Criminal Sociology Part 2

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 a.s.sault and Wounding ...

Illegally carrying Arms ...... - 8 7 - 3 3 Resistance to Authority, a.s.saults 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. s.e.xual crimes and offences (as we saw in the case of rape), such as abortion, adultery, indecent a.s.saults, 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.sent, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance affecting all alike, with a few it is an exceptional constraint of pa.s.sion, a sort of psychological tempest, which drives them into crime.

Thus, then, the entire body of criminals may be cla.s.sed in five categories, which as early as 1880 I described as criminal madmen, born criminals, criminals by contracted habits, occasional criminals, and criminals of pa.s.sion.

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, cla.s.sifying 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sification of symptoms.

In the first place, it is evident that in a cla.s.sification 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 const.i.tute 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, ill.u.s.trated 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 ident.i.ty 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 doc.u.ments, and the like, such as Pa.s.sanante, 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 cla.s.sical 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 s.e.xual psychopathy. Yet again there are such as are tainted with hereditary madness, and especially the epileptics and epileptoids, who may also be a.s.signed to the cla.s.s of born criminals, according to the plausible hypothesis of Lombroso as to the fundamental ident.i.ty 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 pet.i.te et grande Roquette," Paris, 1884, ii. 440.

The born criminals and the occasional criminals const.i.tute the majority of the characteristic and diverse types of homicide and thief. Prison governors call them "gaol-birds." They pa.s.s 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 const.i.tution. 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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sociations 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 p.r.o.ne to it. And society, which thus abandons them, before and after they leave their prison, to wretchedness, idleness, and temptations, gives them no a.s.sistance in their struggle to gain an honest livelihood, even when it does not thrust them back into crime by hara.s.sing 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sizes 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 a.s.sizes 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, a.s.saults, and wounding 1.6 " 1.5 " " incendiarism... ... ... ... 1.8 " 2 " " indecent a.s.sault ... ... ... 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 a.s.sIZE 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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.saults 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]