarded as little more than a “criminal anthropology school.” And though this title no longer corresponds with the development of the school, which also takes into account and investigates the data of psychology, statistics, and sociology, it is none the less true that the most characteristic impetus of the new scientific movement was due to anthropological studies. This was conspicuously the case when Lombroso, giving a scientific form to sundry scattered and fragmentary observations upon criminals, added fresh life to them by a collection of inquiries which were not only original but also governed by a distinct idea, and established the new science of criminal anthropology.
It is possible, of course, to discover a very early origin for criminal anthropology, as for general anthropology; for, as Pascal said, man has always been the most wonderful object of study to himself. For observations on physiognomy in particular we may go as far backwards as to Plato, and his comparisons of the human face and character with those of the brutes, or even to Aristotle, who still earlier observed the physical and psychological correspondence between the passions of men and their facial expression. And after the mediaeval gropings in chiromancy, metoscopy, podomancy and so forth, one comes to the seventeenth century studies in physiognomy by the Jesuit Niquetius, by Cortes, Cardanus, De la Chambre, Della Porta, &c., who were precursors of Gall, Spurzheim, and Lavater on one side, and, on the other, of the modern scientific study of the emotions, with their expression in face and gesture, conducted by Camper, Bell, Engel, Burgess, Duchenne, Gratiolet, Piderit, Mantegazza, Schaffhausen, Schack, Heiment, and above all by Darwin.
With regard to the special observation of criminals, over and above the limited statements of the old physiognomists and phrenologists, Lauvergne (1841) in France and Attomyr (1842) in Germany had accurately applied the theories of Gall to the examination of convicts; and their works, in spite of certain exaggerations of phrenology, are still a valuable treasury of observations in anthropology. In Italy, De Rolandis (1835) had published his observations on a deceased criminal; in America, Sampson (1846) had traced the connection between criminality and cerebral organisation; in Germany, Camper (1854) published a study on the physiognomy of murderers; and Ave Lallemant (1858-62) produced a long work on criminals, from the psychological point of view.
But the science of criminal anthropology, more strictly speaking, only begins with the observations of English gaol surgeons and other learned men, such as Forbes Winslow (1854), Mayhew (1860), Thomson (1870), Wilson (1870), Nicolson (1872), Maudsley (1873), and with the very notable work of Despine (1868), which indeed gave rise to the inquiries of Thomson, and which, in spite of its lack of synthetic treatment and systematic unity, is still, taken in conjunction with the work of Ave Lallemant, the most important inquiry in the psychological domain anterior to the work of Lombroso.
Nevertheless, it was only with the first edition of “The Criminal” (1876) that criminal anthropology asserted itself as an independent science, distinct from the main trunk of general anthropology, itself quite recent in its origin, having come into existence with the works of Daubenton, Blumenbach, Soemmering, Camper, White, and Pritchard.
The work of Lombroso set out with two original faults: the mistake of having given undue importance, at any rate apparently, to the data of craniology and anthropometry, rather than to those of psychology; and, secondly, that of having mixed up, in the first two editions, all criminals in a single class. In later editions these defects were eliminated, Lombroso having adopted the observation which I made in the first instance, as to the various anthropological categories of criminals. This does not prevent certain critics of criminal anthropology from repeating, with a strange monotony, the venerable objections as to the “impossibility of distinguishing a criminal from an honest man by the shape of his skull,” or of “measuring human responsibility in accordance with different craniological types.”[2]
[2] Vol. ii. of the fourth edition of “The Criminal” (1889) is specially concerned with the epileptic and idiotic criminal (referred to alcoholism, hysteria, mattoidism) whether occasional or subject to violent impulse; whilst vol. i. is concerned only with congenital criminality and moral insanity.
But these original faults in no way obscure the two following noteworthy facts–that within a few years after the publication of “The Criminal” there were published, in Italy and elsewhere, a whole library of studies in criminal anthropology, and that a new school has been established, having a distinct method and scientific developments, which are no longer to be looked for in the classical school of criminal law.
I.
What, then, is criminal anthropology? And of what nature are its fundamental data, which lead us up to the general conclusions of criminal sociology?
If general anthropology is, according to the definition of M. de Quatrefages, the natural history of man, as zoology is the natural history of animals, criminal anthropology is but the study of a single variety of mankind. In other words, it is the natural history of the criminal man.
Criminal anthropology studies the criminal man in his organic and psychical constitution, and in his life as related to his physical and social environment–just as anthropology has done for man in general, and for the various races of mankind. So that, as already said, whilst the classical observers of crime study various offences in their abstract character, on the assumption that the criminal, apart from particular cases which are evident and appreciable, is a man of the ordinary type, under normal conditions of intelligence and feeling, the anthropological observers of crime, on the other hand, study the criminal first of all by means of direct observations, in anatomical and physiological laboratories, in prisons and madhouses, organically and physically, comparing him with the typical characteristics of the normal man, as well as with those of the mad and the degenerate.
Before recounting the general data of criminal anthropology, it is necessary to lay particular stress upon a remark which I made in the original edition of this work, but which our opponents have too frequently ignored.
We must carefully discriminate between the technical value of anthropological data concerning the criminal man and their scientific function in criminal sociology.
For the student of criminal anthropology, who builds up the natural history of the criminal, every characteristic has an anatomical, or a physiological, or a psychological value in itself, apart from the sociological conclusions which it may be possible to draw from it. The technical inquiry into these bio- psychical characteristics is the special work of this new science of criminal anthropology.
Now these data, which are the conclusions of the anthropologist, are but starting-points for the criminal sociologist, from which he has to reach his legal and social conclusions. Criminal anthropology is to criminal sociology, in its scientific function, what the biological sciences, in description and experimentation, are to clinical practice.
In other words, the criminal sociologist is not in duty bound to conduct for himself the inquiries of criminal anthropology, just as the clinical operator is not bound to be a physiologist or an anatomist. No doubt the direct observation of criminals is a very serviceable study, even for the criminal sociologist; but the only duty of the latter is to base his legal and social inferences upon the positive data of criminal anthropology for the biological aspects of crime, and upon statistical data for the influences of physical and social environment, instead of contenting himself with mere abstract legal syllogisms.
On the other hand it is clear that sundry questions which have a direct bearing upon criminal anthropology–as, for instance, in regard to some particular biological characteristic, or to its evolutionary significance–have no immediate obligation or value for criminal sociology, which employs only the fundamental and most indubitable data of criminal anthropology. So that it is but a clumsy way of propounding the question to ask, as it is too frequently asked: “What connection can there be between the cephalic index, or the transverse measurement of a murderer’s jaw, and his responsibility for the crime which he has committed?” The scientific function of the anthropological data is a very different thing, and the only legitimate question which sociology can put to anthropology is this:–“Is the criminal, and in what respects is he, a normal or an abnormal man? And if he is, or when he is abnormal, whence is the abnormality derived? Is it congenital or contracted, capable or incapable of rectification?”
This is all; and yet it is sufficient to enable the student of crime to arrive at positive conclusions concerning the measures which society can take in order to defend itself against crime; whilst he can draw other conclusions from criminal statistics.
As for the principal data hitherto established by criminal anthropology, whilst we must refer the reader for detailed information to the works of specialists, we may repeat that this new science studies the criminal in his organic and in his psychical constitution, for these are the two inseparable aspects of human existence.
A beginning has naturally been made with the organic study of the criminal, both anatomical and physiological, since we must study the organ before the function, and the physical before the moral. This, however, has given rise to a host of misconceptions and one- sided criticisms, which have not yet ceased; for criminal anthropology has been charged, by such as consider only the most conspicuous data with narrowing crime down to the mere result of conformations of the skull or convolutions of the brain. The fact is that purely morphological observations are but preliminary steps to the histological and physiological study of the brain, and of the body as a whole.
As for craniology, especially in regard to the two distinct and characteristic types of criminals–murderers and thieves, an incontestable inferiority has been noted in the shape of the head, by comparison with normal men, together with a greater frequency of hereditary and pathological departures from the normal type. Similarly an examination of the brains of criminals, whilst it reveals in them an inferiority of form and histological type, gives also, in a great majority of cases, indications of disease which were frequently undetected in their lifetime. Thus M. Dally, who for twenty years past has displayed exceptional acumen in problems of this kind, said that “all the criminals who had been subjected to autopsy (after execution) gave evidence of cerebral injury.”[3]
[3] In a discussion at the Medico-Psychological Society of Paris; “Proceedings” for 1881, i. 93, 266, 280, 483.
Observations of the physiognomy of criminals, which no one will undervalue who has studied criminals in their lifetime, with adequate knowledge, as well as other physical inquiries, external and internal, have shown the existence of remarkable types, from the greater frequency of the tattooed man to exceptionally abnormal conditions of the frame and the organs, dating from birth, together with many forms of contracted disease.
Finally, inquiries of a physiological nature into the reflex action of the body, and especially into general and specific sensibility, and sensibility to pain, and into reflex action under external agencies, conducted with the aid of instruments which record the results, have shown abnormal conditions, all tending to physical insensibility, deep-seated and more or less absolute, but incontestably different in kind from that which obtains amongst the average men of the same social classes.
These are organic conditions, it must be at once affirmed, which account as nothing else can for the undeniable fact of the hereditary transmission of tendencies to crime, as well as of predisposition to insanity, to suicide, and to other forms of degeneration.
The second division of criminal anthropology, which is by far the more important, with a more direct influence upon criminal sociology, is the psychological study of the criminal. This recognition of its greater importance does not prevent our critics from concentrating their attack upon the organic characterisation of criminals, in oblivion of the psychological characterisation, which even in Lombroso’s book occupies the larger part of the text.[4]
[4] A recent example of this infatuation amongst one-sided, and therefore ineffectual critics is the work of Colajanni, “Socialism and Criminal Sociology,” Catania, 1889. In the first volume, which is devoted to criminal anthropology, out of four hundred pages of argumentative criticism (which does not prevent the author from taking our most fundamental conclusions on the anthropological classification of criminals, and on crime, as phenomena of psychical atavism), there are only six pages, 227- 232, for the criticism of psychological types.
Criminal psychology presents us with the characteristics which may be called specially descriptive, such as the slang, the handwriting, the secret symbols, the literature and art of the criminal; and on the other hand it makes known to us the characteristics which, in combination with organic abnormality, account for the development of crime in the individual. And these characteristics are grouped in two psychical and fundamental abnormalities, namely, moral insensibility and want of foresight.
Moral insensibility, which is decidedly more congenital than contracted, is either total or partial, and is displayed in criminals who inflict personal injuries, as much as in others, with a variety of symptoms which I have recorded elsewhere, and which are eventually reduced to these conditions of the moral sense in a large number of criminals–a lack of repugnance to the idea and execution of the offence, previous to its commission, and the absence of remorse after committing it.
Outside of these conditions of the moral sense, which is no special sentiment, but an expression of the entire moral constitution of the individual, as the temperament is of his physiological constitution, other sentiments, of selfishness or even of unselfishness, are not wanting in the majority of criminals. Hence arise many illusions for superficial observers of criminal life. But these latter sentiments are either excessive, as hate, cupidity, vanity and the like, and are thus stimulants to crime, or else, as with religion, love, honour, loyalty, and so on, they cease to be forces antagonistic to crime, because they have no foundation in a normal moral sense.
From this fundamental inferiority of sentiment there follows an inferiority of intelligence, which, however, does not exclude certain forms of craftiness, though it tends to inability to foresee the consequences of crime, far in excess of what is observed in the average members of the classes of society to which the several criminals belong.
Thus the psychology of the criminal is summed up in a defective resistance to criminal tendencies and temptations, due to that ill-balanced impulsiveness which characterises children and savages.
II.
I have long been convinced, by my study of works on criminal anthropology, but especially by direct and continuous observation from a physiological or a psychological point of view of a large number of criminals, whether mad or of normal intelligence, that the data of criminal anthropology are not entirely applicable, in their complete and essential form, to all who commit crimes. They are to be confined to a certain number, who may be called congenital, incorrigible, and habitual criminals. But apart from these there is a class of occasional criminals, who do not exhibit, or who exhibit in slighter degrees, the anatomical, physiological, and psychological characteristics which constitute the type described by Lombroso as “the criminal man.”
Before further defining these two main classes of criminals, in their natural and descriptive characterisation, I must add a positive demonstration, which can be attested under two distinct forms–(1) by the results of anthropological observation of criminals, and (2) by statistics of relapse, and of the manifestations of crime which anthropologists have hitherto chiefly studied.
As for organic anomalies, as I cannot here treat the whole matter in detail, I will simply reproduce from my study of homicide a summary of results for a single category of these anomalies, which a methodical observation of every class of criminals will carry further and render more precise, as Lombroso has already shown (see the fourth edition of his work, 1889, p. 273).
Homicides sentenced
To penal To Imprisonment Soldiers servitude
Persons in whom I detected (346) (363) (711) No anomaly in the skull 11.9 p.c. 8.2 p.c. 37.2 p.c. One or two anomalies 47.2 ” 56.6 ” 51.8 ” Three or four anomalies 30.9 ” 2.6 ” 11 ” Five or six anomalies 6.7 ” 2.3 ” 0 ” Seven or more anomalies .3 ” .3 ” 0 ”
That is to say, men with normal skulls were three times as numerous amongst soldiers as they were amongst criminals; of men with a noteworthy number of anomalies occurring together (three or four), there were three times as many amongst criminals as amongst soldiers; and there was not one soldier amongst those who showed an extraordinary number (five or more).
This proves to demonstration not only the greater frequency of anomalous skulls (and the same is true of physiognomical, physiological, and psychological anomalies) amongst criminals, but also that amongst these criminals between fifty and sixty per cent. show very few anomalies, whilst about one-third of the whole number present a remarkable combination, and one-tenth are normal in this respect.
Amongst the statistical data exhibiting the primary characteristics of the majority of criminals, the data connected with relapsed criminals are especially conspicuous. Though relapses, like first offences, are partly due to social conditions, they also have a manifest biological cause, since, under the operation of the same penal system, there are some liberated prisoners who relapse and some who do not.
The statistics of relapse are unfortunately very difficult to collect, on account of differences in the legislation of different countries, and in the preparation of records, which, even under the more general adoption of anthropometrical identification, rarely succeed in preventing the use of fresh names by professional criminals. So that we may still say, in the words of one who is a very good judge in this matter, M. Yvernes, not only that “the Prisons Congress of London (1872) was compelled to leave various problems undecided for lack of documentary evidence, and especially the question of relapsed criminals,” but also that to this day (1879), “we find varying results in different countries, the exact significance of which is not apparent.”
I have, however, published an essay on international statistics of relapsed criminals, from which I drew the following general conclusion: that even in prison statistics, which often give higher totals of relapsed cases than are given by judicial statistics, because they are more personal, and therefore less uncertain, we never obtain the full number of relapses, though the totals given vary from country to country, from district to district, and from prison to prison. It would be impossible to state accurately what proportion the numbers given bear to the actual number; but I am justified in saying, from all the materials which I have collected and compared in the aforesaid essay, that the number of relapses in Europe is generally between 50 and 60 per cent., and certainly rather above than below this limit. Whilst the Italian statistics, for instance, give 14 per cent. of relapses amongst prisoners sentenced to penal servitude, I found by experience 37 per cent; out of 346 who admitted to me that they had relapsed; and, amongst those who had been sentenced to simple imprisonment, I found 60 per cent. out of 363, in place of the 33 per cent. recorded in the prison statistics. The difference may be due to the particular conditions of the prisons which I visited; but in any case it establishes the inadequacy of the official figures dealing with relapse.
After this statement of a general fact, which proves, as Lombroso and Espinas said, that “the relapsed criminal is the rule rather than the exception,” we can proceed to set down the special proportions of relapse for each particular crime, so as to obtain an indication of the forms of crime which are most frequently resorted to by habitual criminals.
For Italy I have found that the highest percentages of relapse are afforded by persons convicted of theft and petty larceny, forgery, rape, manslaughter, conspiracy, and, at the correctional courts, vagrancy and mendacity. The lowest percentages are amongst those convicted of assault and bodily harm, murders, and infanticide.
For France, where legal statistics are remarkably adapted for the most minute inquiry, I have drawn up the following table of statistics from the lists of persons convicted at the assize courts and correctional tribunals, taking an average of the years 1877-81, which is not sensibly affected by the results of succeeding years.
It will be seen that the average of relapses for crimes against the person is higher than the average for the most serious cases of murderous and indecent assault, which are clearly an outcome of the most anti-social tendencies (such as parricide, murder, rape, inflicting bodily harm on parents, &c.). Thus homicide and fatal wounding, though relapse is very frequent in these cases, still display a less abnormal and more occasional character by their lower position in the table, as shown in the cases of infanticide, concealment of birth, and abandonment of infants. As for the very frequent occurrence of relapse in special crimes, such as assaults on officials and resistance to authority, which rarely come before the assize courts–though even there they tend to support the higher numbers in the tribunals–these are offences which may also be committed by criminals of every kind, and which, moreover, depend in some measure on the social factor of police organisation, and frequently on the psycho-pathological state of particular individuals.
The somewhat rare occurrence of relapse in such a grave type of murder as poisoning is noteworthy. But this is only an effect of the special psychology of these criminals, as I have explained elsewhere.
FRANCE–CASES OF RELAPSE, 1877-81.
COURTS OF ASSIZE
CRIMES
(Against the person) p. 100 Violence against public officers 85.8 Bigamy 59.3
Wounding parents or grandparents 55.9 Riot 55.3
Kidnapping of minors 46.2 Sexual assault on adults 44.0
Wilful murder (assassination) 42.3 Parricide 41.7
Manslaughter (homicide) 39.4 Sexual assaults on children 38.5 Attempts against railways 37.5
Serious wounds followed by death 36.8 —-
General average 35.8
Abortion 30.0
Perjury 26.7
Sequestration 18.8
Poisoning 16.7
Infanticide 6.0
Stealing, substitution or abandoning children 4.9
CRIMES
(Against property) p. 100 Theft in churches 74.3
Thefts, simple 71.7
Robbery, with violence, not on the highway 66.0 Burning buildings not inhabited, woods, etc. 59.8 —-
General average 58.5
Barratry 50.0
Theft by servants 44.2 Counterfeiting 43.8
Forgery, private writings 42.5 Burning inhabited dwellings 41.5 Forgery, commercial paper 38.3
Forgery, public documents 37.0 Fraudulent bankruptcy 35.3
Abuse of confidence by domestic servant 32.5 Extortion 30.7
Embezzlement of public funds 28.5 Robbing the mails by postal employees
Smuggling by customs officers
CORRECTIONAL TRIBUNALS
DELICTS p. 100
Infractions of surveillance 100 Infractions of expulsion of foreign fugitives 93.0 Infractions of interdiction to sojourn 89.0 Drunkenness 78.4
Vagabondage 71.3
Begging 65.7
Fraud (escroquerie) 47.8 Insult to public officers 46.8 Forcible entry 45.3
Thefts 45.2
Breach of trust 43.8 —-
General average 41.9
Riot, resistance 40.3
Written or verbal threats 39.6 Prohibited weapons, etc. 37.3
Political, electoral, and newspaper delicts 35.7 Outrage to public morality 34.5 Public outrage to decency 32.2 Voluntary wounds and blows 31.0 Unlawful opening of cafes, inns 27.7 Unlawful practice of medicine or pharmacy 26.6 Contraventions of railway regulations 25.3 Hunting or carrying prohibited arms 24.2 Breach of good morals, tending to corruption 23.8 Simple bankruptcy 23.6
Insult to ministers of religion 20.4 Fraudulent sales of merchandise 16.7 Defamations, insults, calumnies 14.2 Rural delicts 12.0
Amongst crimes against property, the most frequent relapses are found in the case of thieves (not including thefts and breaches of trust by domestic servants, which thus, proving their more occasional character, confirm the agreement of statistics with criminal psychology). The same thing is observed in regard to forgers of commercial documents and to fraudulent bankrupts, who are partly drawn into crime under the stress of personal or general crises. And the infrequency of relapse amongst postal employees condemned for embezzlement, and amongst customs officers who have been guilty of smuggling, is only a further confirmation of the inducement to crime by the opportunities met with in each case, rather than by personal tendencies.
Amongst minor offences, apart from that evasion of supervision which is no more than a legal condition, there are, both in France and in Italy, very frequent cases of relapse by vagabonds and mendicants, which is a consequence of social environment, as well as of the feeble organisation of the individuals. Other relapses above the average, included amongst these offences, constitute a sort of accessory criminality, existing side by side with the habitual criminality of thieves, murderers, and the like, such as drunkenness, attacks on public functionaries, infractions of the regulations of domicile, &c.
In thefts and resistance to authorities, relapse is less frequent here than in the assize courts, for in the majority of these minor offences, in their general forms, there is a greater number of occasional offences, as is also the case with bankruptcies, defamation, abuse, rural offences, &c., which demonstrate their more occasional character by their very low figures.
Hence the statistics of general and specific relapse indirectly confirm the fact that criminals, as a whole, have no uniform anthropological type; and that the bio-psychical types and anomalies belong more especially to the category of habitual criminals and those born into the criminal class, who, after all, are the only ones hitherto studied by criminal anthropologists.
What, then, is the numerical proportion of habitual criminals to the aggregate number of criminals?
In the absence of direct inquiry, it is possible to get at this proportion indirectly, from facts of two kinds. In the first place, a study of the works on criminal anthropology supplies us with an approximate figure, since the biological characteristics united in individuals, in sufficient number to create a criminal type, are met with in between forty and fifty per cent. of the total.
And this conclusion may be confirmed by other data of criminal statistics.
Whilst the statistics of relapse give us a very limited number of crimes and offences committed by born and habitual criminals, science and criminal legislation give us a far more extended classification.
Ellero reckoned in the penal code of the German Empire 203 crimes and offences; and I find that the Italian code of 1859 enumerates about 180, the new code about 200, and the French penal code about 150. Thus the kind of crimes of habitual criminals would only be about one-tenth of the complete legal classification of crimes and offences.
It is easy indeed to suppose that born and habitual criminals do not generally commit political crimes and offences, nor offences connected with the press, nor against freedom of worship, nor in corruption of public functionaries, nor misuse of title or authority; nor calumny, making false attestations or false reports; nor adultery, incest, or abduction of minors; nor infanticide, abortion, or palming of children; nor betrayal of professional secrets; nor bankruptcy offences, nor damage to property, nor violation of domicile, nor illegal arrests, nor duels, nor defamation, nor abuse. I say generally; for, as there are occasional criminals who commit the offences characteristic of habitual criminality, such as homicides, robberies, rapes, &c., so there are born criminals who sometimes commit crimes out of their ordinary course.
It is now necessary to add a few statistical data in respect of the classification of crime, which I take, like the others, from the essay already mentioned.
HABITUAL CRIMINALITY ITALY. FRANCE. BELGIUM. (homicide, theft, conspiracy,
rape, incendiarism,
vagrancy, swindling) A* B* C* A* B* C* A* B* C* ——————————————————————– Proportion of the persons p.c. p.c. p.c. p.c p.c. p.c. p.c. p.c. p.c. convicted of these crimes
and offences to the total
number of convictions . . 84 32 38 90 34 35 86 30 30
{* NOTE: A, B and C above are `Assizes,’ `Tribunals,’ and `Totals,’ respectively.}
That is to say, habitual criminality would be represented, in Italy, by about 40 per cent. of the total number of condemned persons, and by somewhat less in France and Belgium. This would be accounted for in Belgium by the exclusion of vagrancy; but the difference is virtually due to the greater frequency in Italy of certain crimes, such as homicide, highway robbery with violence, and conspiracies.
Further, it is apparent that in all these countries the types of habitual criminality, with the exception of thefts and vagrancy, are in greater proportion at the assizes, on account of their serious character.
The actual totals, however, are larger at the tribunals, for as, in the scale of animal life, the greatest fecundity belongs to the lower and smaller forms, so in the criminal scale, the less serious offences (such as simple theft, swindling, vagrancy, &c.) are the more numerous. Thus, out of the total of 38 per cent. in Italy, 32 belong to the tribunals and 6 to the assizes; out of 35 per cent in France, 33 belong to the tribunals and 2 to the assizes; and out of 30 per cent. in Belgium, 29 belong to the tribunals and 1 to the assizes. This also is partly accounted for by legislative distinctions as to the respective jurisdictions of these courts.
As to the particulars of the totals, it is found that thefts are the most numerous types in Italy (20 per cent.), in France (24 per cent.), in Belgium (23 per cent.), and in Prussia (37 per cent., including breaches of trust).[5]
[5] Starke, “Verbrechen und Verbrecher in Preussen,” Berlin, 1884, p. 92.
After theft, the most numerous in Italy are vagrancy (5 per cent.), homicides (4 per cent.), swindling (3 per cent.), forgery (.9 per cent.), rape (.4 per cent.), conspiracy (.4 per cent.), and incendiarism (.2 per cent.).
In France and Belgium we find the same relative frequency of vagrancy and swindling; but homicide, incendiarism, and conspiracy are less frequent, whilst rape is more common in France (.5 per cent.) and in Belgium (1 per cent.).
Such then are the most frequent forms of habitual criminality in the generality of condemned persons; and it will be useful now to contrast the more frequent forms of occasional criminality. For Italy the only judicial statistics which are valuable for detailed inquiry are those of 1863, 1869-72. For France, every volume of the admirable series of criminal statistics may be utilised.
It will be seen that the frequency of these occasional crimes and offences in Italy and in France is very variable, though assaults and wounding, resistance to authorities, damage, defamation and abuse, are the most numerous in both countries.
The proportion of each offence to the total also varies considerably, not only through a difference of legislation between Italy and France in regard to poaching, drunkenness, frauds on refreshment-house keepers, and so forth, but also by reason of the different condition of individuals and of society in the two countries. Thus assaults and wounding, which in Italy comprise 23 per cent. of the total of convictions, reach in France no more than 14 per cent., whilst resistance to the authorities, &c., which
YEARLY AVERAGE or CONDEMNED PERSONS.
ITALY, 1863-72. FRANCE 1877-81
CRIMES AND OFFENCES OF GREATEST
FREQUENCY
(not including those of Habitual Criminals). p.c. p.c. p.c. p.c. Wilful Assault and Wounding …
Illegally carrying Arms …… — 8 7 — 3 3 Resistance to Authority, Assaults and
Violence against Public Functionaries … 3 5 4 –2 10 10 Injury to Property … … … — 2 2 — I 1-6 1 5 Defamation and Abuse … … … — s-S 1-6 — I-6 1 5 Written or Spoken Threats … … — 1 4 1’2 — ‘2 –2 Illegal Games … … … … — I –8 — 2 1 ‘I Political Crimes and Offences …… 31.7 — –2 — 4 2 –2 Press Crimes and Offences … … 4 4 –4 — –6 –6 Embezzlement, Corruption, Malfeasance
of Public Functionaries — –3 .3 — — — Escape from Detention –1 –2 2 — –6 –6 False Witness .. … … … –7 2 –2 09 6 –6 Violation of Domicile … … … — 17 .15 — lo –9 Calumny … –. –1 I 1 –oS –o8 Exposure, Palming or “Suppression”
of Infants — –12 1 –2 –1 –1 Bankruptcy Offences … … … I 1 –1 1’3 5 –6 Offences against Religion and Ministers
of Religion — 1 –1 — –7 .07 Duelling … .. .. … … … — .04 .03 — — — Abortion … … … … … — — — og — –OI Offences against the Game Laws — — — — 13 12-7 Drunkenness — — — — 1 5 1 5
Offences against Public Decency — — — — I-8 1.7 Adultery … … … … … — — — –5 5 Offences against Morality, with Incitement to Immorality … … — — — — –2 –2 Involuntary Homicide — — — — –2 –2 ” Wounding — — — — –6 –6 ” Incendiarism — — — — –2 –2 Illegal Practising of Medicine and
Surgery … … … … … — — — — –2 –2 Frauds on Keepers of Refreshment
Houses … … … … … — — — — I-4 1 4 Rural Offences … … … … — — — — 6 –6 — — m
_________________________________________________________________________ _
Yearly Average of Convictions,
Gross Totals 6,273 43,584 49,857 3,300 163,997 167,297
[1] Devastation of crops, destruction of fences. [2] Unauthorised gaming houses; secret lotteries. [3] An exceptional figure, owing to 528 convictions
in 1863, whilst the average of the other years was nine convictions. [4] Electoral offences.
are 4 per cent. in Italy, touch 9 per cent in France. Sexual crimes and offences (as we saw in the case of rape), such as abortion, adultery, indecent assaults, and incitement to immorality, which in Italy present very small and negligible figures, are more frequent in France. Whilst the illegal carrying of arms, threats, false witness, escape from detention, violations of domicile, calumny, are of greater frequency in Italy than in France, the contrary is true of bankruptcy offences, political and press crimes and offences, on account of a manifest difference of the moral, economic, and social conditions of the two countries, which are plainly discernible behind these apparently dry figures.
In addition to this demonstration, we have given anthropological and statistical proofs of the fundamental distinction between habitual and occasional criminals, which had been pointed out by many observers, but which had hitherto remained a simple assertion without manifest consequences.
This same distinction ought to be not only the basis of all sociological theory concerning crime, but also a point of departure for other distinctions more precise and complete, which I set forth in my previous studies on criminals, and which were subsequently reproduced, with more or less of assent, by all criminal sociologists.
In the first place, it is necessary to distinguish, amongst habitual criminals, those who present a conspicuous and clinical form of mental aberration, which accounts for their anti-social activity.
In the second place, amongst habitual criminals who are not of unsound mind, however little the inmates of prisons may have been observed with adequate ideas and experience, there is a clear indication of a class of individuals, physically or mentally abnormal, induced to crime by inborn tendencies, which are manifest from their birth, and accompanied by symptoms of extreme moral insensibility. Side by side with these, another class challenges attention, of individuals who have also been criminals from childhood, and who continue to be so, but who are in a special degree a product of physical and social environment, which has persistently driven them into the criminal life, by their abandonment before and after the first offence, and which, especially in the great towns, is very often forced upon them by the actual incitement of their parents.
Amongst occasional criminals, again, a special category is created by a kind of exaggeration of the characteristics, mainly psychological, of the type itself. In the case of all occasional criminals, the crime is brought about rather by the effects of environment than by the active tendencies of the individual; but whilst in most of these individuals the deciding cause is only a circumstance affecting all alike, with a few it is an exceptional constraint of passion, a sort of psychological tempest, which drives them into crime.
Thus, then, the entire body of criminals may be classed in five categories, which as early as 1880 I described as criminal madmen, born criminals, criminals by contracted habits, occasional criminals, and criminals of passion.
As already observed, criminal anthropology will not finally establish itself until it has been developed by biological, psychological, and statistical monographs on each of these categories, in such a manner as to present their anthropological characteristics with greater precision than they have hitherto attained. So far, observers continue to give us the same characteristics for a large aggregate of criminals, classifying them according to the form of their crime rather than according to their bio-social type. In Lombroso’s work, for instance, or in that of Marro (and to some extent even in my work on homicide), the characteristics are stated for a total, or for legal categories of criminals, such as murderers, thieves, forgers, and so on, which include born criminals, occasional and habitual criminals, and madmen. The result is a certain measure of inconsistency, according to the predominance of one type or the other in the aggregate of criminals under observation. This also contributes to render the conclusions of criminal anthropology less evident.
Nevertheless, we may sum up the inquiries which have been made up to the present time; and in particular we may now point out the general characteristics of the five classes of criminals, in accordance with my personal experience in the observation of criminals. It is to be hoped that successive observations of a more methodical kind will gradually reinforce the accuracy of this classification of symptoms.
In the first place, it is evident that in a classification not exclusively biological, if it is to form the anthropological basis of criminal sociology, criminals of unsound mind must in all fairness be included.
The usual objection, recently repeated by M. Joly (“Le Crime,” p. 62), which holds the term “criminal madness” to be self- contradictory, since a madman is not morally responsible, and therefore cannot be a criminal, is not conclusive. We maintain that responsibility to society, the only responsibility common to all criminals, exists also for criminals of unsound mind.
Nor, again, is it correct to say, with M. Bianchi, that mad criminals should be referred to psychiatry, and not to criminal anthropology; for, though psychiatry is concerned with mad criminals in a psycho-pathological sense, this does not prevent criminal anthropology and sociology from also concerning themselves with the same subjects, in order to constitute the natural history of the criminal, and to suggest remedies in the interest of society.
As for criminals of unsound mind, it is necessary to begin by placing in a separate category such as cannot, after the studies of Lombroso and the Italian school of psychiatry, be distinguished from the born criminals properly so-called. These are the persons tainted with a form of insanity which is known under various names, from the “moral insanity” of Pritchard to the “reasoning madness” of Verga. Moral insanity, illustrated by the works of Mendel, Legrand du Saulle, Maudsley, Krafft-Ebing, Savage, Hugues, Hollander, Tamburini, Bonvecchiato, which, with the lack or atrophy of the
moral or social sense, and of APPARENT soundness of mind, is properly speaking only the essential psychological condition of the born criminal.
Beyond these morally insane people, who are very rare–for, as Krafft-Ebing and Lombroso have pointed out, they are found more frequently in prisons than in mad-houses–there is the unhappily large body of persons tainted by a common and clinical form of mental alienation, all of whom are apt to become criminal.
The whole of these criminals of unsound mind cannot be included in a single category; and such, indeed, is the opinion expressed by Lombroso, in the second volume of the fourth edition of his work, after his descriptive analysis of the chief forms of mental alienation. As a matter of fact, not only are the organic, and especially the psychological, characteristics of criminal madmen sometimes identical with and sometimes opposed to those of born and occasional criminals, but these very characteristics vary considerably between the different forms of mental alienation, in spite of the identity of the crime committed.
It is further to be observed, in respect of criminal madmen, that this category also includes all the intermediary types between complete madness and a rational condition, who remain in what Maudsley has called the “middle zone.” The most frequent varieties in the criminality of these partially insane persons, or “mattoides,” are the perpetrators of attacks upon statesmen, who are generally men with a grievance, irascible men, writers of insane documents, and the like, such as Passanante, Guiteau, and Maclean.
In the same category are those who commit terrible crimes without motive, and who nevertheless, according to the complacent psychology of the classical school, would be credited with a maximum of moral soundness.
Again, there are the necrophiles, like Sergeant Bertrand, Verzeni, Menesclou, and very probably the undetected “Jack the Ripper” of London, who are tainted with a form of sexual psychopathy. Yet again there are such as are tainted with hereditary madness, and especially the epileptics and epileptoids, who may also be assigned to the class of born criminals, according to the plausible hypothesis of Lombroso as to the fundamental identity of congenital criminality, moral madness, and epilepsy. I have always found in my own experience that outrageous murders, not to be explained according to the ordinary psychology of criminals, are accompanied by psychical epilepsy, or larvea.
Born or instinctive criminals are those who most frequently present the organic and psychological characteristics established by criminal anthropology. These are either savage or brutal men, or crafty and idle, who draw no distinction between homicide, robbery or other kinds of crime, and honest industry. “They are criminals just as others are good workingmen,” says Fregier; and, as Romagnosi put it, actual punishment affects them much less than the menace of punishment, or does not affect them at all, since they regard imprisonment as a natural risk of their occupation, as masons regard the fall of a roof, or as miners regard fire-damp. “They do not suffer in prison. They are like a painter in his studio, dreaming of their next masterpiece. They are on good terms with their gaolers, and even know how to make themselves useful.”[5]
[5] Moreau, “Souvenirs de la petite et grande Roquette,” Paris, 1884, ii. 440.
The born criminals and the occasional criminals constitute the majority of the characteristic and diverse types of homicide and thief. Prison governors call them “gaol-birds.” They pass on from the police to the judge and to the prison, and from the prison to the police and to the judge, with a regularity which has not yet impaired the faith of law-makers in the efficacy of punishment as a cure for crime.[6]
[6] Wayland, “The Incorrigible,” in the Journal of Mental Science, 1888. Sichart, “Criminal Incorrigibles.”
No doubt the idea of a born criminal is a direct challenge to the traditional belief that the conduct of every man is the outcome of his free will, or at most of his lack of education rather than of his original physio-psychical constitution. But, in the first place, even public opinion, when not prejudiced in favour of the so-called consequences of irresponsibility, recognises in many familiar and everyday cases that there are criminals who, without being mad, are still not as ordinary men; and the reporters call them “human tigers,” “brutes,” and the like. And in the second place, the scientific proofs of these hereditary tendencies to crime, even apart from the clinical forms of mental alienation, are now so numerous that it is useless to insist upon them further.
The third class is that of the criminals whom, after my prison experience, I have called criminals by contracted habit. These are they who, not presenting the anthropological characteristics of the born criminals, or presenting them but slightly, commit their first crime most commonly in youth, or even in childhood– almost invariably a crime against property, and far more through moral weakness, induced by circumstances and a corrupting environment, than through inborn and active tendencies. After this, as M. Joly observes, either they are led on by the impunity of their first offences, or, more decisively, prison associations debilitate and corrupt them, morally and physically, the cell degrades them, alcoholism renders them stupid and subject to impulse, and they continually fall back into crime, and become chronically prone to it. And society, which thus abandons them, before and after they leave their prison, to wretchedness, idleness, and temptations, gives them no assistance in their struggle to gain an honest livelihood, even when it does not thrust them back into crime by harassing police regulations, which prevent them from finding or keeping honest employment.[7]
[7] Fliche, “Comment en devient Criminel,” Paris, 1886.
Of those criminals who begin by being occasional criminals, and end, after progressive degeneration, by exhibiting the features of the born criminals, Thomas More said, “What is this but to make thieves for the pleasure of hanging them?” And it is just this class of criminals whom measures of social prevention might reduce to a minimum, for by abolishing the causes we abolish the effects.
Apart from their organic and psychological characteristics, innate or acquired, there are two bio-sociological symptoms which seem to me to be common, though for distinct reasons, to born criminals and habitual criminals. I mean precocity and relapse. The occasional crime and the crime of passion do not, as a rule, occur before manhood, and rarely or never lead to relapse.
Here are a few figures concerning precocity, derived from international prison statistics:–
PRISONERS UNDER 20 YEARS OF AGE. Male. Female. __________________________________________________________________ p.c. p.c.
Italy (1871–6) … … … … … … … 8.8 6.8 France (’72-5) … … … … … … … 10 7.6 Prussia (’71-7–not over 19 years) … … … 2.8 2.6 Austria (’72-5) … … … … … … … 9.6 10.6 Hungary (’72-6) … … … … … … … 4.2 9 England (’72-7 )–not over 24) … … … … 27.4 14.8 Scotland (’72-7) … … … … … … … 20 7.8 Ireland (’72-7) … … … … … … … 9 3.2 Belgium (’74-5) … … … … … … … 20.8 — Holland (’72-7) … … … … … … … 22.8 3.7 Sweden (’73-7) … … … … … … … 19.7 17 Switzerland (’74) … … … … … … … 6.6 7 Denmark (’74-5) … … … … … … … 9.9 9.6 —————————————————————-
More recent figures show that the yearly average in France, for 1876-80, out of 4,374 persons brought to trial, was 1 per cent. under sixteen years of age, and 17 per cent. between sixteen and twenty-one; whilst in 1886 the same percentages were .60 and 14. Out of 146,217 accused before the tribunals there were 4 per cent. under sixteen, and 14 per cent. between sixteen and twenty- one. Out of 25,135 females there were 4 per cent. under sixteen, and 11 per cent. between sixteen and twenty-one; whilst in 1886 the percentages were 3 and 14 of males, 2.5 and 14 of females.
In Prussia, of persons accused of crimes and offences in 1860-70, 4 per cent. were under eighteen years.
In Germany, of persons condemned in 1886, 3 per cent. were between twelve and fifteen, 6 per cent. between fifteen and eighteen, and 16 per cent. between eighteen and twenty-one years.
In Italy, out of 5,189 persons condemned at the assizes in 1887, 3 per cent. were between fourteen and eighteen, and 12 per cent. between eighteen and twenty-one. Out of 65,624 tried before the tribunals, 1.2 per cent. were under fourteen, 5 per cent. were between fourteen and eighteen, and 13 per cent. between eighteen and twenty-one. There is a continual increase of precocious criminals in Italy. Prisoners condemned at the assizes under the age of twenty-one stood at 15 per cent. from 1880 to 1887, whilst those of a similar age who were tried before the tribunals rose from 17 to 20 per cent.
To these numerical data may be added others of a qualificative character, showing that precocity is most frequent in respect of the natural crimes and offences which are usually observed amongst born and habitual criminals.
In France the younger prisoners in 1882 had been sentenced in the following proportions:–
Male. Female.
For murder and poisoning … … 0.9 per cent. .5 per cent. ” homicide, assaults, and wounding 1.6 ” 1.5 ” ” incendiarism… … … … 1.8 ” 2 ” ” indecent assault … … … 3.5 ” 11.8 ” ” specified thefts, forgery, uttering
false coin … … … … 5.2 ” 2.4 ” ” simple theft, swindling … 60.8 ” 49.7 ” ” mendacity and vagrancy … 23 ” 20.5 ” ” other crimes and offences … 2.7 ” 8 ” ” defiance of parents … … 1 ” 10.5 ”
These figures, showing a greater frequency amongst females of precocious crimes against the person, and amongst males against property, are approximately repeated in Switzerland, where young prisoners in 1870-74 had been sentenced in these proportions:–
For crimes and offences against the person … 12.1 per cent. ” ” ” morality … 5.7 ” ” incendiarism… … … … … … … 4.3 ” ” theft … … … … … … … … 65.5 ” ” swindling … … … … … … … 5.4 ” ” forgery … … … … … … … 1.9 ” ” vagrancy … … … … … … … 4.6 ”
The judicial statistics of France and Italy give these proportions:–
{FIX THIS TABLE!}
ITALY–1866. FRANCE–1886 ASSIZE COURTS Under 14–18. 28–21. Under j l6–2
Homicide … … … … p.c. p.c. p.c. p.c. p.c. Murder(and robbery with homicide) 14 1 i 10 3 7 6 Parricide …… … … … — 5 –8 7 5 9 Infanticide … … … … — 1 –4 — 6 Imprisonment … … … … — — — Wilful wounding (followed by death) — 19 24 — 3 S Abortion …… … … … — — — 1-1 Rape and indecent assault on adults}– 1’2 ” ” children}– 10 7 t 3 7 11 Resistance to and attacks on public
functionaries … … … — 5 –6 — 3 Incendiarism — — –2 3-7 3 1 False money .. .. .. . 14 — 1 3-7 2 5 Forgery in public and private docu-
ments …… … … … — 5 –2 — 2 –1 Extortion, highway robbery with
violence … … … … 14 9 7 — 3w 6 Specified and simple theft … 14 19 16 41 51 Unintentional wounding … 28 5 2 — — —————————————————————- Total of condemned and accused 7 179 475 27 641
The French statistics for the tribunals–no complete Italian statistics being available, are as follows:–
FRANCE–1886. CORRECTIONAL TRIBUNALS.
le. Female. Offences. Under 16. 16–21 Under 16.1 16–21 per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent.
Resistance to authorities … … 2 2 2 ‘1 1 1 Assaults on public functionaries –8 5 –7 4 1 Vagrancy … … .– 4 4 11 2 3 2 S’S
Mendacity … … … 4 8 4 12’- 3 6 Wilful wounding … … … 5 1 18-5 300 11 Unintentional wounding … 8 7 1
Offences against public decency .. 1 6 1 8 3 1 3 Defamation and abuse – 1 ‘2 1 1 1 0
Theft … … … … … 57 5 a–4 63 54 3 Frauds on refreshment-house keepers –1 2 1 –1 6 Swindling 5 1 2 2.4 3 +2
Breach of confidence … … 9 1 3 7 1 2 Injury to crops and plants … 5 –3 –3 5 Game-law offences .. … .– 15 1 14 2 1 l –2 —————————————————————- Total of accused
Here we have a statistical demonstration of a more frequent precocity, amongst various forms of criminality, in respect of inborn tendencies (murder and homicide, rape, incendiarism, specific thefts), or in respect of tendencies contracted by habit (simple theft, mendacity, vagrancy).
Also this characteristic of precocity is accompanied by that of relapse, which accordingly we have seen to be more frequent in the same forms of natural criminality, and which we can now tabulate in respect of its persistency in these born and habitual criminals.
It has been well said that the large number of relapsed persons who are brought to trial year after year proves that thieves ply their trade as a regular calling; the thief who has once tasted prison life is sure to return to it.[8] And again, there are very few cases in which a man or a woman who has turned thief ceases to be one. Whatever the reason may be, as a matter of fact the thief is rarely or never reformed. When you can turn an old thief into an honest worker, you may turn an old fox into a house dog.[9]
[8] Quarterly Review, 1871, “The London Police.” [9] Thomson, “The Psychology of Criminals,” Journal of Mental Science, 1870.
We must, however, read these testimonies of practical men, which could easily be multiplied, in the light of our distinction between incorrigible criminals, who are so from their birth, and such as are made incorrigible by the effect of their prison and social environment. The former could scarcely be reduced in number, whilst the latter could be considerably diminished by the penal alternatives of which I will speak later.
The following statistics of relapse are quoted from Yvernes, “La Recidive en Europe” (Paris, 1874):–
FRANCE–1826-74. ITALY–1870.
Relapses ENGLAND–1871. SWEDEN–1871. Accused Accused Prisoners. Thieves. and brought and brought to trial. to trial. Once … … 38 per cent. 54 per cent. 45 per cent. 60 per cent. Twice … 18 ” 28 ” 20 ” 30 ” Three times… 44 ” 18 ” 35 ” 10 ”
In Prussia (1878-82), 17 per cent. had relapsed once, 16 per cent. twice, 16 per cent. three times, 13 per cent. four times, 10 per cent five times, and 28 per cent. six times or oftener.[10]
[10] Starke, “Verbrechen und Verbrecher,” Berlin, 1884, p. 229.
At the Prisons Congress of Stockholm the following figures were given for Scotland. Out of a total of forty-nine relapsed prisoners, 16 per cent. had relapsed once, 13 per cent. twice or three times, 6 per cent. four or five times, 6 per cent. from six to ten times, 5 per cent. from ten to twenty times, 4 per cent. from twenty to fifty times, and 1 per cent. more than fifty times.
At the meeting of the Social Science Congress, held at Liverpool, in 1876, Mr. Nugent stated that upwards of 4,107 women had relapsed four times or oftener, and that many of them were classed as incorrigible, having been convicted twenty; forty, or fifty times, whilst one had been convicted 130 times.
The judicial statistics of Italy for 1887 give the following results:–
ITALY–Convicted, per cent. Relapses. Justices of Tribunals. Assizes. Peace.
Once … … … … 57 42 50 Two to five times … 34 40 40 More than five times … 9 18 10 ——————————————————– Actual totals of relapses 27,068 16,240 1,870
I have found from my inquiries amongst 346 condemned to penal servitude and 353 prisoners from the correctional tribunals the following percentages:–
Relapsed. Convicts Imprisoned. Once … … 83.2 … … 26
Twice … … 12.5 … … 16.5
3 times … … 3.1 … … … 14.6 4 ” … … — … … … 10.8
5 ” … … 6.8 … … … 6.6
6 ” … … — … … … 5.2
7 ” … … 1.6 … … … 7.1
8 ” … … — … … … 2.8
9 ” … … — … … … 2.8
10 ” … … — … … … 2.3
11 ” … … — … … … .9
12 ” … … — … … … .5
13 ” … … — … … … .9
14 ” … … — … … … 1.4
15 ” … … — … … … .9
20 ” … … — … … … .5
———————————————— Actual totals of relapses 128 212
Chronic relapse is naturally less frequent in the case of those condemned to long terms; but it is a conspicuous symptom of individual and social pathology in the two classes of born and habitual criminals.
Lombroso, in the second volume of his work on “The Criminal,” denies that precocity and relapse are characteristics distinguishing born and habitual from occasional criminals. But it is only a question of terms. He considers that born and habitual criminals confine themselves almost exclusively to serious crime, and occasional criminals to minor offences. And as the figures which I have given show that precocity and relapse are even more frequent for minor offences than for crimes, he thinks that they contradict instead of confirming my conclusions.
The mere seriousness of an act cannot by any means divide the categories of criminals; for homicide as well as theft, assault and battery as well as forgery, may be committed, though in different psychological and social conditions, as easily by born and habitual criminals as by occasional criminals and criminals of passion.
Moreover, the figures which I have given show that precocity and relapse are more frequent in the forms of criminality which, apart from their gravity, are the common practices of born and habitual criminals, such as murder, homicide, robbery, rape, &c., whilst they are far more uncommon, even if they can be said to be observed at all, in the case of the crimes and offences usually committed by occasional criminals, such as infanticide, and certain of the offences mentioned above.
It remains to say something of the occasional criminals, and the criminals of passion.
The latter are but a variety of the occasional criminals, but their characteristics are so specific that they may be very readily distinguished. In fact Lombroso, in his second edition, supplementing the observations of Despine and Bittinger, separated them from other criminals, and classified them according to their symptoms. I need only summarise his observations.
In the first place, the criminals who constitute the strongly marked class of criminals by irresistible impulse are very rare, and their crimes are almost invariably against the person. Thus, out of 71 criminals of passion inquired into by Lombroso, 69 were homicides, 6 had in addition been convicted of theft, 3 of incendiarism, and 1 of rape.
It may be shown that they number about 5 per cent. of crimes against the person.
They are as a rule persons of previous good behaviour, sanguine or nervous by temperament, of excessive sensibility, unlike born or habitual criminals, and they are often of a neurotic or epileptoid temperament, of which their crimes may be, strictly speaking, an unrecognised consequence.
Frequently they transgress in their youth, especially in the case of women, under stress of a passion which suddenly spurns constraint, like anger, or outraged love, or injured honour. They are highly emotional before, during, or after the crime, which they do not commit treacherously, but openly, and often by ill- chosen methods, the first that present themselves. Now and then, however, one encounters criminals of passion who premeditate a crime, and carry it out treacherously, either by reason of their colder and less impulsive temperament, or as the outcome of preconceived ideas or a widespread sentiment, in cases where we have to do with a popular form of lawlessness, such as the vendetta.
This is why the test of premeditation has no absolute value in criminal psychology, as a distinction between the born criminal and the criminal of passion; for premeditation depends especially on the temperament of the individual, and is exemplified in crimes committed by both anthropological types.
Amongst other symptoms of the criminal of passion, there is also the precise motive which leads to a crime complete in itself, and never as a means of attaining another criminal purpose.
These offenders immediately acknowledge their crime, with unassumed remorse, frequently so keen that they instantly commit, or attempt to commit suicide. When convicted–as they seldom are by a jury–they are always repentant prisoners, and amend their lives, or do not become degraded, so that in this way they encourage superficial observers to affirm as a general fact, and one possible in all circumstances, that ameliorative effect of imprisonment which is really a mere illusion in the case of the far more numerous classes of born and habitual criminals.
In these same offenders we very rarely observe, if at all, the organic anomalies which create a criminal type. And even the psychological characteristics are much slighter in countries where certain crimes of passion are endemic, almost ranking amongst the customs of the community, like the homicides which occur in Corsica and Sardinia for the vindication of honour, or the political assassinations in Russia and Ireland.
The last class is that of occasional criminals, who without any inborn and active tendency to crime lapse into crime at an early age through the temptation of their personal condition, and of their physical and social environment, and who do not lapse into it, or do not relapse, if these temptations disappear.
Thus they commit those crimes and offences which do not indicate natural criminality, or else crimes and offences against person or property, but under personal and social conditions altogether different from those in which they are committed by born and habitual criminals.
There is no doubt that, even with the occasional criminal, some of the causes which lead him into crime belong to the anthropological class; for external causes would not suffice without individual predispositions. For instance, during a scarcity or a hard winter, not all of those who experience privation have recourse to theft, but some prefer to endure want, however undeserved, without ceasing to be honest, whilst others are at the utmost driven to beg their food; and amongst those who yield to the suggestion of crime, some stop short at simple theft, whilst others go as far as robbery with violence.
But the true difference between the born and the occasional criminal is that, with the former, the external cause is less operative than the internal tendency, because this tendency possesses, as it were, a centrifugal force, driving the individual to commit crime, whilst, for the occasional criminal, it is rather a case of feeble power of resistance against external causes, to which most of the inducement to crime is due.
The casual provocation of crime in the born criminal is generally the outcome of an instinct or tendency already existing, and far more of a pretext than an occasion of crime. With the occasional criminal, on the other hand, it is the casual provocation which matures, no doubt in a favouring soil, the growth of criminal tendencies not previously developed.
For this reason Lombroso calls the occasional criminals “criminaloids,” in order to show precisely that they have a distinctly abnormal constitution, though in a less degree than the born criminals, just as we have the metal and the metalloid, the epileptic and the epileptoid.
And this, again, is the reason why Lombroso’s criticisms on my description of occasional criminals are lacking in force. He says, as Benedikt said at the Congress at Rome, that all criminals are criminals by birth, so that there is no such thing as an occasional criminal, in the sense of a NORMAL individual casually launched into crime. But I have not, any more than Garofalo, drawn such a picture of the occasional criminal, for as a matter of fact I have said precisely the opposite, as indeed Lombroso himself acknowledges a little further on (ii. 422), namely, that between the born and the occasional criminal there is only a difference of degree and modality, as in all the criminal classes.
To cite a few details of criminal psychology, it may be stated that of the two physiological conditions of crime, moral insensibility and improvidence, occasional crime is especially due to the latter, and inborn and habitual crime to the former. With the born criminal it is, above all, the lack or the weakness of moral sense which fails to withstand crime, whereas with the occasional criminal the moral sense is almost normal, but inability to realise beforehand the consequences of his act causes him to yield to external influences.
Every man, however pure and honest he may be, is conscious now and then of a transitory notion of some dishonest or criminal action. But with the honest man, exactly because he is physically and morally normal, this notion of crime, which simultaneously summons up the idea of its grievous consequences, glances off the surface of the normal conscience, and is a mere flash without the thunder. With the man who is less normal and has less forethought, the notion dwells, resists the weak repulsion of a not too vigorous moral sense, and finally prevails; for, as Victor Hugo says, “Face to face with duty, to hesitate is to be lost.”[11]
[11] For instance, I will recall a fact which Morel has related of himself, how one day, as he was crossing a bridge in Paris, he saw a working-man gazing into the water, and a homicidal idea flashed across his mind, so that he had to hurry away, for fear of yielding to the temptation to throw the man into the water. Again, there is the case of Humboldt’s nurse, who was attacked one day by the temptation to kill her charge, and ran with him to his mother in order to avoid a disaster. Brierre de Boismont also tells us of a learned man who, at the sight of a picture in a public gallery, was tempted to cut the canvas, and ran away from his impulse to crime.
The criminal of passion is one who is strong enough to resist ordinary temptations of no exceptional force, to which the occasional criminal would yield, but who does not resist psychological storms which indeed are sometimes actually irresistible.
The forms of occasional criminality, which are determined by these ordinary temptations, are also determined by age, sex, poverty, worldly influences, influences of moral environment, alcoholism, personal surroundings, and imitation. Tarde has ably demonstrated the persistent influence of these conditions on the actions of men.
In this connection, Lombroso has drawn a clear distinction between two varieties of occasional criminals: the “pseudo-criminals,” or normal human beings who commit involuntary offences, or offences which do not spring from perversity, and do not hurt society, though they are punishable by law, and “criminaloids,” who commit ordinary offences, but differ from true criminals for the reasons already given.
A final observation is necessary in regard to this anthropological classification of criminals, and it meets various objections raised by our syllogistic critics. The difference existing amongst the five categories is only one of degree, and depends upon their organic and psychological types, and upon the influence of physical and social environment.
In every natural classification the differences between various groups and varieties are never anything but relative. This deprives them of none of their theoretical and practical importance, and so it is with this anthropological classification of criminals.
It follows that, as in natural history we advance by degrees and shades from the inorganic to the organic creation, life beginning in the mineral domain with the laws of crystallisation, so in criminal anthropology we pass by degrees and shades from the mad to the born criminal, through the links of moral madmen and epileptics; and from the born criminal to the occasional, through the link of the habitual criminal, who begins by being an occasional criminal, and ends by acquiring and transmitting to his children the characteristics of the born criminal. And finally, we pass from the occasional criminal to the criminal of passion, who is but a species of the other, and who further, with his neurotic and epileptoid temperament, not infrequently approximates to the criminal of unsound mind.
Thus in our everyday life, as in science, we very often find intermediate types, for complete and unmixed types are always the most uncommon. And whilst legislators and judges, in their complacent psychology, exact and establish marked lines of cleavage between the sane and the insane criminal, experts in psychiatry and anthropology are often constrained to place a prisoner somewhere between the mad and the born criminal, or between the occasional criminal and the normal man.
But it is evident that even when a criminal cannot be classed precisely in one or the other category, and stands between the two, this is in itself a sufficiently definite classification, especially from a sociological point of view. There is consequently no weight in the objection of those who, basing their argument on an abstract and nebulous idea of the criminal in general, and judging him merely according to the crime which has been committed, without knowing his personal characteristics and the circumstances of his environment, affirm that criminal anthropology cannot classify all who are detained and accused.
In my experience, however, as a counsel and as an observer, I have never had any difficulty in classifying all persons detained or condemned for crimes and offences, by relying upon organic, and especially upon psychological symptoms.
Thus, as Garofalo recently said, whilst the accepted criminal science recognises only two terms, the offence and the punishment, criminal sociology on the other hand recognises three: the crime, the criminal, and the means best calculated for social self- defence. And it may be concluded that up to this time, science, legislation, and, in a minor degree, but without any scientific method, the administration of justice, have judged and punished crime in the person of the criminal, but that hereafter it will be necessary to judge the criminal as well as the crime.
After these general observations on the anthropological classes of criminals, it might seem necessary to establish their respective numerical proportions. But as there is no absolute separation between one and another, and as the frequency of the several criminal types varies according to the crimes or offences, natural or otherwise, against persons or property, no precise account can be rendered of the criminal world as a whole.
By way of approximation, however, it may be said in the first place that the classes of mad criminals and criminals of passion are the least numerous, and represent something like 5 or 10 per cent. of the total.
On the other hand, we have seen that born and habitual criminals are about 40 or 50 per cent.; so that the occasional criminals would also be between 40 and 50 per cent.
These are figures which naturally vary according to the different groups of crime and of criminals which come under observation, and which cannot be more accurately determined without a series of special studies in criminal anthropology, as I said when answering the objections which have been raised against the methods of this novel science.
It remains for us, before concluding our first chapter, to establish a fact of great scientific and practical value. This is that, after the anthropological classification which I have maintained for some ten years past, all who have been devoting themselves to the subject of crime as regarded from a biological and social standpoint have recognised the need for a classification less simple than that of habitual and occasional criminals, and which will be more or less complex according to the criterion which may be adopted.
In the first place, the necessity is generally recognised of abandoning the old arbitrary and algebraic type in favour of a classification which shall correspond more accurately with the facts of the case. This classification, originating in observations made within the prison walls, I have extended in the domain of criminal sociology, wherein it is now established as a fundamental criterion of legislative measures which must be taken as a protection against criminals, as well as a criterion of their responsibility.
Secondly, the classifications of criminals hitherto given are not essentially and integrally distinct. It has been seen, as a matter of fact, that all the classifications which have been set forth amount to a recognition of four types, the born, the insane, the occasional criminals, and the criminals of passion; and this again resolves itself into the simple and primitive distinction between occasional and instinctive criminals. The category of criminals by contracted habit would not be accepted by all observers, but it corresponds too closely to our daily experience to stand in need of further proof. And on the other hand I must frankly decline to accept the authority of those who put forward classifications more or less symmetrical without having made a direct study of criminals; for the experimental method does not admit systems based on mere imagination, or on vague recollections of criminal trials, or on argumentative constructions built up from the systems of others.
As a matter of fact, apart from the differences of nomenclature, it is evident that the partial discrepancies in this anthropological classification of criminals are due in some measure to the different points of view taken by observers. For instance, the classification of Lacassagne, Joly, Krauss, Badik, and Marro rest upon a purely descriptive criterion of the organic or psychological characteristics of criminals. The classifications of Liszt, Medem, and Minzloff, on the other hand, depend solely upon the curative and defensive influence of punishment; and those of Foehring and Starke upon certain special points of view, such as the assistance of released prisoners, on their tendency to relapse.
My own point of view, on the contrary, has been general and reproductive, for my classification is based upon the natural causes of crime, individual, physical, and social, and to this extent it corresponds more closely with the theoretical and practical requirements of criminal sociology. If the curative art of society, like that of individuals, expects from positive knowledge an indication of remedies, it is clear that a classification based on the fundamental causes of crime is best fitted to indicate a social cure for this manifestation of disease, which is the essential object of criminal sociology. For, as in biology one is carried from purely descriptive anatomy to genetic anatomy and physiology, so in sociology we must pass on from purely legal descriptions of crimes to the genetic knowledge of the criminals who commit these crimes.
For this reason all the chief classifications of criminals, as has been seen, may be brought into line with my own, by virtue of the more complete and fruitful test which has established it. And thus we have a manifest proof that this classification actually represents the common and permanent basis of all the chief anthropological categories of criminals, whether in regard to their natural causality and their specific character, or in regard to the different forms of social self-defence which spring out of them, and which must be adapted to the natural causes of crime, and to the principal criminal types.
But whatever classification may be accepted, we shall always have, as the fundamental axiom of criminal anthropology, this variety in the types of criminals, which must henceforth be indispensable to all who are theoretically or practically concerned with crime.
CHAPTER II.
THE DATA OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS.
For moral and social facts, unlike physical and biological facts, experiment is very difficult, and frequently even impossible; observation in this domain brings the greatest aid to scientific research. And statistics are amongst the most efficacious instruments of such observation.
It is natural, therefore, that criminal sociology, after studying the individual aspect of the natural genesis of crime, should have recourse to criminal statistics for the study of the social aspect. Statistical information in the words of Krohne, “is the first condition of success in opposing the armies of crime, for it discharges the same function as the Intelligence department in war.”
From statistics, in fact, the modern idea of the close relation between offences and the conditions of social life, in some of its aspects, and above all in certain particular forms, has most directly sprung.
The science of criminal statistics is to criminal sociology what histology is to biology, for it exhibits, in the conditions of the individual elements of the collective organism, the factors of crime as a social phenomenon. And that not only for scientific inductions, but also for practical and legislative purposes; for, as Lord Brougham said at the London Statistical Congress in 1860, “criminal statistics are for the legislator what the chart and the compass are for the navigator.”
The experimental school, accepting the fundamental and incontestible idea, apart from its numerical and optimistic exaggerations, that the statistics of crime must be considered in regard to the growth and activity of the population, has opened up an entirely new channel of fruitful observations, in the classification and study of the natural factors of crime.
In my “Studies of Crime in France” (1881) I arranged in three natural orders the whole series of causes leading to crime, which had previously been indicated in a fragmentary and incomplete manner.[12]
[12] Bentham, in his “Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” enumerates the following circumstances as necessary to be considered in legislation:–temperament, health, strength, physical imperfections, culture, intellectual faculties, strength of mind, dispositions, ideas of honour and religion, feelings of sympathy and antipathy, insanity, economic conditions, sex, age, social status, education, profession, climate, race, government, religious profession.
Lombroso, in the second edition of his “Criminal,” which embraces all the divisions of his classical work, has made but a rapid enumeration of the principal points:–race civilisation, poverty, heredity, age sex, civil status, profession, education, organic anomalies, sensations imitation. Morselli, treating of suicide, has given a fuller classification of its contributory causes:–worldly or natural influences, ethnical or demographical influences, social influences, biopsychical influences.
From the consideration that human actions, whether honest or dishonest, social or anti-social, are always the outcome of a man’s physio-psychical organism, and of the physical and social atmosphere which surrounds him, I have drawn attention to the anthropological or individual factors of crime, the physical factors, and the social factors.
The anthropological factors, inherent in the individual criminal, are the first condition of crime; and they may be divided into three sub-classes, according as we regard the criminal organically physically, or socially.
The organic constitution of the criminal comprises all anomalies of the skull, the brain, the vital organs, the sensibility, and the reflex activity, and all the bodily characteristics taken together, such as the physiognomy, tattooing, and so on.
The mental constitution of the criminal comprises anomalies of intelligence and feeling, especially of the moral sense, and the specialities of criminal writing and slang.
The personal characteristics of the criminal comprise his purely biological conditions, such as race, age, sex; bio-social conditions, such as civil status, profession, domicile, social rank, instruction, education, which have hitherto been regarded as almost the exclusive concern of criminal statistics.
The physical factors of crime are climate, the nature of the soil, the relative length of day and night, the seasons, the average temperature, meteoric conditions, agricultural pursuits.
The social factors comprise the density of population; public opinion, manners and religion; family circumstances; the system of education; industrial pursuits; alcoholism; economic and political conditions; public administration, justice and police; and in general, legislative, civil and penal institutions. We have here a host of latent causes, commingling and combining in all parts of the social organism, which generally escape the notice both of theorists and of practical men, of criminologists and of legislators.
This classification of the natural factors of crime, which has indeed been accepted by almost all criminal anthropologists and sociologists, seems to me more precise and complete than any other which has been proposed.
In respect of this classification of the natural factors of crime, it is necessary to make two final observations as to the practical results which may be obtained in the struggle for just laws and against the transgression of them.
In the first place, owing to “the discovery of the unexpected relation amongst the various forces of nature, which had previously been thought to be independent,” we must lay stress on this positive deduction, that we cannot find an adequate reason either for a single crime or for the aggregate criminality of a nation if we do not take into account each and all of the different natural factors, which we may isolate in the exigencies of our studies, but which always act together in an indissoluble union.
No crime, whoever commits it, and in whatever circumstances, can be explained except as the outcome of individual free-will, or as the natural effect of natural causes. Since the former of these explanations has no scientific value, it is impossible to give a scientific explanation of a crime (or indeed of any other action of man or brute) unless it is considered as the product of a particular organic and psychical constitution, acting in a particular physical and social environment.
Therefore it is far from being exact to assert that the positive criminal school reduces crime to a purely and exclusively anthropological phenomenon. As a matter of fact, this school has always from the beginning maintained that crime is the effect of anthropological, physical, and social conditions, which evolve it by their simultaneous and inseparable operation. And if inquiries into biological conditions have been more abundant and more conspicuous by their novelty, this in no way contradicts the fundamental conclusion of criminal sociology.
That being stated, we have still to examine the relative value of these three classes of conditions in the natural evolution of crime.
It seems to me that this question is generally stated inaccurately, and also that it cannot be answered absolutely, and in a word.
It is generally stated inaccurately; because they who think, for instance, that crime is nothing else than a purely and exclusively social phenomenon in the evolution of which the organic and psychical anomalies of the criminal have had no part, ignore more or less consciously the universal correlation of natural forces, and forget that, in regard to any phenomenon whatsoever, it is impossible to set an absolute limit to the network of its causes, immediate and remote, direct and indirect.
To put this question in an arbitrary sense would be like asking if a mammal is the product of its lungs, or its heart, or its stomach, or of vegetable constituents, or of the atmosphere; whereas each of these conditions, internal and external, is necessary to the life of the animal.
In fact, if crime were the exclusive product of the social environment, how could one explain the familiar fact that in the same social environment, and in identical circumstances of poverty, abandonment, lack of education, sixty per cent. do not commit crimes, and, of the other forty, five prefer suicide, five go mad, five simply become beggars or tramps not dangerous to society, whilst the remaining twenty-five actually commit crimes? And amongst the latter, whilst some go no further than theft without violence, why do others commit theft with violence, and even kill their victim outright, before he offers resistance, or threatens them, or calls for help, and this with no other object than gain?
The secondary differences of social condition, which may be observed even amongst the members of a single family, rotting in one of the slums of our great towns, or amongst those who are surrounded by the temptations of money or power, or the like, are clearly not enough in themselves to explain the vast differences in the actions which grow out of them, varying from honesty under the greatest discouragement to suicide and murder.
The question, therefore, must be asked in a relative sense altogether, and we must inquire which of the three kinds of natural causes of crime has a greater or less influence in determining each particular crime at any given moment in the individual and social life.
No clear answer of general application can be given to this question, for the relative influence of the anthropological, physical, and social conditions varies with the psychological and social characteristics of each offence against the law.
For instance, if we consider the three great classes of crimes against the person, against property, and against personal purity, it is evident that each class of determining causes, but especially the biological and social conditions, have a distinctly different influence in evolving homicide, theft, or indecent assaults. And so it is in every category of crimes.
The undeniable influence of social conditions, and still more of economic conditions, in leading up to the commission of theft, is far inferior in the genesis of homicides and indecent assaults. And similarly, in each category of crimes, the influence of the determining conditions varies greatly according to the special forms of crime.
Certain casual homicides are plainly the result of social conditions (gambling, drink, public opinion, &c.) in a much higher degree than homicides which for the most part spring from brutality, from the moral insensibility of individuals, or from their psycho-pathological conditions, corresponding to abnormal organic conditions.
In like manner, certain indecent assaults, incests, &c., are largely the outcome of social environment, which, condemning a number of persons to live in hovels without air or light, with a promiscuity of sex between parents and children such as obtains amongst the brutes, effaces or deadens all normal sense of modesty. On the other hand, there are cases of rape and the like which are mostly due to the biological condition of the individual, either in manifest forms of sexual disease or, less manifest though none the less actual, of biological anomaly.
For thefts, again, whilst occasional simple thefts are largely the effect of social and economical conditions, this influence becomes feebler in comparison with impulses due to the personal constitution, organic and psychical, as, for instance, in the case of thefts with violence, and especially of murder for the purpose of robbery, which scoundrels of the “swell-mob” so frequently commit in cold blood.
The same observation applies to the conditions of physical environment. For instance, if the regular increase of crimes against property in winter (and, as I showed for the first time from French statistics, in years when the cold is greatest) is only an indirect result, through the social and economic influences of temperature, the increase of crimes of passion and indecent assaults during the months and years when the temperature is highest is only a direct effect of temperature, even for such as, by their biological conditions, offer the feeblest resistance to these influences.
Meanwhile, a last objection has been raised against the conclusions which I have maintained for many years past.
It has been said that, even if we admit that for certain crimes and criminals the greatest influence must be recognised as due to the physical and psychical conditions of the individual, extending from slightly manifested anomalies of an anthropological character to the most accentuated pathological condition, this does not exclude the possibility of a crime being due to social conditions. In fact, it is said the anomalies of the individual are in their turn only an effect of a debasing social environment, which condemns its victims to organic and psychical degeneration.
This objection is sound enough if it be taken in a relative sense, but groundless if it be insisted on absolutely.
It must be considered, in the first place, that the distinctions of cause and effect are only relative, for every effect has its cause, and vice versa; so that if wretchedness, material and moral, is a cause of degeneration, degeneration itself, like biological anomaly, is a cause of wretchedness. And in this sense the question would be simply metaphysical, like the famous Byzantine discussions as to whether there was originally an egg before a hen or a hen before an egg.
And, in fact, when it was said, in regard to criminal geography, that the extent and quality of crime in such and such a province, instead of being the effect of biological conditions (race, &c.) and physical conditions (climate, soil, &c.), were but the effect of social and economic conditions (of rural and industrial pursuits, and the like), I was able to make a very simple reply. For, apart even from statistical proofs, if the social conditions of such and such a province, which have an unquestionable influence, are really the absolute and exclusive cause of crime, we may still ask whether these social conditions of the province are not themselves the effect of the ethnical qualities of energy, intelligence, and so forth, in its inhabitants, and of the more or less favourable conditions of the climate and the soil.
But it may also be observed, more precisely, that even apart from strongly marked and conspicuous pathological conditions, which meanwhile assert themselves amongst the biological factors of crime, there is a very great number of these cases in which it cannot actually be said that the bio-psychical anomalies of the criminal are the effect of a physically and morally poisonous environment.
In every family in which there are several children, we find (in spite of identical surroundings and conditions of a favourable kind, and suitable methods of training and education), individuals who differ intellectually from the cradle; we also find in the degree or in the kind of their talent, the same individuals also differ from their cradle in physical and moral constitution. And though the phenomenon may only be manifest in the less numerous cases of types which are markedly normal or abnormal, it is none the less true also in the more numerous cases of ordinary types.
In this connection I may observe that physical and social conditions have a greater or a less influence in proportion as the physical and psychical constitution of the individual is more or less sound and vigorous.
The practical conclusion, therefore, of these general observations on the natural genesis of crime is this: Every crime is the result of individual physical and social conditions; and, since these conditions have a more or less dominant influence for various forms of crime, the most certain and profitable mode of defence which society can employ against criminality is of a twofold character, and both modes ought to be employed and brought into action simultaneously–in the first place, the amelioration of the social conditions, as a natural preventive of crime, in the nature of a substitute for punishment; and, secondly, measures of perpetual or temporary elimination of criminals, according as the influence of biological conditions in the evolution of crime is all but absolute, or more or less great, and more or less curable.
As a matter of fact, when we follow the periodic variations of crime, with its measured growth and decrease, we cannot fail to conclude that these constant and constantly occurring variations depend upon a corresponding variation of anthropological and physical factors. For, whilst criminal statistics are far from showing the regularity which Quetelet claimed with much exaggeration, the proportional figures in regard to the bearings of age, sex, calling, &c., upon criminality exhibit very insignificant variations from year to year. And as for the physical factors, if marked variations are explicable at some given period, it is nevertheless evident that neither climate, nor the nature of the soil, nor atmospheric conditions, nor the seasons, nor the temperature of different years could have undergone in the last half-century such constant and repeated variations as to correspond to those waves of criminality which we shall presently exhibit in almost every nation of Europe.
Thus it is to the social factors that we must chiefly attribute the periodic variations of criminality. For even the variations which can be detected in certain anthropological factors, like the influences of age and sex upon crime, and the more or less marked outbreak of anti-social and pathological tendencies, depend in their turn upon social factors, such as the protection accorded to abandoned infants, the participation of women in non-domestic, commercial and industrial life, preventive and repressive measures, and the like. And again, since the social factors have special import in occasional crime, and crime by acquired habit, and since these are the most numerous sections of crime as a whole, it is clear that the periodic movement of crime must be attributed in the main to the social factors. So true is this, that, as we shall presently see, the gravest crimes, especially against persons, precisely because they mostly indicate congenital criminality, follow a more steady and regular movement than these slighter but far more frequent offences against property, public order, and persons, of a more occasional character, and that, as microbes of the world of crime, they are the more direct outcome of social environment.
It is therefore another point in favour of the experimental school that it has insisted on this sociological aspect of the problem of criminality, by showing legislators, outside the limits of their punitive remedies, as easy as they are illusory, how they might, as far as circumstances will permit, apply a genuine social remedy to crime.
After these preliminary observations, it is time that we should take a closer view of the general statistics of the movement of crime in Europe, so far as they may be followed in official figures.
Whilst we have no intention of offering a body of comparative statistics, but only of giving a simple indication of the periodic movement of crime, these data, which do not render it easy to compare one country with another, though they are intimately related so far as each particular country is concerned, suffice to exhibit a few facts of some considerable importance.
The most conspicuous general phenomenon in the countries here included is the steadiness of the gravest forms of crime side by side with the continuous increase of slighter offences, especially in the countries which show a long series of figures, such as France, England, and Belgium. This proceeds mainly from the progressive accumulation of offences against special enactments, which are constantly being added to the original basis of the penal code; but it is also a symptom of an actual transformation in the criminal activity of the century, from whence, through the gradual substitution of crimes against property in the great towns for crimes against the person in earlier centuries, we have a wider extension together with a lower degree of intensity.
Another characteristic common to the countries under observation is that, whilst the graver crimes against property show a somewhat marked diminution, crimes against persons, on the other hand, show more steadiness, either of regularity, as in France and Belgium, or of increase, as in England, and still more in Germany. But this phenomenon in the case of crimes against the person is in actual correspondence with criminal activity arising from an increase of population. On the other hand–apart from the transformation of crimes of violence into crimes of craft and fraud, due to the increase of movable property–the decrease of offences against property is no more than the manifest effect of an artificial change of judicial procedure, summary proceedings taking the place of trial by jury.
An alternation, which is not invalidated by exceptions here and there, has been observed in the criminality of different countries, in the periodic movement of crimes and offences against property and those against the person, of such a kind that years of increase in the former usually answer to a diminution in the latter, and vice versa. The principal factors in the annual increase of theft, such as scarcity and extremes of weather, cause a corresponding diminution of violent assaults and bodily harm, of homicides and indecent assaults, and vice versa. On the other hand, offences against property, which are very numerous, contribute most of all to the total of annual crime; so that the maximum of 1880 in Italy, as well as in France, Belgium and Austria, is especially due to the great severity of the winter of 1879-80, which in Italy coincided with an agricultural crisis, attested by the very high price of corn. Whereas from 1881 to 1885 there were very mild winters, with more abundant harvests, and from 1886 a greater extreme of cold and a more acute economic crisis.
The general tendency of these periodic oscillations of crime in Italy, as in other European countries, is nevertheless far more towards increase than towards decrease. This is also shown by the proportional triennial averages of crimes and offences placed on record, and of persons condemned to imprisonment.
In the movement of crime in each country it is necessary to distinguish special oscillations, more or less prolonged, of increase or decrease, from its general and permanent tendency. The latter is determined by the fundamental conditions of each nation, physical and social, apart from the purely artificial section of transgressions brought into existence by new laws. The special oscillations, on the other hand, are determined by the annual variations in this or that factor of the more numerous offences; that is to say, by abundance or scantiness of the harvests, by the annual variations of temperature, by industrial and political crises, and the like.
The oblivion of this marked distinction, coupled with the prejudices of the scientific schools, and even of political parties, leads to some curious disagreements, and to lively discussions on the results of criminal statistics. For on one side the champions of the classical school plainly see that the persistent increase of crimes and offences amounts to a proof of that breakdown of penal systems, practical and theoretical, which have hitherto been applied–as was admitted by Holtzendorff. And on the other hand, the increase of crimes is denied or affirmed for the purpose of supporting or attacking some particular ministry. For, in parliaments more than elsewhere, there is always a deep-seated and vivacious prejudice, a kind of social artificiality, which causes men to think that the condition of States, moral and economic, is fundamentally determined far more by the action of this or that government than by natural factors, which are mainly superior to and outside of governments and politicians.
And this is why in Italy there has been much discussion of late, in scientific publications, at the sittings of the Central Commission of Judicial Statistics, and even in Parliament, as to whether crime was increasing or decreasing.
Beltrani-Scalia and Lombroso almost simultaneously called attention to the growth of Italian crime, and they were succeeded by various adherents of the positive school, such as Ferri, Garofalo, Pavia, Pugliese, Guidi, Bournet, Barzilai, and Rossi, who produced evidence that the general tendency of crime in Italy was to increase, and that the diminutions observed after 1880 were mere transitory oscillations; and after 1886 they were justified by facts.
On the other hand, official returns of criminal statistics, and a majority of the members of the Central Commission, when pursuing an inquiry suggested by myself into Italian crime since 1873 –for previously to this date there are no criminal statistics in Italy except for 1853 and 1869-70–came to the conclusion that there was a tendency towards a diminution of crime. But their decision was formed from an entirely partial standpoint, which they had taken up in the exigency of polemical discussion. They compared, in fact, the years just concluded, 1881-5, with 1880, and thus it naturally followed that after a maximum they had a relative decrease. And it was only this ingenious comparison which gave an appearance of actual proof to their optimistic assertions; for when a fever is at forty degrees, the fall of even half a degree is very important. They paid special attention to the so-called high criminality, which is tried by the Assize courts, and is actually decreasing, though by the purely artificial effect of more and more effective measures of correction. But I have always maintained, and I have the support of M. Oettingen, that we cannot separate crimes and offences tried by the Assizes from those tried by the Tribunals, for there is only a difference of degree between them, as is clear in regard to theft, assaults and wounding, forgery and the like.
It is a curious fact that similar illusions have existed in all countries through the same causes and prejudices which have been mentioned above. In France, for instance, we often find that the keepers of the seals, reporting on volumes of the excellent and valuable series of criminal statistics since the year 1826, occasionally remark on these oscillatory diminutions, and make a point of treating them as signs of a constant and general tendency, which succeeding years have always contradicted.
In France also, the same controversy has been kept up since 1840, with the same polemical artifices as were employed more recently in Italy, on the question whether crime has increased or decreased. Dufau, Beranger, Berrzat de St. Prix, and Legoyt affirmed that it had diminished since 1826, against the true opinion of de Metz, Dupin, Chassan, Mesuard, and Fayet, the last of whom quotes the others in one of his essays on criminal statistics, now undeservedly forgotten, though they abound in striking and profound observation.
But, as for France in those days, so for Italy to-day, the statistics of succeeding years quickly proved that what official optimism and national self-complacency spoke of as pessimism on our part was but a conscientious inference from lamentable facts, established in every country by the influence of civilisation on crime, which I have described in preceding pages.
After these general statements we ought logically to watch the periodic movement of each leading category of crimes and offences in each division of the country; for not all crimes, nor all districts, pursue the same course from year to year. But as this inquiry is impossible in the present work, we may pass on to the general figures for other European countries.
FRAN 1826-8. 1895-7. Police Contraventions … … … 100 391| Offences … … … … … … 100 397| Crimes against the person … … 100 98|in 61 years ” property … … … 100 41|
BELGIUM. 1850-2. 1883-5. Tried by the Correctional Tribunals,
for crimes against the person 100 109|in 36 years ” property … 100 162|
1840-2. 1883-5. Tried by the Tribunals for “Offences” 100 260| Tried at Assizes, crimes against the person 100 65|in 46 years ” ” property 100 21|
ENGLAND. 1857-9. 1884-6. Tried summarily, for offences … 100 176 in 30 years. 1835-7. 1884-6.
Criminal cases, against the person 100 143| ” against property, and for |in 55 years. circulation of false money … 100 55|
IRELAND. 1864-6. 1886-8. Tried summarily … … … 100 95| Crimes against the person … .. 100 57|in 25 years. ” property, and false money 100 52|
PRUSSIA. 1854-6. 1876-8. Contraventions and “vols de bois” 100 l32|in 25 years. Crimes and offences … … 100 134|
GERMANY. 1882-4. 1885-7. Crimes and offences against public order 100 110| ” ” the person 100 116|in 6 years. ” ” property 100 95|
AUSTRIA. 1867-9. 1884-6. Prisoners condemned for crimes — 100 122|in 20 years. ” ” offences … 100 495|
SPAIN. 1883-4. 1886-7. Tried for crimes and offences — 100 {X}3|in 5 years. ” contraventions …… 100 113|
The most constant general fact shown by these data is in all cases the very remarkable increase of slighter delinquencies, side by side with constancy or slight diminution in crimes against the person, and a large diminution in crime against property. This is seen in France, England, Belgium, whilst there is an increase both of crimes and offences in Austria.
Behind the general fact, however, we must distinguish between the actual and the apparent.
On the one hand, the decrease of more serious crime against property is simply due to prisoners electing to be sentenced by the inferior court, which is at the discretion of the Tribunals in France, but legally established in Belgium, by the laws of 1838 and 1848, and in England by the Acts of 1856 and 1878–an election of the slighter but more certain punishment of the magistrates in preference to going before a jury. Indeed, crimes against the person, in which there is less power of election, do not exhibit so marked a decrease; and accordingly we see that in Belgium the increase of “correctionalised” crimes is due far more to crimes against property (62 per cent in 36 years) than to those against the person (9 per cent.).
On the other hand, the growth of slighter delinquency is partly the effect of special enactments, which are constantly creating new infractions, offences or contraventions. For France may be mentioned the law of 1832 on eluding supervision, that of 1844 on the game laws, that of 1857 on the false description of goods for sale, of 1845 on railway offences, of 1849 on the expulsion of refugees, of 1873 on drunkenness, and of 1874 on requisition of horses. I dealt with the statistical results of these laws, and with the influence of the increasing number of police agents, in my “Studies on Criminality in France” (Rome, 1881); and I will here add only a single observation. If it is true, as M. Joly says, that other laws, passed since 1826, have extinguished a few offences, or at least have diminished their frequency under less severe regulations, yet it is also true that the new infractions created in the past half-century show far higher numbers than those of the infractions which have been extinguished or rendered less easy. So that amongst the 297 per cent. of increase on the offences tried in France between 1826 and 1887, the element due to legal creation of new infractions must not be ignored.
It cannot, however, be denied that for certain more frequent offences we have a real and very noteworthy increase, apart from any legislative or statistical cause of disturbance.
The same observation may be made in regard to England. There also the increase of 76 per cent, during thirty years of offences tried summarily is due in part to new infractions, created by special legislation, and especially by the Education Act of 1873, under which there were more than forty thousand infractions in 1878, and more than sixty-five thousand in 1886.
In regard to this delinquency in England (wherein are included, over and above real offences, certain infractions corresponding to the police contraventions of the Italian, French, Belgian and Austrian codes) it is to be observed that the increase of 76 per cent. in thirty years is due rather to contraventions than to offences. And this would establish a remarkable difference between the variations of delinquency in England and in France.
If we analyse the record of infractions tried summarily in England, we find that contraventions of the law in respect of drunkenness account for most of this increase (from 82,196 in 1861 to 183,221 in 1885 and 165,139 in 1886). On the other hand, offences against the person (assaults) and against property (stealing, larceny, malicious offences) have not shown so large an increase.
In fact, if we compare the variations in assaults and thefts in France and England, we have the following figures:–
ENGLAND.
1861-3. 1879-81. Prisoners tried summarily for assaults … … 100 102 Ditto for stealing, larceny, and malicious offences … … … … … … … 100 110
FRANCE.
Cases tried by the Tribunals:
For assault and wounding … … … … … 100 134 For simple theft … … … … … … … 100 116
So that in England not only the total delinquency, but more especially the commoner offences against the person and against property show a slighter increase than that which has been established for the same period in France. Whilst we do not overlook the greater increase of crimes against the person in England (coinciding, of course, with the doubling of the population in fifty-five years), this fact seems to me to prove the salutary influence of English organisations against certain social factors which lead up to delinquency (such as the care of foundlings, the guardianship of the poor, and so forth), notwithstanding the great development of economic activity, which is assuredly in no way inferior to that of France. The figures strengthen my conclusions as to the social factors of crime, and refute the optimistic theory of Poletti.
But the actual participation of each country in the general increase of crime in Europe is determined by other causes, outside of the artificial influences of different codes of law. And the most general and constant of these causes, in all the various physical and social environments, is the annual increase of population, which, by adding to the density of the inhabitants of each country, multiplies their material and legal relations to one another, and, consequently, the objective and subjective constituents of crime.
Taking the official Italian figures, which are also relied on by M. Levasseur, we find, for the periods corresponding to the variations of criminality, the following rates of increase in the population of the different countries. Ireland shows a decrease, owing to emigration.
Increase.
Italy 22,104,789 in 1863–30,947,306 in 1889 40 per cent. ” 27,165,553 in 1873–30,565,188 in 1888 12 ” France 31,858,937 in 1826–38,218,903 in 1887 20 per cent. Belgium 4,072,619 in 1840– 5,583,278 in 1885 44 ” Prussia 21,046,984 in 1852–26,614,428 in 1878 26 ” Germany 45,717,000 in 1882–47,540,000 in 1887 4 ” England 13,896,797 in 1831–27,870,586 in 1886 101 ” ” 20,066,224 in 1861–27,870,586 in 1886 39 ” Austria 20,217,531 in 1869–23,070,688 in 1886 14 ” Ireland 5,798,967 in 1861– 4,777,545 in 1888 decrease 17 ”
It must, however, be observed, with regard to this increase of the population, firstly that it tells as a factor of criminality only in so far as it is not neutralised, wholly or in part, by other influences, mainly social, which prevent crime or render it less grave. Secondly, it is not right merely to compare the proportional rates of increase in the population with those of crime, as was done for instance by M. Bodio, who said that in Italy, from 1873 to 1883, “since the population had increased by 7.5 per cent., crime might have increased during the same time by 7.5 per cent., without its being fair to say that it had actually increased.” In point of fact, as M. Rossi remarked, since in Italy, and almost all the European States, the growth of the population is due to the excess of births over deaths (for emigration is more numerous than immigration), it is evident that, when we confine our attention to short periods, the addition to the population, consisting of children under ten or twelve years, does not increase crime in an appreciable degree. The deaths, on the other hand, must be subtracted from all stages of human life, but especially from the number of those who can and do commit crimes and offences.
Now, as we cannot in this place go into detail, I must confine myself to the statement of a few characteristic facts, as illustrated by European crime. Thus we perceive the influence of the great famine of 1846-7 on crimes against property in France and Belgium; the rapid oscillations of crime in Ireland, indicating the unstable political and social conditions of the country; and the parallel movements of crime in, France and Prussia. We see, indeed, a constant diminution of crime for the period between 1860 and 1870, followed (after the statistical disturbance of the terrible year 1870-1) by a period of serious and continued increase of crime, resulting from social and economic conditions, as shown especially by the increase of vagrancy and theft since 1875.
All these general facts go to prove the close and intimate connection between crime and the aggregate of its various constituents. So that, without pursuing more detailed inquiries into certain social factors of crime, which are capable of statistical enumeration, such as the increase in the number of the police, the abundance or scarcity of corn and wine, the spread of drunkenness, family circumstances, increase of personal possessions, the facility or otherwise of the settlement of disputes, commercial and industrial crises, the rate of wages, the variation from year to year of the general conditions of existence, and so forth, coincident with the development of education, encouragements to thrift and the organisation of charity, we must now proceed to draw from these statistical data the most important conclusions of criminal sociology.
I.
Criminal statistics show that crime increases in the aggregate, with more or less notable oscillations from year to year, rising or falling in successive waves. Thus it is evident that the level of criminality in any one year is determined by the different conditions of the physical and social environment, combined with the hereditary tendencies and occasional impulses of the individual, in obedience to a law which I have called, in analogy with chemical phenomena, the law of criminal saturation.
Just as in a given volume of water, at a given temperature, we find a solution of a fixed quantity of any chemical substance, not an atom more or less, so in a given social environment, in certain defined physical conditions of the individual, we find the commission of a fixed number of crimes.
Our ignorance of many physical and psychical laws and of innumerable conditions of fact, will prevent us from obtaining a precise view of this level of criminality. But none the less is it the necessary and inevitable result of a given physical and social environment. Statistics show us, indeed, that the variations of this environment are always attended by consequential and proportional variations of crime. In France, for instance (and the observation will be found to apply to every country which possesses an extended series of criminal statistics), the number of crimes against the person varies but little in sixty-two years. The same thing holds good for England and Belgium, because their special environment is also less variable, by reason that hereditary dispositions and human passions cannot vary profoundly or frequently, except under the influence of exceptional disturbances of the weather, or of social conditions. In fact, the more serious variations in respect of crimes against the person in France have taken place either during political revolutions, or in years of excessive heat, or of exceptional abundance of meat, grain, and wine. This is illustrated by the exceptional increase of crime from 1849 to 1852. Minor offences against the person, on the contrary, which are more occasional, assaults and wounding, for example, vary in the main, as to their annual oscillations, with the abundance of the wine harvest, whilst in their oscillations from month to month they display a characteristic increase during the vintage periods, from June to December, notwithstanding the constant diminution of other offences and crimes against the person.
On the other hand, crimes against property, and still more offences against property, show wide oscillations on account of the variability of the special environment, which is almost always in a condition of unstable equilibrium, as in periods of scarcity, and of commercial, financial and industrial crises, and so forth, whilst they are subject also to the influence of the physical environment. Crimes and offences against property display extraordinary increases in the severest winter seasons, and diminutions in milder winters.
And this correspondence between the more general, powerful, and variable physical and social factors of crime, as well as its more characteristic manifestations such as thefts, wounding, and indecent assaults, is so constant and so direct that, when I was studying the annual movement of criminality in France, and perceived some extraordinary oscillation in the crimes and offences, I foresaw that in the annals of the year I should find mention of an agricultural or political crisis, or an exceptional winter or summer in the records of the weather. So that with a single column of a table of criminal statistics I was able to reconstruct the historical condition of a country in its more salient features. In this way psychological experiment again confirmed the truth of the law of criminal saturation.
Not only so, but it may be added that as, in chemistry, over and above the normal saturation we find that an increased temperature of the liquid envelopes an exceptional super-saturation, so in criminal sociology, in addition to the ordinary saturation we are sometimes aware of an excess of criminal saturation, due to the exceptional conditions of the social environment.
Indeed it is to be observed not only that the main and typical criminality has a sort of reflex criminality depending upon it, but also that an increase of more serious or more frequent crimes induces a crop of resistance to and assaults upon the guardians of public order, together with false witness, insults, avoidance of supervision, absconding, and the like. Certain crimes and offences also have their complementary offences, which from being consequences become in their turn the causes of new offences. Thus concealment and purchase of stolen goods increase simultaneously with theft; homicide and wounding lead to the illegal carrying of arms; adultery and abusive language to duels, and so forth.
Beyond this there are sundry kinds of excessive criminal saturations which are exceptional, and therefore transitory. Ireland and Russia present us with conspicuous examples in their political and social crimes; and similarly America, during election contests. So in France before and after December 2 1851, the harbouring of criminals, which in no other quadrennial period from 1826 to 1887 exceeds a record of fifty, rises in 1850-53 as high as 239. So during the famine of 1847, theft of grain rises in France to forty-two in a single year, whilst for half a century it barely reaches a total of seventy-five. It is notorious, again, that in years of dear provisions, or severe winters, a large number of thefts and petty offences are committed for the sole object of securing maintenance within the prison walls. And in this connection I have observed in France that other offences against property decrease during a famine, by an analogous psychological motive, thus presenting a sort of statistical paradox. Thus, for example, I have found that as oidium and phylloxera are more effective than severe punishments in diminishing the number of assaults and cases of unlawful wounding, so famine succeeds better than the strongest bars, or dogs kept loose in the prison yards, in preventing the escape of prisoners, who at such times are detained by the advantage of being supported at the public expense.
For a parallel reason in 1847, a famine year, whilst all crimes and offences against property increased in an extraordinary fashion, only the crimes of theft and breach of confidence by household servants showed a characteristic decrease, because such persons were deterred by the fear of being dismissed by their employers during the time of distress. The figures are as follows:–
FRANCE (Assizes). 1844. 1845. 1846. 1847. Crimes against property … 3,767 3,396 3,581 4,235 Breach of confidence by
household servants … … 136 128 168 104 Thefts by the same … … 1,001 874 924 896
M. Chaussinand adds, by way of confirmation of my statement that during economic crises, such as famine and high prices of grain, the number of cases of escape from justice also decreases, FOR “thieves and tramps prefer arrest, in order to escape from the misery which afflicts them outside the prison walls.”
Two fundamental conclusions of criminal sociology may be drawn from this law of criminal saturation.
The first is that it is incorrect to assert a mechanical regularity of crime, which from Quetelet’s time has been much exaggerated. There has been a too literal insistance on his famous declaration that “the budget of crime is an annual taxation paid with more preciseness than any other”; and that it is possible to calculate beforehand how many homicides, poisoners, and forgers we shall have, because “crimes are generated every year in the same number, with the same punishments, in the same proportions.” And one constantly meets with this echo of the statisticians, that “from year to year crimes against the person vary at the most by one in twenty-five, and those against property by one in fifty”; or, again, that there is “a law of limitation in crime, which does not vary by more than one in ten.”
This opinion, originated by Quetelet and other statisticians after an inquiry confined to the more serious crimes, and to a very short succession of years, has already been refuted, in part by Maury and Rhenisch, and more plainly by Aberdare, Mayr, Messedaglia and Minzloff.
In fact, if the level of criminality is of necessity determined by the physical and social environment, how could it remain constant in spite of the continual variations, sometimes very considerable, of this same environment? That which does remain fixed is the proportion between a given environment and the number of crimes: and this is precisely the law of criminal saturation. But the statistics of criminality will never be constant to one rule from year to year. There will be a dynamical but not a statical regularity.
Thus the element of fixity in criminal sociology consists in asserting, not the fatality or predestination of human actions, including crimes, but only their necessary dependence upon their natural causes, and therewith the possibility of modifying effects by modifying the activity of these causes. And, indeed, even Quetelet himself recognised this when he said, “If we change the social order we shall see an immediate change in the facts which have been so constantly reproduced. Statisticians will then have to consider whether the changes have been useful or injurious. These studies therefore show how important is the mission of the legislator, and how responsible he is in his own sphere for all the phenomena of the social order.”
The second consequence of the law of criminal saturation, one of great theoretical importance, is that the penalties hitherto regarded, save for a few platonic declarations, as the best remedies for crime, are less effectual than they are supposed to be. For crimes and offences increase and diminish by a combination of other causes, which are far from being identical with the punishments lightly written out by legislators and awarded by judges.
History affords us various impressive examples.
The Roman Empire, when society had fallen into extreme corruption, recalling many symptoms of our own epoch, vainly promulgated laws which visited celibacy, adultery, and incest–“venus prodigiosa”–with “the vengeance of the sword and punishments of the utmost severity.” Dio Cassius (“Hist. Rom.,” lxxvi. 16) says that in the city of Rome alone, after the law of Septimus Severus, there were three thousand charges of adultery. But the stringent laws against these crimes continued to the days of Justinian, which shows that the crimes had not been checked; and, as Gibbon says (“Decline and Fall,” ch. 44), the Scatinian law against “venus nefanda” had fallen into abeyance through lapse of time and the multitude of offenders. Yet we see in our own days, as in France, that there are some who would oppose celibacy with no other remedy than a law passed for the purpose.
Since mediaeval times the increasing gentleness of manners has caused a diminution of crimes of blood, once so numerous that there was need of sundry “truces” and “peaces,” notwithstanding the harsh penalties of previous centuries. And Du Boys called Cettes simple because, after giving a table of shocking punishments in the Germany of his day (the fifteenth century), he marvelled that all these pains and torments had not prevented the increase of crimes.
Imperial Rome deluded herself with the idea that she could stamp out Christianity with punishments and tortures, which, however, only seemed to fan the flame. In the same way Catholic Europe hoped to extinguish Protestantism by means of vindictive persecution, and only produced the opposite effect, as always happens. If the Reformed faith does not strike root in Italy, France, and Spain, that must be explained by psychological reasons proper to those nations, independently of the stake and of massacres, for it did not strike root even when religious belief was liberated from its fetters. This does not prevent all governments in every land from continuing to believe that, in order to arrest the spread of certain political or social doctrines, there is nothing better than to pass exceptional penal laws, forgetting that, with ideas and prejudices just as with steam, compression increases the expansive force.
Popular education has swept away the so-called crimes of magic and witchcraft, though they had withstood the most savage punishments of antiquity and mediaeval times.
Blasphemy, in spite of the slitting of the nose, tongue, and lips, enacted by the penal laws, and continued in France from Louis XI. to Louis XV., was very common in the middle ages, being (like witchcraft, trances, and self-immurement) a pathological or abnormal manifestation of religious emotion, which in those times had an extraordinary development. And the habit of blasphemy diminished under the psychological and social evolution of our own days, precisely when it ceased to be punished. Or, rather, it continued to this day, as in Tuscany, where the Tuscan penal code (Art. 136), which survived until December 31, 1889, still punished it with five years’ imprisonment. The illusion as to the efficacy of punishment is so deeply rooted that a proposal was made in the Senate, in 1875, to include this penalty in the new Italian penal code. And at Murcia, in Spain, trials for blasphemy have lately been re-established.
Mittermaier observed that, if in England and Scotland there were far fewer cases of false witness, perjury, and resistance to authority than in Ireland and on the Continent, this must be due in great measure to national character, which is one of the hereditary elements of normal as well as of abnormal and criminal life.
Thus even apart from statistics we can satisfy ourselves that crimes and punishments belong to two different spheres; but when statistics support the teaching of history, no doubt can remain as to the very slight (I had almost said the absence of any) deterrent effect of punishments upon crime.
We may indeed derive a telling proof from statistical records, by referring to the progress of repression in France, over a period of sixty years, as I have already done in my “Studies” previously quoted.
When we speak of the repression of crime, we must first of all distinguish between that which is due to the general character of penal legislation, more or less severe, and that which is secured by the administration by the judges of the law as it is. Now, so far as legislation is concerned, the growth of crime in France certainly cannot be attributed to the relaxation of punishment. The legislative reforms which have taken place, especially in 1832 and 1863, on the general revision of the penal code, modified punishments to some extent, but with the definite purpose and result, as shown by the same official records of criminal statistics, of strengthening the repressive power of the law by providing for the application of less aggravated punishments. The repugnance of juries and judges against excessive punishments, and their preference for acquittal, is, indeed, a psychological law. Moreover, it is well known that if there is in Europe a penal code less mild than any of the rest, it is that of France, which is the oldest of those now in force, and still retains much of the military rigour of its origin. And it must be added that for certain crimes, as for rapes and indecent assaults, which are nevertheless constantly increasing in France, the punishments have been increased by several successive enactments. The same is true of extortion by threats of exposure, which occurs more and more frequently, as M. Joly also observes, in spite of the severe punishments of the law of 1863.
The question, therefore, is reduced to judicial repression, the progress whereof must be observed in the past half-century, for it has evidently the greatest influence upon crime. Laws, in fact, have no real operation if they are not applied more or less rigorously; for in the social strata which contribute most to criminality the laws are known only by their practical application, which is also the only truly defensive function, carrying with it a special preventive of the repetition of the crime by the person condemned.
Thus the arguments of jurists and legislators have not much value for the criminal sociologist when they are based solely on the psychological illusion that the dangerous classes trouble themselves about the shaping of a penal code, as the more instructed and less numerous classes might well do. The dangerous classes attend to the sentences of the judges, and still more to the execution of those sentences, than to the articles of a code. In this connection I cannot agree with the forecast of Garofalo as to the perilous effect of the abolition of capital punishment in Italy on the imagination of the people; for he was well aware that, though it is defined in various articles of the old code, and in about sixty sentences every year, the punishment of death has not been carried out, which is the essential point, for the last fifteen years.
The elements which determine the greater or less severity of judicial repression are of two kinds:–
1. The ratio of persons acquitted to the total number of prisoners put on their trial.
2. The ratio of the severest punishments to the total number of prisoners condemned.
Certainly the proportion of acquittals ought not to indicate a difference in the severity of repression as such, for condemnation or acquittal ought to point merely to the certainty or otherwise of guilt, the sufficiency or insufficiency of the evidence. But, as a matter of fact, the proportional increase of convictions does partly represent greater severity on the part of the judges, and still more of the juries, who display it by attaching weight to somewhat unconvincing evidence, or in too readily admitting circumstances which tend to aggravate the offence. This is confirmed also by the rarity of acquittals in cases of contumacy.
Of these two factors the former is certainly the more important, for it is a psychological law that man, in regard to punishment as to any other kind of suffering, is more affected by the certainty than by the gravity of the infliction. And it is to the credit of criminal theorists of the classical school that they have steadily maintained that a mild yet certain punishment is more effectual than one which, being severe in itself, holds out a stronger hope of escaping it. Nevertheless it is a fact that they have carried the theory too far, by seeking to obtain excessive mitigations and abbreviations of punishment, without exerting themselves to secure certainty by reforms of procedure and police administration.
The diminution of the rate of acquittal is evident and continuous, both at the Assizes and in the Tribunals, except for the last quadrennial period. This may of course indicate a more careful management of the trials by the judges; but it certainly shows an undoubted tendency towards increased judicial severity, which, meanwhile, has not arrested the growth of crime.
PERCENTAGE OF ACQUITTALS IN FRANCE.
Tried in
Assize Courts. Tribunals. Total 1826-30 … … 39 … … 31 … … 32 1831-5 … … 42 … … 28 … … 30 1836-40 … … 35 … … 22 … … 23 1841-5 … … 32 … … 18 … … 19 1846-50 … … 36 … … 16 … … 17 1851-5 … … 28 … … 12 … … 13 1856-60 … … 24 … … 10 … … 7 1861-5 … … 24 … … 9 … … 6
1866-9 … … 23 … … 17 … … 8 1872-6 … … 20 … … 6 … … 6
1877-81 … … 23 … … 5 … … 6 1882-6 … … 27 … … 6 … … 6
PERCENTAGE OF ACQUITTALS IN ENGLAND.
Criminal Proceedings. Summary Proceedings. 1858-62 … … … 25 … … … 34
1863-7 … … … 24 … … … 31 1868-72 … … … 26 … … … 24
1873-7 … … … 25 … … … 21 1878-82 … … … 24 … … … 21
1883-7 … … … 22 … … … 20
Here also it appears that the growth of crime in England, though less than in France, is not due to the weakening of judicial severity through the greater number of acquittals. The number has, in fact, constantly diminished, especially in summary proceedings, which is just where the greatest increase of crime is manifest.
Passing now to the other factor of judicial repression, that is to the percentage of persons sentenced to graver kinds of punishment, we have to take into account, amongst assize cases in France, the prisoners sentenced to death, penal servitude, and solitary imprisonment, excluding such as are sentenced to correctional punishment (simple imprisonment and fines) as well as young prisoners sent to reformatories; and in regard to the Tribunals, we must take the percentages of those who are condemned to imprisonment, which is the most serious punishment, the remainder being fined, or handed over to their parents, or sent to reformatories.
Condemned at Assizes Condemned FRANCE. —————————- by Tribunals To death. To penal servitude. to imprisonment.
1826-30 … … 2.5 … … 58 … … … 61
1831-5 … … 1.5 … … 42 … … … 65
1836-40 … … .7 … … 37 … … … 65
1841-5 … … 1 … … 40 … … … 61
1845-50 … … 1 … … 39 … … … 62
1851-5 … … 1.1 … … 48 … … … 61
1856-60 … … 1 … … 49 … … … 61
1861-5 … … .6 … … 48 … … … 64
1866-9 … … .5 … … 47 … … … 68
1872-6 … … .7 … … 49 … … … 66
1877-81 … … .7 … … 50 … … … 66
1882-6 … … 1 … … 49 … … … 65
These figures, if they do not show (as might have been foreseen) so large an increase of severity as in the percentages of acquittals, yet prove that repression has not diminished even in the serious character of the punishments. On the other hand, we can see that, in the assize cases, excluding the first period, before the revision of 1832, whilst capital punishment shows a certain diminution (especially due to the laws of 1832, 1848, &c., which reduced the number of cases involving the death penalty), though continuing at a certain level since 1861, sentences of penal servitude and solitary confinement show a continued increase from the second period, and especially since 1851.
So also at the Tribunals, except for a few oscillations, as in the ninth period, there is a sustained increase of repression.
And the fact that this increased ratio of the more serious punishments actually indicates a greater severity on the part of the judges can only be contested on the ground of a simultaneous increase of the more serious crimes and offences. On the other hand, we note in France a general decrease of crimes against the person (except for assaults on children), and still more of crimes against property.
There is also a striking confirmation in the corresponding acquittals and condemnations of a more serious character. We see, in fact, that the more serious condemnations increase precisely when the acquittals decrease (as in the 4th, 6th, 7th, and 10th periods at the Assizes, and the 2nd, 5th, and 8th periods at the Tribunals); whilst in the years of more frequent acquittals there is also a diminution of more serious punishments, as in the 5th and 8th periods at the Assizes. That is to say, the two sets of statistics actually indicate a greater or less severity on the part of juries and judges.
This firmer repression is demonstrated in spite of the continued increase of attenuating circumstances, which rose at the Assizes from 50 per cent. in 1833 to 73 per cent. in 1806, and at the Tribunals from 54 per cent. in 1851 to 65 per cent. in 1886. Nevertheless it is a fact that the number of cases tried by default at the Assizes has continuously decreased from a yearly average of 647 in 1826-30 to one of 266 in 1882-6.
For Italy we have the following figures: {column missing head?}
PRETORS. TRIBUNALS. ASSIZES. —————————————— Condemned to Imprisonment. Condemned Penal Servitude Slighter imprisonment. to death. for life. temporary punishts 1874 21 79 1.2 5.6 65 28
5 22 80 1.3 6.5 63 29 6 23 81 1.3 6.1 66 27
7 24 82 1.5 7.2 66 25 8 25 85 1 7.6 67 25
9 25 — 1.2 6.3 67 25 1880 26 — 1.3 5.5 68 25
1 24 81 1.7 6.1 65 27 2 23 81 1.5 6 66 27
3 23 81 1.7 5.4 64 29 4 23 81 1.3 5.3 64 30
5 23 81 1.6 5.4 63 30 6 21 81 1.6 5.7 62 30
7 21 83 1.1 5.8 63 30 8 21 82 1.2 4.7 65 29
Thus, once more, there has been no relaxation of repression, except in late years for those condemned by the Pretors to penal servitude for life.
The conclusion, therefore, is still the same, namely that judicial repression, in France and Italy, has grown stronger and stronger, whilst criminality has increased more and more.
In this fact, again, which confutes the common opinion that the sovereign remedy of crime is the greater rigour of punishment, we may fairly find a positive proof that the penal, legislative, and administrative systems hitherto adopted have missed their aim, which can be nothing else than the defence of society against criminals.
Henceforth we must seek, through the study of facts, a better direction for penal legislation as a function of society, so that, by the observation of psychological and sociological laws, it may tend, not to a violent and always tardy reaction against crime already evolved, but to the elimination or diversion of its natural factors.
This fundamental conclusion of criminal statistics is so important that we must confirm it by adding to the statistical data the general laws of biology and sociology. This is the more necessary because my position as first stated has met with some criticism.
In the first place, it is easily seen, when we compare the total result of crime with the varied character of its anthropological, physical, and social factors, that punishment can exert but a slight influence upon it. Punishment, in fact, by its special effect as a legal deterrent, acting as a psychological motive, will clearly be unable to neutralise the constant and hereditary action of climate, customs, increase of population, agricultural production, economic and political crises, which statistics invariably exhibit as the most potent factors of the growth or diminution of criminality.
It is a natural law that forces cannot conflict or neutralise each other unless they are of the same kind. The fall of a body cannot be retarded, changed in direction or accelerated, save by a force homogeneous with that of gravity. So punishment, as a psychological motive, can only oppose the psychological factors of crime, and indeed only the occasional and moderately energetic factors; for it is evident that it cannot, as a preliminary to its application, eliminate the organic hereditary factors which are revealed to us by criminal anthropology.
Punishment, which has professed to be such a simple and powerful remedy against all the factors of crime, is therefore a panacea whose potency is far beneath its reputation.
We must bear in mind a fact which is familiar enough, though it has been too often forgotten by legislators and criminalists. Society is not a homogeneous aggregate, but on the contrary an organism, like every animal organism, composed of tissues of varying structure and sensibility. Every society, in fact, with its progressive and increasingly distinctive needs and occupations, is a product of the union of social classes which differ greatly in their organic and psychical characteristics. The physical constitution, the habits, sentiments, ideas, and tendencies of one social stratum are far from being the same as those of other strata. Here again we have, as Spencer would say, the law of evolution through a departure from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex, or, in the words of Ardigo, a natural formation by successive distinctions. Amongst savage tribes this distinction of the social strata does not exist, or it is far less marked than in barbarian societies, and still less than in civilised societies.
Every schoolmaster with a bent for psychological observation separates his pupils into three classes. There is the class of industrious pupils of good disposition, who work of their own accord, without calling for strict discipline; that of the ignorant and idle (degenerate and of weak nervous force) from whom neither mildness nor severity can obtain anything worth having; and that of the pupils who are neither wholly industrious nor wholly idle, and for whom a discipline based on psychological laws may be genuinely useful.
This is the case with large bodies of soldiers or of prisoners, for all associations of men, and for society as a whole. These partial organisms, due to the constant relationships of a life more or less in common, are in this respect reproductions of society as a whole, just as a fragment of crystal reproduces the characteristics of the unbroken crystal.[13]
[13] There is, however, some difference between the manifestation of the activity of a group of men and that of the aggregate society. Between psychology which studies the individual, and sociology which studies the society, I think there is room for a collective psychology, to study more or less defined groups. The phenomena of these groups are analogous, but not identical with those of the sociological body properly so called, according as the union is more or less definite. Collective psychology has its field of observation in all unions, however occasional, such as the public street, the markets, workshops, theatres meetings, assemblies, colleges, schools, barracks, prisons, and so forth. Many practical applications of the data of collective psychology might be given. An example will be found in a future chapter, when I come to consider the psychology of the jury.
In the same way, from the standpoint of criminal sociology, we may divide the social strata into three analogous categories–the highest, which commits no crimes, organically upright, restrained only by the authority of the moral sense, of religious sentiments and public opinion, together with the hereditary transmission of moral habits. This class, for which no penal code would be necessary, is unfortunately very small; and it is far smaller if, in addition to legal and apparent criminality, we also take into account that social and latent criminality through which many men, who are upright so far as the penal code is concerned, are not upright by the standard of morality.
Another class, the lowest, is made up of individuals opposed to all sense of uprightness, who, being without education, perpetually dragged back by their material and moral destitution into the primitive forms of the brute struggle for existence, inherit from their parents and transmit to their children an abnormal organisation, adding degeneration and disease, an atavistic return to savage humanity. This is the nursery of the born criminals, for whom punishments, so far as they are legal deterrents, are useless, because they encounter no moral sense which could distinguish punishment by law from the risk which also attends upon every honest industry.
Lastly we have the other class of individuals who are not born to crime, but are not firmly upright, alternating between vice and virtue, with imperfect moral sense, education and training, for whom punishment may be genuinely useful as a psychological motive. It is just this class which yields the large contingent of occasional criminals, for whom punishments are efficacious if they are directed in their execution by the axioms of scientific psychology, and especially if they are aided by the social prevention which reduces the number of opportunities of committing crimes and offences.
Once again I must express my agreement with M. Garofalo, who, in dealing with this subject, insists on the necessity of distinguishing between the different classes of criminals before deciding as to the efficacy of punishments.
Yet this conclusion as to the very limited efficiency of punishments, which is forced upon us by facts, and which, as Bentham said, is confirmed by the application of each punitive act, precisely because its previous application did not succeed in preventing crime, is directly opposed to general public opinion, and even to the opinion of jurists and legislators.
On the inception or the growth of a criminal manifestation, legislators, jurists, and public think only of the remedies, which are as easy as they are illusory, of the penal code, or of some new Act of repression. Even if this were useful, which is very problematical, it has the inevitable disadvantage of making men ignore other remedies, far more profitable, albeit more difficult, of a preventive and social kind. And this tendency is so common that many of those who have dwelt upon or accepted the positive movement of the new school, not long after they had admitted that I was in the right, declared impulsively that “the constant commission of crime arises from the lack of timely repression,” and that “one of the chief causes of the growth of crime in Italy is the mildness of our punishments.” Or else they forgot to ask themselves the elementary question of criminal sociology, whether and how far punishments have a genuinely defensive force. This is just what happens with pedagogues who enter upon long discussions on the various methods and means of education, without asking themselves beforehand whether and how far education has the actual power of modifying the temperament and character which heredity stamps upon every individual.
These conclusions take us far beyond the limit of penal severity, and at the same time they suffice to combat the objection commonly raised against those who think, like ourselves, that repressive justice ought to concern itself not with the punishment of past crime, but with the prevention of future crime. For whilst the advocates of severity, and those whom I will call the “laxativists,” virtually think (apart from a few platonic statements) only of punishments as remedies of offences, we on the other hand believe that punishments are merely secondary instruments of social self-defence, and remedies ought to be adapted to the actual factors of the offence. And since the social factors are most capable of modification, so we say with Prins that “for social evils we require social cures.”
M. Tarde, then, was not quite accurate in his remark that my conviction as to the very slight efficacy of punishments is a mere consequence of my ideas on the anthropological and physical character of crime, and that, “on the contrary, the preponderating importance which he has assigned to the social causes logically debars him from accepting this conclusion.” As a matter of fact, punishment regarded as a psychological motive so far as it is a legal deterrent, and as a physical motive so far as it implies the confinement of the person condemned, would more naturally belong, in abstract logic, to the biological and physical theory of crime. Whereas it is precisely because I recognise the influence of social environment, in addition, that experimental logic convinces me that punishment is not an efficacious remedy of crime, unless forces are applied beforehand to neutralise, or at any rate to counteract, the social factors of crime.
And if this is not a new conclusion, as one of our critics observes by way of reproach–as though it were not one of the characteristics of truth to repeat itself persistently, however much it may be forgotten or even opposed–we must nevertheless remark that it is now repeated with a mass of new observations and definite applications, which give it a force unknown to mere logical deductions.
The classical school has concerned itself simply with mitigation of punishment as compared with mediaeval excess; and for this reason, because every age has its own mission, it could not also concern itself with the prevention of crimes, which is far more useful and efficacious. A few isolated thinkers, it is true, wrote a few bold and far-reaching pages on preventive methods in opposition to the numerous volumes on punishment; but their words had no effect upon criminalists and legislators, because science had not yet undertaken the positive and methodical observation of the natural factors of crime.
I will confine myself to a few examples, in order to show that amongst practical men, as amongst public officials and legislators, the illusion that punishments are the true panacea of crime is always predominant.
Practical men declare that “the prohibitive penal law ought to be regarded as the first and most important of preventive laws.” The prefets in their circulars, being concerned about the increase of crime, put forward the most vigilant and severe repression as a sovereign remedy. A counsellor of the French Cour de Cassation writes that “in a worthy system of social police there is no better guarantee for order and safety than intimidation.” The Keeper of the Seals, in his report on French penal statistics for 1876, speaking of the continued increase of indecent assaults, comes to the conclusion that “in any case, only firm and energetic repression can avail against a lamentable increase of crimes against morality.” And more recently another Keeper of the Seals ended his report on the statistics of 1826 to 1880 by observing that “the growth of crime can only be opposed by an incessantly vigorous repression.” M. Tarde agreed with this conclusion, saying that “if crimes are only, as has been said, railway accidents of a society travelling at full speed, it must not be forgotten that, the faster the train, the stronger must be the brake . . . and it is certain that such a state of affairs demands an increase or a new departure of repression and punishment.”
It may be admitted that our conclusion is not a novelty; but, as Stuart Mill said, there are two ways of effecting useful innovations, to discover what was not known before, or else to repeat with new demonstrations the truths which had been forgotten.
And this illusion as to the influence of punishments is so widespread that it is well to inquire into its historic and psychological arguments; for, as Spencer says, in order to decide as to the value of an idea, it is useful to examine its genealogy.
We may pass by the foundation of primitive vengeance, which from the age of private combats passed into the spirit and form of the earliest penal laws, and still subsists as a more or less unconscious and enfeebled residuum in modern society. We may also pass by the hereditary effect of the traditions of mediaeval severity, which excite an instinctive sympathy for stern punishment in connection with every crime.
But one of the main reasons of this tendency is an error of psychological perspective, whereby men have forgotten the profound differences of the ideas, habits, and sentiments of the various social strata, concerning which I have spoken above. Through this forgetfulness the honest and instructed classes confound their own idea of the penal law, and the impression it makes upon them, with the idea and the impression of the social classes from which the majority of criminals are recruited. This has been remarked upon by Beccaria, Carmignani, and Holtzendorff amongst the classical criminalists, and by Lombroso and others of the new school who have studied the slang and literature of criminals, which are their psychological mirror. Again, it is forgotten that for the higher classes, apart from their physical and moral repugnance against crime, which is the most powerful repelling force, there is the fear of public opinion, almost unknown amongst the classes which have stopped short at a lower stage of human evolution.
For the higher classes one example may suffice. It is the fact observed upon by Mr. Spencer, that gambling debts and Stock Exchange bargains are scrupulously discharged, though for them there is neither penal obligation nor evidence in writing. And it may be added that imprisonment for debt never promoted the fulfilment of contracts, nor has its abolition discouraged it.
As for the lower classes, one visit to a prison suffices. There, if you ask a prisoner why the punishment did not deter him from the crime, you generally get no answer, because he has never thought about it. Or else he replies, as I have often found, that “if you were afraid of hurting yourself when you went to work, you would give up working.” These indeed are what one would expect to be the feelings prevailing amongst the lower social strata, to whom honest sentiments and ideas, which for us are traditional and organic, come very late–just as Mr. Stanley observed that the people in Central Africa are only now beginning to employ stone guns, which in past ages were used in Europe.
Another fallacy which helps to strengthen confidence in punishments is that the effect of exceptional and summary laws is treated on the same basis as that of the ordinary codes, slow and uncertain in their procedure, which saps all their force by the chance of immunity, and the interval between the unlawful act and its legal consequence.
Lombroso and Tarde, indeed, have confronted me with historic examples of vigorous and even savage repressions, whereby it was possible to stamp out some epidemic crime. But these examples are not conclusive, for I have shown that, as soon as these exceptional repressions were at an end, as, for instance, after the death of Pope Sixtus V., brigandage and other crimes were persistently renewed. But my main rejoinder is this, that these exceptional repressions depend upon the jus belli; and therefore cannot enter into the ordinary and constant methods of penal administration. This may not have the effect of an extraordinary repression, secured by a somewhat unscrupulous promptitude, which strikes innocent and guilty alike; and thus it is impossible to treat as equal, or even to compare, the influence of methods which are essentially different.
Another false comparison is drawn between the effective force of various punishments, and their potentiality is confounded, whereas it is necessary to distinguish the punishment of the written code from that of the judge, and still more from that carried into execution. In fact it is only natural that punishment should more or less terrify the criminal who has been judged and is about to be condemned; but this in no way proves its efficacy, which should have been displayed by the menace of the law in guarding the prisoner against the crime. Even with the death penalty, there are many instances of condemned persons who, through congenital insensibility, submit to it cynically. Moreover, for such as have been overwhelmed with terror when the moment of execution arrived, the utmost that this fact can prove is that they are so constituted as to give themselves up completely to the impression of the moment, without the energy to resist it. In other words, so long as the punishment is distant and uncertain, they were not terrified, but having always yielded to the impression of the moment, they yielded to the criminal impulse.
For other punishments, also, it is known that punitive methods, even when not contrary to the law, as they sometimes are in Italy, are always less stern than simple folk imagine when they read the codes and the sentences. And criminals naturally judge of punishments by their own experience, that is to say, in accordance with their practical application, and not with the more or less candid threats of the lawmaker.
If we add to vindictive feeling, historic traditions, oblivion of bio-psychic differences of the social strata, the confounding of exceptional laws and ordinary punishments, and of the varying effective force of punishment, the attitude of the public mind and the natural tendency of criminalists to think only of their two syllogistic symbols of crime and punishment–if we further add the easy-going idea of the multitude, that the inscribing of a law in the statute-book is a sufficient remedy for social diseases, we can readily understand how this exaggerated and illusory confidence in punishment is so persistent, and crops up in every theoretical or practical discussion, in spite of the strong refutation which is daily afforded by facts and psychological observation.
All human actions, like the actions of animals, are developed between the two opposite poles of pleasure and pain, by the attraction of the former and the repulsion of the latter. And punishment, which is one of the social forms of pain, is always a direct motive in human conduct, as it is also an indirect guide, by virtue of its being a sanction of justice, unconsciously strengthening respect for the law. But still this psychological truth, whilst it demonstrates the natural character of punishment, and the consequent absurdity of abolishing it as absolutely void of efficacy, does not destroy our conclusion as to the slight efficacy of punishment as a counteraction of crime.
We have only to distinguish between punishment as a natural sanction and punishment as a social sanction in order to see how the really great power of natural punishment almost entirely disappears in social punishment, which in all our systems is but a sorry caricature.
The mute but inexorable reaction of nature against every action which infringes her laws, and the grievous consequences which inevitably follow for the man who has infringed them, constitute a repression of the most efficacious kind, wherein every man, especially in the earlier years of his life, receives daily and never to be forgotten lessons. This is the discipline of natural consequence, which is a genuine educational method, long since pointed out by Rousseau, and developed by Spencer and Bain.
But in this natural and spontaneous form, the punishment derives its whole force from the inevitable character of the consequences. And it is one of the few observations of practical psychology which have been made and repeated by the classical students of crime, that in punishment, and especially the punishment of death, the certainty is more effectual than the severity. And I will add that even a small uncertainty takes away from a pain which we fear, much of its repelling force, whereas even a great uncertainty does not destroy the attraction of a pleasure which we are hoping for.
Here, then, we have a primary and potent cause of the slight efficacy of legal punishments, in the picturing of the many chances of escape. First there is the chance of not being detected, which is the most powerful spring of all contemplated crime: then the chance, in case of detection, that the evidence will not be strong enough, that the judges will be merciful, or will be deceived, that judgment may be averted amidst the intricacies of the trial, that clemency may either reverse or mitigate the sentence. These are so many psychological causes which, conflicting with the natural fear of unpleasant consequences, weaken the repellent force of legal punishment, whilst they are unknown to natural punishment.
There is also another psychological condition which, undermining even the force of natural punishment, almost entirely destroys the power of social punishment; and that is improvidence. We see, in fact, that even the most certain natural consequences are defied, and lose most of their power to guard an improvident man from anti-natural and dangerous actions. Now in regard to legal punishment, even apart from passionate impulse, it is known that criminals, occasional and other, are specially improvident, in common with savages and children. This weakness is conspicuous enough in the lower and less instructed classes, but amongst criminals it is a genuine characteristic of psychological infirmity.
Now, whilst a very slight force is sufficient to produce very great and constant effects, when it acts in harmony with natural tendency and environment, every process, on the other hand, which is opposed to the natural tendencies of man, or which does not follow them closely, encounters a resistance which triumphs in the last resort.
Everyday life gives us many examples. The university student, when he gambles, risks on a single card the last remnant of his allowance, and prepares for himself a thousand privations. Miners and workmen at dangerous trades refuse to take warning by the sight of comrades whom they have seen dying or repeatedly attacked by disease. M. Despine related that, during the cholera of 1866, at Bilbao, there were some who set up an imitation of the disease in order to obtain charitable relief, though in several cases death ensued. M. Fayet, in an essay on the statistics of accused persons in France, extending over twenty years, remarked that specific and proportionately greater criminality was displayed by notaries and bailiffs, who knew better than any one else the punishments fixed by law. And in the statistics of capital punishment at Ferrara, during nine centuries, I discovered the significant fact that there is a succession of notaries executed for forgery, frequently at very short intervals, in the same town. This attests the truth of the observation made by Montesquieu and Beccaria, as against the deterrent power of the death penalty, for men grow accustomed to the sight; and this again is confirmed by the fact mentioned by Mr. Roberts, a gaol chaplain, and M. Berenger, a magistrate, that several condemned men had previously been present at executions, and by another fact mentioned by Despine and Angelucci, that in the same town, and often in the same place, in which executions had been carried out, murders are often committed on the same day.
A man does not change his identity; and no penal code, whether mild or severe, can change his natural and invincible tendencies, such as inclination to pleasure and persistent hope of impunity.
Let us also observe that, as Mill said, the permanent efficacy of any measure in the spheres of politics, economy, and administration, is always inversely proportional to its force and suddenness. Now punishment does not stand the test even of this sociological law, for in its essence it is only the primitive reaction of force against force. It is true that, as Beccaria said, the classical school has always aimed at rendering social reaction against crime less violent; but that is not enough. Henceforward, if we are to adapt ourselves to psychological and sociological laws, the development of our defensive administration must tend to render this social reaction less direct. If the struggle for existence is always to remain the supreme law of living creatures, yet it is not necessary that it should always be developed in the violent forms of primitive humanity. On the contrary, one of the results of social progress is to make the struggle for existence less violent and less direct.
In the same way, the continuous struggle between society and criminals, instead of being a physical and social force, directly opposed to a physical individual force, should rather become an indirect system of psychical forces. Penal law in society has the same qualities as education in the family and pedagogy in schools. All the three were once dominated by the idea of taming human passions by force; the rod was supreme. In course of time it was perceived that this produced unexpected results, such as violence and hypocrisy, and then men thought fit to modify their punishments. But in our own days schoolmasters see the advantage of relying solely on the free play of tendencies and bio- psychological laws. Similarly the defensive function of society, as Romagnosi said, in place of being a physical and repressive system, ought to be a moral and preventive system, based on the natural laws of biology, psychology, and sociology.
Force is always a bad remedy for force. In the Middle Ages, when punishments were brutal, crimes were equally savage; and society, in demoralising rivalry with the atrocity of criminals, laboured in a vicious circle. Now, in the lower social grades, the brutal man, who often resorts to violence, is in his turn frequently the victim of violence; so that, amongst criminals, a scar is somewhat of a professional distinction.
To sum up, our doctrine as to the efficacy of punishments does not consist, as some critics too sparing of their arguments have maintained, in an absolute negation, but rather and especially in objecting to the traditional prejudice that punishments are the best and most effectual remedies of crime.
What we say is this. Punishment by itself, as a means of repression, possesses a negative rather than a positive value; not only because it has not the same influence on all anthropological types of criminals, but also because its use is rather to preclude the serious mischief which would result from impunity than to convert, as some imagine that it can, an anti-social into a social being. But impunity would lead to a demoralisation of the popular conscience in regard to crimes and offences, to an increase of the profound lack of foresight in criminals, and to the removal of the present impediment to fresh crimes during the term of incarceration.
It is the same with education, the modifying power of which is commonly exaggerated. Education, though it has an enduring influence on children, and is therefore more effectual than punishment, is far more serviceable in eliminating anti-social tendencies, whereof we all possess the germs, than in any supposed creation of social tendencies and forces which were not present from birth.
Thus, whilst the consequences of impunity and lack of education are serious and mischievous, still this does not prove conversely that punishment and education have in reality so positive an influence as is commonly attributed to them.
It is precisely on the ground of this negative, yet real efficacy of punishments, especially whilst they are being carried out, that, whilst we appreciate the mitigation of punitive discipline which has been achieved by the classical school, we believe, on the other hand, that their abbreviation of the term of punishments is altogether mistaken and dangerous. We admit that punishment ought not to be an arbitrary and inhuman torture, and for this reason we have no sympathy with the system of solitary confinement, now so much in fashion with the classical jurists and prison authorities, precisely because it is inhuman, as well as unwise and needlessly expensive.
It is a psychological absurdity and a social danger, which nevertheless underlies the new Italian penal code, that punishment ought to consist more and more in a short isolation of the prisoner. For, setting aside the well-known results of short punishments, such as corruption and recidivism, it is evident that in this way punishment is deprived of its main element of negative efficiency against crime, as well as of its effect in preventing crime during the incarceration of the criminal.
II.
Since punishments, instead of being the simple panacea of crime which popular opinion, encouraged by the opinions of classical writers on crime and of legislators, imagine them, are very limited in their deterrent influence, it is natural that the criminal sociologist should look for other means of social defence in the actual study of crimes and of their natural origin.
We are taught by the everyday experience of the family, the school, associations of men and women, and the history of social life, that in order to lessen the danger of outbreaks of passion it is more useful to take them in their origin, and in flank, than to meet them when they have gathered force.
Bentham relates that in England the delays caused by hard-drinking couriers, who used to be heavily fined without any good result, were obviated by combining passenger traffic with the postal service. Employers of labour secure industry and the most productive work far more easily by offering a share of the realised profits than by a system of fines. In the German universities, academic jealousies and intolerance have been in great measure overcome by paying the professors in proportion to the number of their pupils, so that the Faculties find it to their interest to engage and encourage the best professors, in order to attract as many students as possible. Thus the activity and zeal of professors, magistrates, and officials would be stimulated if their remuneration depended not only on the automatic test of seniority, but also on the progress displayed by publications, sentences not reversed, settlements not cancelled, and the like. It is better to regulate the disturbing restlessness of children by timely diversions rather than by attempting to repress them in a manner injurious to their physical and moral health. So in lunatic asylums and prisons, work is a better means of order and discipline than chains and castigation. In brief, we obtain more from men by consulting their self-respect and interests than by threats and restraint
If the counteraction of punishment must inevitably be opposed to criminal activity, still it is more conducive to social order to prevent or diminish this activity by means of an indirect and more effective force.
In the economic sphere, it has been observed that when a staple product fails, recourse is had to less esteemed substitutes, in order to supply the natural wants of mankind. So in the criminal sphere, as we are convinced by experience that punishments are almost devoid of deterrent effect, we must have recourse to the best available substitutes for the purpose of social defence.
These methods of indirect defence I have called penal substitutes. But whereas the food substitutes are as a rule only secondary products, brought into temporary use, penal substitutes should become the main instruments of the function of social defence, for which punishments will come to be secondary means, albeit permanent. For in this connection we must not forget the law of criminal saturation, which in every social environment makes a minimum of crime inevitable, on account of the natural factors inseparable from individual and social imperfection. Punishments in one form or another will always be, for this