It is useless, or worse than useless, to occupy ourselves with methods for improving the treatment of criminals, so long as the conditions of life render the prison a welcome and desired shelter. So long as we foster the growth of the reckless classes we foster the growth of criminality. So long as there are a large body of women in the East of London, and in other large centres, who are prepared to say: “It’s Jack the Ripper or the bridge with me. What’s the odds?”[118] there will be a still larger number of persons who will willingly accept the risks of prison. “What’s the odds?” Liberty is dear to every man who is fed and clothed and housed, and he will not usually enter a career of crime unless he has carefully calculated the risks of losing his liberty and found them small; but food and shelter are even more precious than liberty, and these may be secured in a prison. As things are, the asylum and the workhouse, against which there is a deep prejudice, ingrained and irrational, would have a greater deterring influence than the prison. There are every morning at Paris 50,000 persons who do not know how they will eat or where they will sleep.[119] It is the same in every great city; for such the prison can be nothing but a home. It is well known that the lot of the convict, miserable as it is, with its dull routine and perpetual surveillance, is yet easier, less laborious, and far more healthy than that to which thousands of honest working men are condemned throughout Great Britain. The fate reserved for a French convict is one that might well be the reward of honesty. He is sent to New Caledonia, to marry, to settle, perhaps to become rich. “I do not know,” an ex-deputy, sent out to report on the condition of the convicts, is said to have declared, “any struggling peasant or small proprietor in France who would not gladly exchange his lot for that of a convict of the first class in New Caledonia.” “The working classes,” as Professor Prins, one of the most able and thoughtful students of this subject, remarks, “badly housed, badly nourished, vegetate at the mercy of economic crises.[120] The worker is always on the borders of vagabondage; the vagabond is always on the borders of crime. The entire working classes are thus exposed in the first line, and whether it is a question of disease or of crime, it is they who succumb first.”[121] Crime would be much commoner than it is if it were not for the communistic practice of mutual helpfulness which rules so largely among the poorest classes, and mitigates the stress of misery. All the more thoughtful students of the criminal, among whom Ferri in this respect stands first, have seen the direct bearing on criminality of what Colajanni has called Social Hygiene. We may neglect the problems of social organisation, but we do so at our peril.
It was at one time thought that the great panacea for the prevention of crime was education. Undoubtedly education has an important bearing on criminality, but we now know that the mere intellectual rudiments of education have very little influence indeed in preventing crime, though they may have a distinct influence in modifying its forms. Such education merely puts a weapon into the hands of the anti-social man. The only education that can avail to prevent crime in any substantial degree must be education in the true sense, an education that is as much physical and moral as intellectual, an education that enables him who has it to play a fair part in social life. The proportion of criminals with some intellectual education is now becoming very large; the proportion of criminals who are acquainted with any trade still remains very small; the proportion of criminals engaged in their trade at the time of the crime is smaller still. We seem to be approaching a point at which it will become obvious that every citizen must be educated to perform some useful social function. In the interests of society he must be enabled to earn his living by that function. If we close the social ranks against him he will enter the anti-social ranks, and the more educated he is the more dangerous he will then become.
All education must include provision for the detection and special treatment of abnormal children. We cannot catch our criminals too young. Taverni has found that criminals in childhood are marked especially by their resistance to educative influences. It is our duty and our interest to detect such refractory and abnormal children at the earliest period, to examine them carefully, and to ensure that each shall have the treatment best adapted to him. It is much easier, and much cheaper, to do that, than to wait until he has brought ruin on himself and shame on his friends. This is beginning to be recognised and acted upon in those countries that are most alive to the meaning of education; in Sweden, for instance, there is a careful medical supervision of schools, by medical officers who are not subordinate to the teachers, although this supervision is confined to the physical condition and capacities of the child. It is indispensable, if we are to deal effectually with the criminal, that we should be able to refer to the record of his physical, mental, and moral dispositions during childhood. In England recently a committee, consisting of the most eminent medical men specially qualified for the task, was appointed to examine into the condition of children in primary schools. This committee, owing chiefly to the enthusiasm and labour of Dr. Francis Warner, accomplished much valuable work, but the London School Board refused to allow any access to its schools. The London School Board consists, one may suppose, of intelligent persons, genuinely interested in education, and representing the sense of the community, yet they refused to consider one of the most serious problems that the educator has to face. So true it is that every society has only the criminals that it deserves.
While a wise modification of the educative influences is here of the greatest importance, we must not forget that to a very large extent the child is moulded before birth. There is no invariable fatalism in the influences that work before birth, but it must always make a very great difference whether a man is well born and starts happily, or whether he is heavily handicapped at the very outset of the race of life; whether a man is born free from vices of nature, or buys freedom, if at all, at a great price. There is evidence to show how much of the welfare of the child depends on the general physical and emotional health of the parents, and that the child’s fate may be determined by some physical weakness, some emotional trouble at conception or during pregnancy. No legislation can step in here, save at the most very indirectly. We can, however, quicken the social and individual conscience. The making of children is the highest of all human functions, and that which carries the most widespread and incalculable consequences. It is well to remember that every falling away from health, every new strain and stress, in man or woman, may lay an additional burden on a man or woman yet unborn, and perhaps wreck a life or a succession of lives.
This is not the place to develop these various consequences which flow from our consideration of the nature and treatment of the criminal. It seemed well, however, to indicate them, if only to show how large a problem is this of criminality. Perhaps every social problem, when we begin to look into it and to turn it round and to analyse it, will be found not to stand alone, but to be made up of fibres that extend to every part of our social life.
APPENDIX A.
FRONTISPIECE.
Composite photograph of twenty criminals--“dullards”--in the Elmira Reformatory. It may be compared with Plates XIV. and XV. I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Hamilton Wey for these photographs.
PLATE I.
1. S. E., age 32. Life sentence. Third time a convict, and he says “all for the same man.” His story is that he was flogged by the mate of his ship at Callao, that he jumped with the mate into the water, and after a chase on shore he stabbed him. He speaks of the mate as his lifelong enemy. Height 6ft. 0¼ in. without boots. Very powerful. A most determined villainous expression, but a massive forehead. Small compressed mouth. Attempted suicide at Millbank. Lost left arm at Woking from disease of elbow joint.
2. T. W., murderer.
3. G. W., gardener, age 86; seven years for uttering counterfeit coin. Three previous short sentences.
4. J. C., farm labourer, from Nottingham, age 62; ten years’ sentence; petty thefts many times. Fourth time a convict.
5. A. J., from Paisley, age 50; cattle stealing; two years a soldier; “could not learn the bugle-calls or anything.” Weak-minded; most of life in prison; three terms of penal servitude; eleven shorter sentences.
6. P. J., charcoal burner and collier, from Hereford, age 36; unlawfully and maliciously wounding; “low type of intellect.” Very troublesome at Chatham, and among the weak-minded at Millbank. One previous sentence of penal servitude.
PLATE II.
1. T. C., chemist, from Portsea, age 21. Paid his addresses to girl whose mother objected; attempted to murder latter by administering prussic acid. Eight years’ penal servitude. Valvular disease of heart after rheumatic fever.
2. G. H., farm labourer, from Leeds, age 50; “very low type;” twenty years for shooting wife.
3. J. H., soldier and navvy, from Durham, age 60; conspiring to murder.
4. J. C., from Liverpool, fifteen years for manslaughter.
5. E. L., dock labourer, from Bristol. Life sentence for murdering wife’s paramour; genitals undeveloped; fatty tumours on scapula.
6. W. G. H., from Lincoln, age 12. Manslaughter; fifteen years. Second and third toes webbed.
PLATE III.
1. R. W., dock labourer, from Paisley, age 18. Assault and robbery; ten years. Previous conviction for theft.
2. E. S. J., farm labourer, age 38; seven years for horse-stealing and other thefts; four previous convictions.
3. W. W., stone-masons’ labourer, from Kirkdale, age 21; seven years and flogged for robbery with violence. Three previous shorter sentences.
4. G. W., puddler, from Salford, age 21; five years for wounding.
5. W. S., cook and steward, from Liverpool; ten years for larceny; five years previously for ditto.
6. W. C., age 25. Robbery with violence; ten years. Two shorter sentences.
PLATE IV.
1. J. J., hawker, from Hull; seven years for theft.
2. J. M., age 28; eight years a tailor, “rest of life a thief.” Seven years for larceny, housebreaking, and receiving.
3. V. M., maker of pearl ornaments, from Birmingham, age 20. Thief chiefly; twelve times in prison.
4. J. W., collier, from Durham; seven years for felony; seven shorter sentences previously. Right eye destroyed.
5. W. T., farm labourer, from Hereford, age 21; ten years for receiving stolen goods.
6. N. K., collier, from Gloucester; seven years for receiving joint of a sheep, stolen and cut up by another; previous conviction for stealing fellow-labourer’s dinner. “Low type; history told as if it was all a joke.”
PLATE V.
1. J. H., from Chester, age 21; five years for burglary. In reformatory and seven times in prison. “Very prominent forehead; small eyes nearly concealed by upper lid.”
3. S. P.. age 35; weaver, from Wakefield; ten years’ penal servitude for felony; five years previously.
4. J. P., costermonger; seven years; house and general thief.
5. D. M., a Greek, age 16; letter sorter; five years for stealing parcels. His father had been in penal servitude for stealing bonds.
6. H. S., letter-sorter, age 21. Five years for stealing a letter.
PLATE VI.
2. W. W., age 45; coal miner and stoker, from Stafford; rape on child of 10. “Strong, villainous expression.”
3. H. O., groom and jockey, from Leeds, age 57. Bestiality; fifteen years’ penal servitude; conspiracy by servant girl, he says. Threatened to destroy himself. “Eyes very close to the nose; small head; low type.”
4. W. M., age 32, from Manchester; nine years a soldier, farm labourer before and since; ten years for crime _contra naturam_.
5. T. R., age 16; farm labourer, from Worcester; ten years for rape; “monkey face.”
6. W. B., age 23, from Manchester; height 5ft. 0½ in.; seven years for arson; intellect feeble.
PLATE VII.
_Relation of the age of Fathers in normal subjects, criminals, and the insane (adapted from Marro)._ PLATE VIII.
PLATE VIII.
Tattooed criminal from Lombroso’s _Uomo Delinquente_. A French sailor, a deserter, previously condemned for an unknown crime. The various inscriptions and designs bear witness to his vicious and criminal tastes. The heart’s case, for instance, is common among pæderasts.
PLATE IX.
The eight heads in this and the following Plate have been chosen, intentionally, almost at random, in order to show the average types of criminal with whom the London police at Scotland Yard have to deal.
2. C. D., age 31. Housebreaker. “A dangerous character.” Many scars on head, body, and limbs.
3. H. A. G., age 36. “A very clever swindler,” “of gentlemanly appearance, and good address.” Speaks French and German.
4. W. A., age 42. “A desperate burglar, and will assuredly use firearms.” A smith, native of Middlesex. Several scars.
PLATE X.
1. J. C., age 32. Shoemaker by trade, native of London. “A daring burglar; will probably use firearms.” Tattooed.
2. M. A. L., age 28. Factory hand, born at Sheffield. “A dangerous thief,” who has had eight years’ penal servitude for assault and robbery.
4. R. W., age 23. Born at Hartlepool. “A dangerous man.” Larceny.
PLATE XI.
The heads in this and the following Plate are chiefly Italian, and taken from Lombroso’s _Uomo Delinquente_.
1. Desroues, poisoner.
2. Cartouche.
4. Incendiary (and cinæedus) of Pesaro, nicknamed “the woman.”
PLATE XII. ITALIAN BRIGANDS.
1. A Calabrian brigand.
2. Carbone, a brigand chief.
3. A Basilicata brigand.
4. Venafro di Caspoli, brigand.
PLATE XIII. FRENCH CRIMINALS (from Corre’s _Les Criminels_).
1. Tropmann, an Alsatian mechanic, aged 19, who assassinated a family of eight persons.
2. Pranzini, thief, and murderer of three persons.
3. Oillic, age 27, Breton sailor, leader in the murder of the officers of the _Fœderis Arca_. Hair black, laughs continually, very energetic, very intemperate “without ever losing his head.”
4. Carbuccia, age 26, a Corsican, who co-operated very actively in the same tragedy. Abandoned in childhood; very intelligent and very violent. Intemperate; handwriting tremulous like that of an old man.
PLATE XIV.
Composite photograph of eleven criminals undergoing physical training at Elmira.
PLATE XV.
Composite photograph of thirty-eight criminals undergoing physical training at Elmira.
APPENDIX B.
_The Congress of Criminal Anthropology at Paris._ The second International Congress of Criminal Anthropology was held in August 1889 at Paris, in the large amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine. A very considerable audience assembled here during the week over which the Congress extended. Many distinguished representatives of science, law, medicine, and the administrative world came from very various countries, and official representatives were present from France, Italy, Russia, Holland, Belgium, the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Roumania, Servia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, and Hawaii. Great Britain, it will be observed, was only conspicuous by its absence. Among those who took part in the proceedings of the Congress may be mentioned M. Thévenet, the Minister of Justice, Dr. Brouardel, the Dean of the Medical Faculty of Paris, and President of the Congress, MM. Théophile Roussel, Lombroso, Ferri, Garofalo, Moleschott, Lacassagne, Demange, Van Hamel, Semal, Ladame, Benedikt, Tarde, Wilson, Tenchini, Motet, Manouvrier, Alphonse Bertillon, Bournet, Féré, Coutagne, Letourneau, Mme. Clémence Royer, Drill, Clark Bell, Magnan, Topinard, Delasiauve, and the General Secretary of the Congress, Dr. Magitot.
In his opening discourse Dr. Brouardel remarked that the Italian school had the great merit of taking up again the study of a question with which philosophy, law, and medicine have always been occupied. Every time in the history of a country that philosophic studies have free expansion, the desire to safeguard society, the spirit of toleration, the methods for ameliorating the fate of the guilty, of protecting them from themselves, and of taking them out of the environment which educates them to crime, have been the object of the meditation and study of great thinkers; and their conceptions have eventually conquered public opinion. It has been the honour of the Italian school--in the land where Roman law, the foundation of all law, was born--that it has again put into the crucible this problem of criminality, and that it has proceeded to the analysis of that problem by the only truly scientific method--by studying the psychology of criminals, and their pathological abnormalities. It will be its distinction to have declared against illusory enthusiasms, and to have founded a science which will contribute to the more efficacious protection of society.
The first communication came from Lombroso, as the recognised chief of the Italian school. He summarised what he believed to be the most important abnormal physical characteristics found among criminals--the presence of cranial and facial asymmetry, precocious synostosis, unusual frequency of left-handedness, large orbits, prominence of zygoma, large median occipital fossa, frequency of tattooing, etc. These characters, he considered, were all due to pathological causes. The discussion was at once commenced by M. Manouvrier. He began by declaring that he was by no means an antagonist of the Italian school. He granted that it had been proved that physical abnormalities are more common among criminals than among the ordinary population, but he claimed due consideration for the influence of environment; crime is a sociological matter much more than a physiological matter. M. Dimitri Drill said that, strictly speaking, there is no criminal type; there are, as Morel had shown, organic conditions of defect and degeneration, but criminality remained above all a social question. MM. Pugliese and Garofalo expressed very similar opinions. M. Lacassagne pointed out that we too often forget the factor of misery in the production of crime; he meant not merely social misery, but physiological misery, of which the origin was intra-uterine. As regards poverty, M. Garofalo could not share Lacassagne’s views; his investigations had shown that the number of criminals furnished by the middle classes is, proportionately, quite equal to that furnished by the lower classes, while for some kinds of crime the upper classes gave a higher figure than the lower. Mme. Clémence Royer called attention to the importance of hybridism in the genesis of crime. The recrudescences of criminality, she remarked, correspond to the great epochs of the mingling of races. Benedikt spoke of the relation between insanity and crime; the criminal is a diseased person, he held, or a lunatic, and we must consider the molecular troubles of the cerebral substance as well as the external physical signs. After M. Tarde, speaking as a _juge d’instruction_, had admitted the existence both of the organic predispositions to crime, and the influence of the social environment, M. Brouardel joined in the discussion. Crime should not, he said, be regarded as the result of any single isolated cause, physical, moral, or social, but of all those causes at once. The diagnosis of the criminal must be subordinated to the same rules as the diagnosis of a disease; that is to say, it is made up of related and simultaneous conditions. A single sign is insufficient to reveal the criminal, just as a single symptom will not prove typhoid fever. Professor Ferri well summed up the morning’s discussion. Crime, he admitted, is a very complex phenomenon; it is a sort of polyhedron, of which every one sees a special side. All the points of view maintained that day were, at the same time, true and incomplete. Lombroso had brought to light the biological side of crime, but that was not the whole of it. Drill, Dekteren, and Manouvrier had shown the social side; Pugliese the legal side, which is a more special aspect of the social side. Tarde, the sympathetic critic of criminal anthropology, had not left out of sight the physiological side of crime. We must, like Moleschott and Brouardel, proceed synthetically, for crime is at once a biological and a social phenomenon. He recalled a saying of Lacassagne’s at the previous Congress, that the criminal is a microbe which only flourishes in a suitable soil. Without doubt it is the environment which makes the criminal; but, like the cultivation medium, without the microbe it is powerless to germinate crime. Both biological and social aspects are fundamental in criminality, and they constitute the two essential data of criminal anthropology.
Dr. Semal, Director of the Mons Lunatic Asylum, and the official delegate of the Belgian Government, presided at the afternoon session, when various communications of a somewhat miscellaneous character were brought forward.
On the following morning Professor Van Hamel, of Amsterdam, presided, and M. Manouvrier brought forward again the question of anatomical criminal characteristics and their illusory character. M. Lombroso defended himself with his usual energy and spirit, pointing out the distinction between the instinctive criminal and the occasional criminal. He explained that he had himself given so much attention to the biological factor in criminality, although he was, above all, an alienist, because it had previously been entirely neglected. He admitted that his conclusions had sometimes been too rash, although founded on the observation of now nearly 27,000 individuals by himself and others, but he had always been ready to give up an indefensible position. The atavism of criminals, he now believed, may largely be explained by morbid causes. The discussion was carried on by other members, and was sufficient, in the opinion of M. Garofalo, to show that the divergence of ideas was more apparent than real; those who far off seem adversaries, are found on nearer view to be partisans. On his proposition, it was decided by the Congress that it is desirable to continue on the largest scale the comparative study of criminals and normal persons, subjecting them to a severe and minute examination, in order to ascertain the physical differences which separate them. On the proposition of M. Lacassagne, it was unanimously agreed that access to prisons ought to be made easier, and that the bodies of executed criminals should be available for scientific study.
At the afternoon session, presided over by Professor Ferri, Dr. Coutagne read a paper on “The Influence of Professions on Criminality.” Mr. Wilson followed on “The Statistics of Crime in the United States,” in which he referred to the necessity of creating international criminal statistics, permitting of the comparative study of crime among different nations. M. Laschi brought forward an interesting communication on “Political Crime from the point of view of Anthropology,” in which he spoke of the bearing of race on politics, and also on genius; and M. Giampietro dealt with “The Moral Responsibility of Deaf-mutes in relation to Legislation.”
On Wednesday morning Baron Garofalo read an important paper on the question whether, when an individual’s guilt has been recognised, the class of criminals to which he belongs can be determined by criminal anthropology. This question was discussed from, necessarily, a somewhat legal point of view, with Garofalo’s customary ability and clearness. He was not concerned, he said, with the recognition of the criminal, but with his classification, and in criminal anthropology we must give the first place to psychology. He insisted on the necessity for the careful psychical examination of the criminal, although it is necessary also to consider his physical nature; while sometimes even the character of the crime is sufficient to class the criminal. Uniformity of punishment is a manifest absurdity; and he referred to the progress already made in France by the recognition of the gravity of incorrigible recidivism. The old criminal law only recognised two terms, the _offence_ and the _punishment_. The new criminology recognises three terms, the _crime_, the _criminal_, and the _method of repression_. Criminal law, he concluded, must not be treated as a detached and isolated science; it must be subordinated to psychology and to anthropology, or it will be powerless to interpret and to determine, in any enlightened legislation, the true classification of criminals. M. Alimena, a young Italian lawyer, thought that the considerations brought forward by Garofalo furnished presumptions only, and not judicial certainties. After a lively episode between M. Benedikt and M. Lombroso, M. Brouardel, bringing the discussion back to the point, remarked that the problem proposed by Garofalo--the classification of criminals--can only be resolved by the totality of the evidence. The complete investigation of the criminal can alone enlighten justice. The crime by itself is insufficient to class the criminal, just as the most senseless act is not enough to characterise a lunatic. The morning session was closed by some remarks from M. Herbette, the official director of the _Administration Pénitentiaire_. The Administration, he observed, were following the results of criminal anthropology with close attention, ready to adopt all conclusions that were proved, as they had already adopted some. While recommending zeal and confidence in the pursuit of these studies, he urged that the conclusions should be as mature and as assured as possible, or criminal anthropology would risk its authority and _prestige_.
At the afternoon session, presided over by Professor Ladame (Geneva), M. Ferri read a paper on the determining conditions of crime--individual, physical, and social--and their relative value. M. Ferri is one of the most accomplished and philosophic advocates of the new criminal anthropology, and his paper, and its subsequent eloquent elucidations, were listened to with great attention. Crime, he said, is at once biological and social. Out of 100 persons living in the same conditions of misery and abandonment, 60 commit no crimes; of the other 40, 5 commit suicide; 5 become insane, 5 are beggars, 25 commit crimes; therefore the social environment is not the exclusive cause of crime. But, again, we must not neglect the social environment, for, to mention one piece of evidence only, the maximum of crimes against property is reached in winter. And, again, the most delicate biological modifications must be considered, for rapes and crimes of violence are most common when the temperature is high, and climate and barometrical pressure play a certain part. If the thermometer had marked ten degrees less, or the barometer a few millimetres more, perhaps such and such a crime would not have been committed. The conclusion is that, on the one hand, we must ameliorate social conditions for the natural prevention of crime, and on the other hand exercise measures of temporary or perpetual elimination of individuals, according as the biological conditions in each case seem more or less curable. M. Alimena attached great importance to education, especially to its hereditary effects. The criminal ought not to be able to say to his judge: “Why have you not made me better?” He agreed with the words of Lacassagne at the former Congress at Rome: “Societies have the criminals that they deserve.” M. Manouvrier considered that Ferri did not attach enough importance to the social factor; no two persons lived in the same social environment. This was also the opinion of M. Drill. M. Tarde expounded his views as to the characteristics of criminals being due to the professional exercise of crime. M. Féré would not believe in any professional type until it had been established by precise measurements. The discussion on the whole showed that, as M. Van Hamel said, society to defend itself must have an eye on every side.
On Thursday the members of the Congress visited Sainte-Anne, where M. Magnan demonstrated the subject of degeneration. They also visited the Prefecture of Police, where M. Alphonse Bertillon showed his anthropometrical method of identifying criminals in action, and M. Moleschott succeeded with little trouble in identifying a man who had given a false name.
On Friday morning M. Tarde presided, and M. Pugliese, of Trani (Italy), read a report on the criminal trial from the sociological point of view. The evidence which demonstrates the existence of a crime and of a criminal can only be duly weighed by a magistrate possessing much technical knowledge. It is not enough for him to be a judge or a jurist; he must be well acquainted with anthropological and sociological science; he must know the environment in which crime is produced, and the people who are born to live and die in this environment. He advocated the establishment by the State of a college for the education of magistrates. At present there is great confusion, and the magistrate is called upon to decide complex questions of which he is quite ignorant. The duty of the judge to demand the decision of science with the power to tread it under foot was a manifest contradiction. It was not reasonable that a medico-legal judgment should be over-ridden by a jury, and it was time to reverse the ancient maxim that the judge is the expert of experts. When it is a question of legal medicine, the medico-legal expert must be the judge. There should be a medico-legal commission, whose duty it would be not to express opinions, but to give decisions. That is the only way to avoid many scandals. M. Brouardel, from the medico-legal standpoint, said he was not able to accept the present which Pugliese offered him. Every trial had issues which were not medical, and here the medico-legal expert would be incompetent. Apart from this, he would be cautious as to using anthropological data at all. It was still premature, and to go too fast was to risk compromising everything. M. Benedikt agreed with M. Brouardel, and advocated the scientific education of lawyers, which M. Lacassagne also considers desirable.