Criminal activity

“ As a Professor of Jurisprudence reminds us, "the object of the whole complicated system of checks and guards provided by English law, and secured by a long train of constitutional conflicts, has been to prevent an innocent man being even momentarily treated as a thief, a murderer, or other criminal, on the mere alleged or real suspicion of a policeman." ”

“ Tattooing, anthropometry, physiognomy, physical and mental conditions, records of sensibility, reflex activity, vaso- motor reactions, the range of sight, the data of criminal statistics, facilitate and complete the amassing of evidence, personal identification, and hints as to the capacity to commit any particular crime; and they will frequently suffice to give police agents and examining magistrates a scientific guidance in their inquiries, which now depend entirely on their individual acuteness and mental sagacity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It might be supposed that communities thus familiarized with the punishment of crime by public authority would rapidly develop a criminal jurisprudence by the simple and direct process of adding from time to time new crimes, perhaps in the order of their supposed enormity, to their catalogue of offenses. ”

“ We are generally informed that our penal systems exist for the purpose of repressing crime, and that punishment is thus inflicted upon the criminal in order that others may be deterred from following his example. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was a careful student of the police reports and the trials at the Central Criminal Court, and the more he studied those interesting records, the more he became convinced of the wickedness of human nature, the inefficiency of the police, and the tendency of accomplices to "split." ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is alleged, that over and above the deterring from crimes, which is effected by this, in common with the other methods of punishing, there is the additional advantage, of obliging the criminal to repair by his labour the injury which he has done to the community. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Criminal cases, such as robberies, assaults, forgeries, murders, and the like, are conducted in a different manner. The head of the police in the district where the crime was committed, is entrusted with the collection of the evidence. ”

“ In fact, the classic school of criminology regards all thieves as THE thief, all murderers as THE murderer, and the human shape disappears in the mind of the legislator, while it re-appears before the judge. Before the essayist and legislator, the criminal is a sort of moving dummy, on whose hack the judge may paste an article of the penal code. ”

“ I have watched the police committing one blunder after another, and to-day, when they are completely baffled and the public has started to write letters to the papers about another undetected crime and another criminal at large, I am having the time of my life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Drew went on. “And yet eighty-five per cent of crimes are committed by professional criminals, men and women with records, who make a business of crime, who haven’t any other occupation, who don’t want any other, who wouldn’t know what you meant if you asked them to settle down and live an honest life. In this city one person out of every three hundred is a professional criminal. ”

“ Practical men declare that ``the prohibitive penal law ought to be regarded as the first and most important of preventive laws.'' The prfets in their circulars, being concerned about the increase of crime, put forward the most vigilant and severe repression as a sovereign remedy. ”

“ These three distinct classes of criminals, whom we might style the degenerates, the derelicts, and the accidental offenders, need to be recognized in our criminal law and to be dealt with differently by our criminal courts and correctional institutions. The instinctive criminal can scarcely be adjusted to normal social life. ”

“ That there are foolish criminals who are discovered, and wise criminals who escape. The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A trial of skill between the police on one side, and the individual on the other. When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant fool, the police in nine cases out of ten win. ”

“ Criminal Cases are prosecutions or proceedings by the State or Federal government to enforce the laws made for the preservation of peace, law, and order in the community, by the imposition of fines, or imprisonment, or the punishment of death, in case of their violation. ”

“ In this connection, one of our country's distinguished jurists has pointed out: "The quality of a nation's civilization can be largely measured by the methods it uses in the enforcement of its criminal law." ”

“ It may be added that, if the slight deterrent influence which it is possible for punishment to exercise depends, with its adaptation to various types of criminals, on the certitude and promptitude of its application, the others depend precisely and solely on the organisation of the police, and of penal procedure. ”

“ By this and many other ways we shall help those charged with criminal offences, who, on a most careful enquiry, might reasonably be supposed to be innocent, but who, through want of means, are unable to obtain the legal assistance, and produce the evidence necessary for an efficient defence. ”

“ This does well enough for the purpose of illustrating the relative proportion of crimes to torts or wrongful acts in general, and, if a tiny dot be placed in the centre of the bull's-eye to represent those crimes which are actually punished, one gets an excellent idea of how infinitely small a number of these serve to keep the whole social fabric in order and sustain the majesty of the law. ”

“ But in cases of obscure, non-professional crime the police are at a disadvantage. The criminal is unknown to them; there are no confederates from whom to get information; consequently they have no starting-point for their inquiries. ”

“ Police authorities everywhere know that a man once a criminal is almost sure to commit another crime at the first opportunity; and for that reason they make it an invariable rule to keep a close watch over such persons. ”

“ We cannot but doubt the perfection of our criminal code, when we see that almost every criminal eludes the law, either by boldly avowing the crime, or by the tardiness with which legal prosecutions are carried on, or, lastly, by the convenient application of bail in criminal cases. ”

“ Reparation of damage suffered by the victims of crime may be regarded from three different points of view:— (1) As an obligation of the criminal to the injured party; (2) as an alternative for imprisonment for slight offences committed by occasional criminals; and (3) as a social function of the State on behalf of the injured person, but also in the indirect and not less important interest of social defence. ”

“ In this connection, Lombroso has drawn a clear distinction between two varieties of occasional criminals: the ``pseudo-criminals,'' or normal human beings who commit involuntary offences, or offences which do not spring from perversity, and do not hurt society, though they are punishable by law, and ``criminaloids,'' who commit ordinary offences, but differ from true criminals for the reasons already given. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed it is to be observed not only that the main and typical criminality has a sort of reflex criminality depending upon it, but also that an increase of more serious or more frequent crimes induces a crop of resistance to and assaults upon the guardians of public order, together with false witness, insults, avoidance of supervision, absconding, and the like. ”

“ The support of these persons is a direct burthen on the national industry. The police, and the whole apparatus of punishment, and of criminal and partly of civil justice, are a second burthen rendered necessary by the first. ”

“ The processes in the criminal courts against offenders, are so long, and involved in such a multitude of forms and writings, as to render it impossible to do justice either to the prisoner or the public. ”

“ Henceforth we must seek, through the study of

facts, a better direction for penal legislation as a function of society, so that, by the observation of psychological and sociological laws, it may tend, not to a violent and always tardy reaction against crime already evolved, but to the elimination or diversion of its natural factors. ”

“ “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.” ”

“ Further, it is apparent that in all these countries the types of habitual criminality, with the exception of thefts and vagrancy, are in greater proportion at the assizes, on account of their serious character. ”

“ We were discussing the ingenuity and resource of criminals in evading the police. Your name happened to be mentioned, and I remarked what a splendid criminal a man of your inventive talents would make. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ And again, since the social factors have special import in occasional crime, and crime by acquired habit, and since these are the most numerous sections of crime as a whole, it is clear that the periodic movement of crime must be attributed in the main to the social factors. ”

“ One general interest is of course that of effective crime prevention and detection; it is this interest which underlies the recognition that a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest. ”

“ As a general rule, they commence their career with just those crimes which distinguish it throughout, even when these are of the gravest kind, like robbery and murder. Rather may it be said that every age has its specific criminality, and this is the case especially with criminaloids. ”

“ Few complainants have ever before appeared in a police court, and are filled with repugnance at the rough treatment of prisoners and the suffering which they observe upon every side. After they have seen the prisoner emerge from the cells, pale, hollow-eyed, bedraggled, and have beheld the tears of his wife and children as they crowd around the husband and father, they begin to realize the horrible consequences of a criminal prosecution and to regret that they ever took the steps which have brought the wrong-doer where he is. ”

“ Whilst we believe that social reforms

and other measures suggested by a study of the natural factors of crime are most effective in preventing crime, legislators, employing the a{sic} priori method of the classical school, have for many years past been discussing proposed penal codes, whilst they permit criminality to make steady progress. ”