Criminality

“ IT is not to be expected that law-makers or the administrators of legal justice should discriminate between spontaneous and imitative crime; but to the patient thinker, the medical scientist, and the practical philanthropist it is evident that the grades and distinctions of actual criminality are almost as various as the individual criminals. Even the word crime is very indefinite, and by no means always indicates the true character of an act usually so designated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leaving aside the logic of this answer, which seems to me impregnable, plain humanity demands that a court addressing the criminality of conduct such as that of the present should recognise and respond to the profound dismay which all members of the community share about the apparent increase of cruel and senseless crimes against the defenceless. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If, therefore, through research in the direction we have indicated, it can be shewn that criminality runs in types, our notions of criminal responsibility, and our ideas regarding the punishment, deterrent and otherwise, of the criminal classes, must be affected and ameliorated thereby. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even less thought was given to the more important question—why so many commit crime at all. If normal human beings under normal conditions do not commit crime, then crime is evidence of the abnormal, either in the person or in the condition. ”

“ In fact, if crime were the product of the social environment exclusively, how could the fact be explained, that in the same social environment and in like circumstances of poverty, abandonment, and lack of education, out of 100 individuals, 60 commit no crime, and of the 40 that remain, 5 prefer suicide to crime, 5 become insane, 5 become beggars or non-dangerous vagrants, and only the 25 others become real criminals? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I wondered if a rapid picture of a boy of sixteen arrested for fighting, shot through this court into association with criminals for ten days, being found in their company afterward and sent by the criminal court to prison for three months for larceny, and afterward appearing and re-appearing as a long or short term criminal, would suggest to others what the idea suggested to me? I wondered, in short, if there were less machinery for the production and punishment of crime and more for its prevention, if life might not be made less of a battlefield and hospital for the poor or unfortunate. ”

“ And what has society done to protect itself against this aggressor? True, there are criminal codes, courts of law, and that surprising survival of the unfittest, trial by jury. Vast edifices have been built as prisons and reformatories, and philanthropic persons have formed societies for the instruction of the criminal and to care for him when his prison gates are opened. But, in spite of it all, the criminal becomes more numerous. He breeds criminals; the taint is in the blood, and there is no royal touch can expel it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In the old days, the criminal, visible to our physical eyes, would be seen, fleeing from justice, and after him, at a decent interval, the officers of the law, tailing away in a long perspective, properly exhausted and furious, their horses foaming and reeking with sweat in most appropriate style. ”

“ Tutt. "The criminal law originally dealt only with crimes of violence—such as murder, rape and assault. In the old days people didn't have any property in the modern sense—except their land, their cattle or their weapons. ”

“ Crime and vice are two terms used for the infraction of different kinds of laws—social and moral—and detectives may be conveniently classed in the same way. The detectives who deal with the transgression of social laws, including such crimes as counterfeiting coin and notes, railroad bonds, scrip, etc., forgers, embezzlers, swindlers, and the wide class of criminals generally, are exceedingly useful members of the community when they are inspired by a high sense of duty, and guided by principles of truth and integrity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 don't want to commit a crime.”
The veins in the forehead of Randolph Mason grew black with anger.
“Commit a crime!” he cried. “No man who has followed my advice has ever committed a crime. Crime is a technical word. It is the law's name for certain acts which it is pleased to define and punish with a penalty. None but fools, dolts, and children commit crimes.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ That these causes do to a great extent defeat the preventive effect of our penal laws, is proved by the tale of our criminal statistics, which reveal the fact that most of our crime is committed by those who [100] have once been punished, and that of general crime about 77 per cent. is committed with impunity. But if so large a proportion of crimes pass unpunished altogether, it is evident that society depends much less for its general security upon its punishments than is commonly supposed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Had justice toward offenders been more duly considered the legislature would probably, long ere this, have been induced to inquire more seriously than it has done, into the causes of crime, with a view to remedying them. This consideration is especially due to prisoners, when it appears, that the use of ardent spirits is the chief cause of crime, and that, by legalizing the sale of this article, and by the countenance given to its use by the community, they and the Government are the chief patrons of crime. ”

“ A certain class of common crimes, such as robbery, cheating and swindling, murder and the like, are followed by a species of automatic punishment in all quarters of the civilized world, in spite of exceptions in specific cases, which result from the intervention of political bosses and similar influences ”

“ I should, at all events, have less to fear from a legal investigation than from a madman, who, in defiance of custom and decorum, and regardless of domestic privacy, invades a home, and, with a knife at the throats of its inmates, demands 'your money or your life,' like any highway robber. ”

“ The country's most widely quoted authorities on crime view it as a social phenomenon, that is, actions by people within society against the interests of the society as a whole or against the principles directing it. ”

“ The problem of crime is not a simple one. The individual and his family and his social environment are all involved and changes in economic conditions affect the amount of crime. The task of the social reformer is to determine the causes of crime and to apply measures of reform and prevention. The science of the phenomena of crime is called criminology, that of punishment is named penology. ”

“ And as the figures which I have given show that precocity and relapse are even more frequent for minor offences than for crimes, he thinks that they contradict instead of confirming my conclusions.
The mere seriousness of an act cannot by any means divide the categories of criminals; for homicide as well as theft, assault and battery as well as forgery, may be committed, though in different psychological and social conditions, as easily by born and habitual criminals as by occasional criminals and criminals of passion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Notwithstanding these, crime is rife, and is rapidly increasing. Says Douglas Morrison:—"It is perfectly well known to every serious student of criminal questions, both at home and abroad, that the proportion of habitual criminals in the criminal population is steadily on the increase, and was never so high as it is now.... ”