Criminal Sociology Part 1

Criminal Sociology.

by Enrico Ferri.

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 subst.i.tution 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 circ.u.mstance 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 inst.i.tute 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.

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 cla.s.sical 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 ent.i.ty 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 cla.s.ses of criminals; but, as a fundamental principle of a scientific theory, it has pa.s.sed away.

Hitherto, then, the cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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. .h.i.therto 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 a.s.sizes, 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 t.i.tle from its studies of anthropology; it is still commonly regarded as little more than a "criminal anthropology school." And though this t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sions 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, Carda.n.u.s, 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, d.u.c.h.enne, 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 a.s.serted 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 cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.sical 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 Quatref.a.ges, 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 const.i.tution, 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 cla.s.sical observers of crime study various offences in their abstract character, on the a.s.sumption 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 princ.i.p.al 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 const.i.tution, 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 ac.u.men 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.