Criminal Sociology Part 4

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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sification which shall correspond more accurately with the facts of the case. This cla.s.sification, 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 cla.s.sifications of criminals. .h.i.therto given are not essentially and integrally distinct. It has been seen, as a matter of fact, that all the cla.s.sifications which have been set forth amount to a recognition of four types, the born, the insane, the occasional criminals, and the criminals of pa.s.sion; 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 cla.s.sifications 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 cla.s.sification of criminals are due in some measure to the different points of view taken by observers. For instance, the cla.s.sification of Laca.s.sagne, Joly, Krauss, Badik, and Marro rest upon a purely descriptive criterion of the organic or psychological characteristics of criminals. The cla.s.sifications 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 a.s.sistance of released prisoners, on their tendency to relapse.

My own point of view, on the contrary, has been general and reproductive, for my cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sification 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 pa.s.s on from purely legal descriptions of crimes to the genetic knowledge of the criminals who commit these crimes.

For this reason all the chief cla.s.sifications 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 cla.s.sification 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 princ.i.p.al criminal types.

But whatever cla.s.sification 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 compa.s.s 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 cla.s.sification 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 circ.u.mstances 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, s.e.x, 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 cla.s.sical work, has made but a rapid enumeration of the princ.i.p.al points:-race civilisation, poverty, heredity, age s.e.x, civil status, profession, education, organic anomalies, sensations imitation. Morselli, treating of suicide, has given a fuller cla.s.sification 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-cla.s.ses, according as we regard the criminal organically physically, or socially.

The organic const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution 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, s.e.x; 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 circ.u.mstances; the system of education; industrial pursuits; alcoholism; economic and political conditions; public administration, justice and police; and in general, legislative, civil and penal inst.i.tutions. 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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sification 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 const.i.tution, acting in a particular physical and social environment.

Therefore it is far from being exact to a.s.sert 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 cla.s.ses 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 const.i.tuents, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.ses of crimes against the person, against property, and against personal purity, it is evident that each cla.s.s of determining causes, but especially the biological and social conditions, have a distinctly different influence in evolving homicide, theft, or indecent a.s.saults. 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 a.s.saults. 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 a.s.saults, 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.xual 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 const.i.tution, 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 pa.s.sion and indecent a.s.saults 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.