A Plea for the Criminal Part 4

What are we to do? Why, sterilize the wife of the defective. As the criminal is most harmful of all defectives he is summoned to come forward first and to bring his wife with him, when behold, the man turns up alone. Where is his wife? Why, he hasn't got one. Has Dr Chapple considered this fact? Did he know, when he made the statement that it was a matter of common observation that the criminal was among those who had the largest families, did he know then that the criminal rarely married? It cannot be said that the criminal's wife is as rare as the Great Auk's egg, but Havelock Ellis states that "among men criminals the celibates are in a very large proportion." And Fere further supports the value of the statement for our present purpose by saying that "criminals and prost.i.tutes have this common character, that they are unproductive. This is true also of vagabonds, and of the idle and vicious generally, to whatever cla.s.s they belong."

Two years' experience as a prison chaplain may not be of much value, but it certainly conveyed the impression that the majority of the criminals were young men who were unmarried.

But Dr Chapple adduces evidence. He tells us of a family in which there were 834 persons the descendants of one woman. Of this family 76 were convicts, 7 were murderers, 142 were beggars, 64 lived on charity. Among their women 181 lived disreputable lives, and in 75 years this family cost their country 250,000 in alms, trials, imprisonments, etc. What family is this? If the following comparison is conclusive in its results then it must be the "Jukes" family.

Dr Chapple's Case. The "Jukes"

Number estimated 834 834 " definitely traced 709 709 " of criminals 76 76 " convicted of murder 7 7 " of beggars 142 142 " receiving alms house relief 64 64 Illegitimates 106 106 Period reviewed 75 years 75 yrs.

Cost to State 250,000 250,000

If it will be allowed that the agreement in these nine lines of statistics establishes the ident.i.ty between the two cases, then the evidence may be examined.

In the first place, the "Jukes" family is the most exceptional one known in the history of crime, and it must be treated as an exception and not as an example. In the second place, these 834 persons were not descended from one woman in 75 years but from FIVE women who were the legitimate and illegitimate daughters of an old Dutch back-woodsman who lived in a rocky part of the State of New York and who is known to criminologists as "Max Jukes." My authority for declaring that there were five female ancestresses during the period reviewed as against one, stated to be the case by Dr Chapple, is Mr R. L. Dugdale, who made a close personal investigation of the life and records of the family. He himself collected the statistics that are given above and which are identical with those given by Dr Chapple's authority, Prof. Pellman, and therefore one must conclude that Prof. Pellman has studied the case at second hand and, in this important detail, is in error.

That 834 persons should have descended from five persons in 75 years covering five generations, exclusive of the 5 ancestresses, does not strike us as evidence of an exceedingly prosperous birth-rate. If there had been another thousand descendants it would not allow for an average of 3 children to grow up and marry in each family. We may then set aside the contention that the "Jukes" were enormously prolific.

Still the "Jukes" were an enormous cost to their country, and surely we should prevent such a family ever appearing in our midst. The answer to this is that the "Jukes" have only appeared once, and, so far as our community is concerned, our social progress makes their reappearance absolutely impossible. The "Jukes" were a tribe of vagabond outlaws.

They gained a livelihood by fishing, hunting, robbery, and intermittent work. They lived in a rocky, inaccessible region in the lake country of the State of New York. Their criminals were able, with a considerable measure of success, to defy the police, and travellers very rarely approached the vicinity of their habitat. Some drifted into the towns and villages. A proportion of these supported themselves by honest industry, and a proportion became a burden upon the rates; Such nests of criminals can exist only in partially civilized countries. The advance of civilization extinguishes them. Nowhere in New Zealand could such a tribe prey upon and defy society for a period of two weeks together. The criminals that we have to deal with are those which society produces not those which it extinguishes.

But if the "Jukes" were at all reproductive what is the difference between them and other cases of criminals? Princ.i.p.ally this, that the "Jukes" formed a little society of their own in which marriage and co-habitation was the rule. Of their women 52 per cent. were disreputable; but Dugdale refuses to call them prost.i.tutes, but rather harlots, indicating that their marital relations were of the order of a progressive polyandry and by no means unproductive. Under these conditions, a fairly large natural increase is not to be wondered at.

No such family has, nor could, exist in the midst of our civilization, but as the case is advanced, not to show a distinct species of criminality, but rather as an example of the rate of natural increase that may be expected of a criminal family, we will examine and compare the conditions of life existing among the "Jukes" and the criminal that we have to deal with and thus discover features among the latter which militate against a large birth-rate; but which are not present among the former.

Our criminals, for the most part, commence their career of crime at an early age. The Rev. W. D. Morrison of Wandsworth Prison, England, declares that the most criminal age is reached between the years of twenty and thirty. This holds good, he says, for Europe, Australia, and the United States.

It is a mistake to suppose that a man first commits crime and then plunges headlong into vice. Though true in some cases, it is exactly the reverse course which is followed in the majority of cases. After having pa.s.sed with a measure of success through the milder domestic and scholastic spheres, the youthful criminal become a failure in the severer social or industrial sphere. Some criminologists go so far as to say that the majority of criminals have displayed distinct evidences of criminality at so early an age as sixteen years. Whatever may have been the cause for committing crime, the crime itself shows that the youth refuses to acknowledge the obligations which an organized society lays upon him. This refusal extends practically throughout the social order, and neither is it confined to this order, but extends also to the moral order and is shown in a total disregard for the matrimonial state. The youth gives way to natural appet.i.tes and a.s.sociates himself with women of low repute. He is of wandering habits, works, when he does work, but intermittently, is restless, and totally disinclined towards matrimony.

Socially, industrially and morally he is unstable. It is these conditions of his life which so contrast him with that species of criminality which the "Jukes" family presents. And it is these same conditions which support the statement of Fere and Ellis, that he is generally a celibate and non-productive. Concerning the progeny of the female criminal there is little to say except that the causes which chiefly account for the male criminal operate to produce the prost.i.tute among women, and therefore criminal women are in a very small minority.

Of these criminal women, Lombroso says that they are monsters who have triumphed over the natural instincts of piety and maternity as well as over their natural weakness. They are bad mothers, and children are a burden to them from which they will readily rid themselves.

Notwithstanding Dr Chapple's evidence, it is conclusive that his statement that criminals have the largest families, is entirely opposed to fact, indeed the exact reverse is the case.

So far as the criminal is concerned, one may well ask whether he has not set himself to the useless task of threshing straw.

The question concerning the proportionate rate of natural increase among all cla.s.ses of society is one which provides one of the fundamentals upon which Dr Chapple has based his proposal. Instead of enquiring into the actualities of this question he has a.s.sumed them, and from his a.s.sumption proceeded to his result. His a.s.sumption that the better cla.s.ses use preventive means which the inferior cla.s.ses do not use, is open to challenge; that there might exist among the inferior cla.s.ses causes peculiar to these cla.s.ses which militate against their increasing naturally, he has failed to notice. There do exist such, and so potent as to disprove entirely his statement that the problem is one for the solution of which we must search deep down in biological truth. The true solution will not be found in biological truth but in sociological truth, and there fairly near the surface.

As Dr Chapple's evidence entirely fails, the conclusions of expert criminologists must be accepted, viz., that criminals are characteristically unproductive, and that, among male criminals, the celibates are in a large majority. As, from these reasons, the vast majority of criminals cannot be the descendants of a criminal ancestry, obviously tubo-ligature will not meet the case.

So far indeed the criminal descendant from criminal stock has alone been considered, whereas a large number of criminals have come from a drunken or from a pauper ancestry. Statistics indicate that 33 per cent. of criminals come from an intemperate ancestry and 2 per cent. from a pauper one. But in both cases, environment has a great deal more to be held responsible for than has heredity. It is the conditions of the home life which make the drunkard's child a criminal, and the same applies with equal force to the pauper's child. So that, if drastic measures are to be taken with these cla.s.ses, surely such measures will proceed gradually from the mean to the extreme, and severe measures will not be employed until milder ones have failed. Where the question is one of environment it is the man's character and habits which have to be dealt with and not his nature. Environment is always capable of modification, and, when improved, the result is invariably a beneficial one for those concerned. So that the least that may be said for the criminal descendants of drunken ancestors is that a better way exists and should, by all moral laws, be first adopted.

Further difficulties, of a physical, rather than moral nature, also exist.

And here again Dr Chapple has a.s.sumed another fundamental position. Is it too much to require of him that he should prove that, where criminals have sprung from a defective ancestry, this defect should be invariably transmitted? That, in short, a criminally defective ancestry is an invariable cause producing a criminal descent. (Note.--By criminally defective ancestry we mean the ancestry from which criminals spring. It may not itself be criminal. It may be drunken or pauper.) Such an important question cannot be a.s.sumed; positive proof is demanded, and this is nowhere forthcoming in Dr Chapple's book.

If it were allowed that criminals were the most prolific of all cla.s.ses of society, this question of heredity would still have to be cleared up before such a proposal as tubo-ligature were seriously discussed, for surely so drastic a remedy would never be employed except under the most positive conditions, that is to say, that this operation would never be employed until it had been ascertained, with scientific precision, that the birth of degenerates, and degenerates only, was being prevented.

Dr Chapple failing to illuminate us upon this point we inquire, does a criminally defective ancestry invariably convey to its offspring a taint disposing it towards crime? Or can it ever be ascertained that a certain given ancestry will certainly produce criminals?

In the treatment of the subject of heredity it has been made clear that on account of the vicious habits of the criminal he is apt to transmit to his offspring a physical defect which will make it difficult for him to adapt himself to the conditions of the society in which he is placed.

This difficulty becomes almost, though not quite, insurmountable when the environment is one in which the practice of vice and dishonesty is easier than that of virtue and thrift.

The transmission of a taint which is a cause of criminality cannot be denied, but the close investigation of the criminal and of his family has revealed the fact that among the comparatively few criminals who are parents they do not all transmit a taint or defect to their offspring, nor among those from whom a taint has been transmitted has it necessarily been transmitted to every child.

The "Jukes" family being the most exceptional of all cases in which criminal heredity may be observed can be investigated for the purposes of discovering the extreme affirmative which the question proposed can give. The answer is an emphatic no. When the "Jukes" intermarried there was, strange as it may seem, almost an entire absence from crime in the family following upon such union. When they married into other families, crime frequently made its appearance. This, at least, shows that an hereditary taint is not invariably conveyed. It may be claimed that it proves that, under certain conditions, such taint is conveyed; but in cases of this nature we do not reach our particular and exclusive affirmatives anything like so rapidly as we reach our particular and exclusive negatives. The negative is often obvious, the affirmative generally remote. It may be that by cross marriages the element of virility, necessary to maintain criminality, is sustained: but if that were so it would be expected that pauperism would necessarily result from consanguineous marriages which is not so far the case as to indicate cause and effect. A more plausible suggestion is that in consanguineous marriages there is a tendency for the family ties to be reunited and the family ideal restored. Such, of course, effectively disposes of criminality. Of the three grandsons of Ada Jukes, who were themselves the sons of her one illegitimate son, their family report is as follows:--The first was licentious, a sheep-stealer, quarrelsome, and an habitual drunkard. He married a disreputable woman and had several children. Of his seven boys, five were criminals. The second grandson kept a tavern and a brothel and was a thief. He married a brothel keeper. Of his six sons, two were criminals. The third grandson was industrious but occasionally intemperate. He married a woman addicted to the opium habit. Of his four sons, none were criminals. These are fairly average cases, and they, at least, affirm very distinctly that the criminal does not always transmit a taint to his child which will dispose that child towards crime.

Although in the cases cited above only some 40 per cent. of the children were criminals, it must, however, be observed that a great deal of criminality goes unpunished, so that we might fix the average at 75 per cent. and be more exact. Of the 75 per cent. we must find out whether their heredity or their environment was the cause of their being criminal. Dugdale's observations led him to conclude that heredity is a latent cause which requires environment for its development. These 75 per cent., however, will be referred to again. There being 25 per cent.

honest and industrious, brings us face to face with a question affecting the morality of Dr Chapple's proposal.

Since then all the children of criminal ancestry are not themselves criminal or likely to become criminals through an hereditary taint, can a proposal be accepted which would not only prevent the birth of the hereditary criminal, but would also prevent the birth of several persons who would have become good and useful citizens.

Thus far only the criminal descended from a criminal ancestry has been considered, whereas, as was stated previously, there are a considerable number of criminals termed "hereditary" criminals who are descended from a drunken ancestry. The proportion of these is about 33 per cent. of the whole. The impossibility of the success of Dr Chapple's remedy is very apparent from the insurmountable difficulties that would be experienced in determining with exact.i.tude when a person was so degenerate in his own system as to make it positive that his prospective offspring would be born a criminal defective. Uncertainty, in this matter, reigns supreme.

There must remain then but very little support for Dr Chapple's proposal when we discover firstly:--that the criminal is very rarely a parent, and secondly:--that in every case a taint is not transmitted from parent to child. Its sphere of effectiveness is restricted by the very circ.u.mstances of the case, and even within that restricted sphere its operation would be most clumsy for it would prevent the birth of all a criminal's children, good and bad alike. Thus it would become both a moral and economic failure.

Dr Chapple has taken it for granted that a criminal's rate of increase is at least equal to the average if not indeed, for certain reasons, considerably greater, and that he in all cases transmits an hereditary taint to his offspring. Then he seeks for a remedy whereby the transmission of this taint may be avoided and he can find none other than one which prevents the very possibility of the prospective child being born. Before coming to such a drastic conclusion enquiry might have been made to discover whether there might not exist a remedy which would be a remedy in the truest sense. That is a remedy which would, while it would prevent the transmission of the taint, yet it would not interfere with reproduction. Such a remedy would be in fact a method for the reformation of the criminal, for if the criminal were reformed the problem would be solved. If he were transformed into an honest and industrious man then the transmission of the criminal taint is at once prevented. There are some, however, who maintain that the criminal is incorrigible and that reformatory agencies have invariably failed. They look upon all attempts on behalf of the criminal as a useless expenditure of energy and money. This question of the possibility or otherwise of the reform of the criminal must now be settled before we can proceed further.

Is the criminal incorrigible? Some criminals do not ever reform because they cannot. These are insane. Some do not because they will not; but these may. The many who pa.s.s through our gaols and show no signs of reform does not prove that although they may reform they never will. If nine hundred and ninety-nine cases were observed of men resisting reform it would not prove the impossibility of reforming the thousandth. It would point to the difficulty, the remote probability or the need of different methods; but it would not determine the impossibility. When the term "incorrigible" is applied to certain criminals it does not mean that these men are incapable of reform; but they are RESISTING reform; and no one can tell when or whether the most obstinate of these will surrender his will to the dictates of conscience and commence a life of reform. The possibility is always an open question. No better testimony can be brought forward than that of Mr Z. R. Brockway, late Superintendent of the New York State Reformatory at Elmira. Mr Brockway is one of the pioneers in reformatory work and is considered the greatest living authority upon the subject. Some 10,000 felons have pa.s.sed through their hands. Speaking at the Fourth International Prison Congress held in St. Petersburg in 1890 he said:--"There is a sense in which nothing that lives is incapable of betterment, and so strictly speaking there are no incorrigible criminals. If it is possible to grasp the thought and cherish it, we should endeavour to discover in the very worst characters some spark of humanity which unites us all in ties of relationship, some secret soul-chambers where superhuman influences may find lodgment, and so with good leaven pervade the whole man; at least we may find in our sphere a field for most fascinating scientific research and experiment.

"I record it as my own conviction, after nearly a lifetime spent with and for criminals, that alike for all, corrigible and incorrigible, the aim to accomplish reformation is a true one. It most surely supplies all possible repression upon the criminal cla.s.ses in society.... The aim of reformations is absolutely essential to any good degree of public protection from crimes.... Mr F. Ammetybock, Director of the Penitentiary of Vridsloselille, Denmark, added:--I would not dare charge as incorrigible one of the 3,000 criminals who have been confided to my care.... During my career as a prison officer, I have seen many criminals who offered, humanly speaking, characteristic signs of incorrigibility and who now and for a long time had led respectable lives.... I believe that other prison officers as well as philanthropists, can confirm the truth of my experience, and I hope that many will protest against the theory of incorrigibility and place in the balance their experience against purely abstract ideas."

On the other hand, it must be admitted that several criminologists emphatically declare that the "instinctive" criminal (or "born" criminal to use Lombroso's term) is incorrigible. Garofalo takes such a hopeless view of the matter as to demand his elimination by death, but none of these men, eminent criminologists as they may be, have studied reformatory science experimentally. Mr Brockway's testimony should be taken as final seeing that of the 12,000 felons who have pa.s.sed through the Elmira Reformatory, 82 per cent. have reformed, i.e., have not returned to criminal practices. The statistics for the year 1903 are as follows:--

Total number of those paroled 445 Served well and earned absolute release 143 Correspondence and good conduct and maintained (parole not expired) 238 Died, doing well until time of death 1 Released by Special Executive Clemency, doing well 1 Returned to Europe by permission 1 ---- 384 or 86 per cent

Returned to Reformatory for violation of parole 15 or 33 "

_Probably returned to crime._ Those who ceased correspondence while on parole and were lost sight of 37 Known to have returned to crime 9 -- 46 or 10 "

It will be seen that while the Reformatory claims only 86 per cent. of reforms, there were only 9 persons (or 2 per cent. of the whole) who were KNOWN to have certainly returned to crime.

This exhibit is conclusive. Reformatory Science, which is yet but in its infancy, can already deal successfully with by far the greatest proportion of criminals, and this success at this stage guarantees a much larger measure in the future. It is clear then upon the statements of the highest authorities that the criminal is not incorrigible, and that the prison (penal) system compares so unfavourably with the reformatory system that it ought to be abolished in favour of it. The system in vogue at the Elmira Reformatory will be described in a later chapter, and there it will be shown that the methods employed are upon a most scientific basis and that the results obtained cannot fail to satisfy the most exacting. It will be seen that by a "reformed" man is meant a man who can and will adapt himself to the conditions of society; a man sound in mind, healthy in body, industrious and honest in habit.

Concerning this man's progeny, what have we to fear? It is in this way that we may dispose of the proportion of 75 per cent. of criminal children descended from criminal ancestry. It should here be again observed that the majority of criminals commence their career in crime at a very early age, and that therefore the reform of almost all criminals may be undertaken before they are likely to become parents.

Again, true reformatory science forbids the release of any criminal from custody who has not given satisfactory evidence of reform.

Thus reformatory science effectually guarantees society against the evil that Dr Chapple has proposed to eradicate, and it does it by a method compared with which tubo-ligature is most crude.

The criminal is either set free as a reformed man or is to be kept in captivity because his resistance to reformatory discipline has shown him to be unfit to rightly use his liberty.

Not only are the chances of his becoming the parent of criminally disposed children effectually removed but he is himself transformed from having a negative to having a positive social value.

Dr Chapple's study convinces him that the cause of the startling increase of crime, insanity, and pauperism is to be found "deep down in biological truth. Society is breeding from defective stock." Dr Waddell, who writes the preface of the "Fertility of the Unfit," is so alarmed as to declare that "our civilization is in imminent peril of being swamped by the increasingly disproportionate progeny of the criminal." The most superficial observation of the life of the criminal would have shown both these writers that criminal habits militated substantially against the probability of a natural increase.

To repeat what Fere and Havelock Ellis both emphatically declare that the criminal and the pauper do not reproduce their kind is but to show that the cause of the natural increase of the criminal is NOT to be found in biological truth, neither is our society in any danger of being swamped by an increasingly disproportionate progeny of the criminal. In short, society has no enemy in Nature.

The true cause for the increase of the numbers of the criminal is to be found in sociological and not in biological truth. As Laca.s.sagne says: "Society has the criminals that it deserves."

Dr MacDonald, W.S. Expert in Criminology, writes to the author, "As to tubo-ligature, or the like, it would not be supported by scientists."

If, however, there were absolutely no scientific objection to the proposal that the Doctor advances, if, that is, the basal facts were exactly he a.s.sumes them to be, would then his remedy be secure from attack? Most emphatically not. For is it not possible, nay with the present shrinking from maternity so widespread, is it not highly probable that the measure would be greatly abused? Thousands as the Doctor himself says would avail themselves of it to-morrow, and for the simple reason that they wish to escape from the responsibilities of bringing up children. Thousands would no doubt repudiate their debts to-morrow if they might do so with impunity, but their wish in the matter scarcely establishes the course as being a desirable one or one calculated to promote the happiness of society.