Crime

“ What is the crime, to his fellow man or woman (not to God, I know that—these are peculiar sins to Him—whether greater in His eyes, who shall say?) —but to mankind, what is crime which would have been prevented but for the ‘genius’ involved in it? ”

“ Before we study crime from the point of view of a juristic phenomenon, we must study the causes to which the annual recurrence of crimes in all countries is due. These are natural causes, which I have classified under the three heads of anthropological, telluric and social. Every crime, from the smallest to the most atrocious, is the result of the interaction of these three causes, the anthropological condition of the criminal, the telluric environment in which he is living, and the social environment in which he is born, living and operating. ”

“ Here is the motive for the crime, clear as light. Are not the bloody knife, the bloody dress, the bloody clothes of the prisoner, unimpeachable witnesses to the criminal act? The criminal agency of the prisoner has not the shadow of a possibility to obscure it. His motive is gigantic. The blood on him, and his despair when arrested, cry ‘Murder! murder!’ with a thousand tongues.
“Men may lie, but circumstances cannot. The thousand hopes and fears and passions of men may delude, or bias the witness. ”

“ Whenever an offense was found to be increasing, some busy senator called for new rigor, until murder became in the eye of the law no greater crime than picking a pocket, purloining a ribbon from a shop, or pilfering a pewter-pot. ”

“ This custom of labelling a criminal with words or initials expositive of his crime or his political or religious offense, is neither American nor Puritan in invention and operation, but is so ancient that the knowledge of its beginning is lost. ”

“ It is the Crime of Crimes,—surpassing far the old Crimen Majestatis, pursued with vengeance by the laws of Rome, and containing all other crimes, as the greater contains the less. I do not go too far, when I call it the Crime against Nature, from which the soul recoils, and which language refuses to describe. ”

“ We may accept the unpleasant fact without theorising further as to the genesis of crime. I propose in these pages to take criminals as I find them; to accept crime as an actual fact, and in its multiform manifestations; to deal with its commission, the motives that have caused it, the methods by which it has been perpetrated, the steps taken—sometimes extraordinarily ingenious and astute, sometimes foolishly forgetful and ineffective—to conceal the deed and throw the pursuers{4} off the scent; on the other hand, I shall set forth in some detail the agencies employed for detection and exposure. ”

“ In other words, are the conditions in which men live together in society of such a nature that crime is certain to flow from them; and is crime simply a reaction against the iniquity of existing social arrangements? Or, on the other hand, does crime spring from the individual and his cosmical surroundings; and is it the product of forces over which society has little or no control? ”

“ Can matter commit a crime? Can matter be punished? Can you separate the mentality from the body over which courts hold jurisdiction? Mortal mind, not matter, is the criminal in every case; and human law rightly estimates crime, and courts reasonably sentence it, according to its motive. ”

“ THE reader will perceive that I have omitted speaking of a certain class of crimes which has covered Europe with blood, and raised up those horrid piles, from whence, midst clouds of whirling smoke, the groans of human victims, the crackling of their bones, and the frying of their still panting bowels, were a pleasing spectacle and agreeable harmony to the fanatic multitude. But men of understanding will perceive, that the age and country in which I live, will not permit me to inquire into the nature of this crime. ”

“ Crime is merely a name for the most obvious, extreme, and directly dangerous forms of what we call immorality—that is to say, departure from the norm in manners and customs. Therefore the highest civilisation is that with the least crime. ”

“ “Then if you wish me to tell what crime I have committed, explain to me in what a crime consists. For as my conscience does not accuse me, I aver that I am not a criminal.” ”

“ Such an action is as much and as flagrant a crime or offence against the community as an act of robbery or murder, which, though primarily an injury to the individual, is primarily avenged as an injury to the State. ”

“ As an illustration I may remind you, that the law punishes even the premeditation of crime, though the criminal's purpose may never have been carried out; the hand may be pure, but there is blood upon the soul, and that suffices. ”

“ CRIMINAL LAW. By criminal, or penal, law is now understood the law as to the definition, trial and punishment of crimes, i.e. of acts or omissions forbidden by law which affect injuriously public rights, or constitute a breach of duties due to the whole community. The sovereign is taken to be the person injured by the crime, as he represents the whole community, and prosecutions are in his name. ”

“ The consequences of crime are as clearly exhibited as its motives and its supposed advantages, and few are hardy enough to declare or to exhibit a carelessness for punishment, or a contempt for the bitter fruits of their misdeeds. ”

“ II. Since punishments, instead of being the simple panacea of crime which popular opinion, encouraged by the opinions of classical writers on crime and of legislators, imagine them, are very limited in their deterrent influence, it is natural that the criminal sociologist should look for other means of social defence in the actual study of crimes and of their natural origin. ”

“ This account of the considerations which have regulated the punishment of crimes explains the severity with which 'criminal negligence' is in some cases punished, and that severity is justified by the account given of the true principle of criminal law, the principle, viz., that crime should be punished according to the importance of the right which it violates, and to the degree of terror which in a well-organised society needs to be associated with the crime in order to the protection of the right. ”

“ The main facts recorded in the pages of Napoléon le Petit and L'Histoire d'un Crime are simple, flagrant, palpable, indisputable. The man who takes any other view of them than is expressed in these two books must be prepared to impugn and to confute the principle that perjury, robbery, and murder are crimes. ”

“ The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the [Pg 258] individual, "crime." ”

“ It is by a too familiar view of even the shadow of crime, that in certain minds the criminal idea may be developed. We need but abolish the mental barriers to crime to step from the criminal idea to the criminal act. ”

“ A student of pharmacy became a hangman for the same reason and a rich Dutchman paid the butchers for allowing him to kill oxen. If, then, one is dealing with a crime which points to extraordinary cruelty, how can one be certain about its motive and history without knowing the history of the criminal? ”

“ Besides the elements essential to constitute crime generally, particular mental elements, which may differ widely, are involved in the definition of particular crimes; and in the case of statutory offences adequately and carefully defined, the mental elements necessary to constitute the crime may be limited by the definition so as to make the prohibition of the law against a particular act absolute for all persons who are not infants or lunatics. ”

“ Stories of Crime. Accounts of crime, or “police news stories,” are constructed on practically the same principles as those of fires and accidents. In all crimes in which human lives are destroyed or endangered, the essential points are the names of the persons involved, the nature of the crime, its cause, its results, and, if the perpetrator escapes, clues to his identity and whereabouts. In murders, attempted murders, suicides, and defalcations, the motives for the crime are always matters of great interest. ”

“ The police, who are ever on the watch, immediately seize and carry off any offender, but from the statements of persons who have had an opportunity of observing, as well as from my own slight experience, I am convinced that there is an untold amount of misery and crime. ”

“ The social sentiments relating to crime are traced in their historical evolution, from the half-instinctive and reflex vengeance of savages through the regulated retributive justice of former ages to the more humane desire to reform the criminal which has characterized this century. ”

“ When we speak of the repression of crime, we must first of all distinguish between that which is due to the general character of penal legislation, more or less severe, and that which is secured by the administration by the judges of the law as it is. ”

“ Only one thing as yet seems to stand out from the mist, which is, that closely associated as crime and punishment are both in thought and speech, they are but little associated in reality. The amount of crime in a country appears to be a given quantity, dependent on quite other causes than the penal laws directed to its repression. ”

“ Many a larceny, robbery, possibly murder, many a crime springing from jealousy, many sexual offenses become intelligible when one learns that the criminal had at one time possessed the object for the sake of which he committed the crime, and having lost it had tried with irresistible vigor to regain it. ”

“ But we must, with regret, profess our belief, that it has often far transcended these limits; and has exhibited itself in forms and modes, which, if permitted to dictate the tone of our criminal legislation, would tend to the rapid increase of crime. ”

“ The born criminal who has a congenital predisposition for crime; the insane criminal suffering from some clinical form of mental alienation, and whom even our existing penal code had to recognize; the habitual criminal, that is to say one who has acquired the habit of crime mainly through the ineffective measures employed by society for the prevention and repression of crime. ”

“ There’s not a crime But takes its proper change out still in crime, If once rung on the counter of this world; ”

“ “Why does my action strike them as so horrible?” he said to himself. “Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law... ”

“ The causes of crime in the social environment are of course much the most important objective causes of crime, and, many students think, altogether the most important causes of crime in general. Let us briefly note some of the more important social conditions that give rise to crime. ”

“ Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity, if we except the crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree. ”

“ Assassinations; murder; malicious stabbing or maiming; rape; malicious assault and battery; robbery; theft; the wanton desecration of churches, cemeteries or other religious edifices and fixtures, and the destruction, except by order of a superior officer, of public or private property, are such offences. 3. The good of the service, the honor of the United States and the interests of humanity, imperiously demand that every crime, enumerated above, should be severely punished. ”

“ But a horrible crime, a murder perpetrated under circumstances unusually diabolical, the criminal being no less a person than the last lord abbot himself, and the victim a beauteous girl whom he had seduced, rendered this institution accursed in the eyes of God and man. ”

“ Crime is an act.4 The question which presents itself first of all is this: Is crime considered from a biological point of view an abnormal act? The answer to this, which is of the highest importance for the etiology of crime, must be negative. From a biological point of view almost all crimes must be ranked as normal acts. ”

“ THE CRIMINAL LAW.—A crime is a wrong which the State recognizes as injurious to the public welfare, and punishes in a criminal action in its own name. There are certain leading principles of the American system of criminal law which must be kept in mind. ”

“ He says, as Benedikt said at the Congress at Rome, that all criminals are criminals by birth, so that there is no such thing as an occasional criminal, in the sense of a *normal individual casually launched into crime. ”

“ We have more than once hinted that a correct history of crime and criminals has long been a desideratum, because much of the history of the times is involved in the prevalence of particular crimes and in the career of criminals. ”

“ The criminal law which had its origin when violence was rife is admirably adapted to the prevention, prosecuting and punishment of crude crimes, such as arson, rape, robbery, burglary, mayhem, assault, homicide, and "common-law" larceny,—theft accompanied by a trespass. In old times everything was against the man charged with crime—at least that was the attitude of the court and jury. "Aha!" exclaims the judge as the evidence goes in. ”

“ Crime may be regarded both objectively and also subjectively, i.e., as regards the deed itself and as regards the doer of the deed. In the past it was customary to consider the crime only and to punish the doer, or the criminal, according to the enormity of his deed. Scientific methods require, however, that we should study the criminal and ask ourselves "what is he?" ”