Criminals

“ 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. ”

“ These are the years most prolific of criminals. Who can say these boys are vicious and hardened criminals? Then follow the young men of from twenty-five to thirty. Three hundred and fourty-four of this age find a home in felon cells. Are these boys and young men not worth saving? What can be done to snatch them from a career of crime, and to save them from becoming miserable wrecks? ”

“ I read again and again arguments to prove that criminals have claims and rights against society. Not long ago, I read an account of an expensive establishment for the reformation of criminals, and I am told that we ought to reform criminals, not merely punish them vindictively. ”

“ There is a marked distinction between such a one and a murderer or robber and other ordinary criminals; for a murderer or similar criminal lets the head and civil authority itself stand, and attacks merely its members or its property. ”

“ By no means, madame; the fanciful exists no longer in the East. There, disguised under other names, and concealed under other costumes, are police agents, magistrates, attorneys-general, and bailiffs. They hang, behead, and impale their criminals in the most agreeable possible manner; but some of these, like clever rogues, have contrived to escape human justice, and succeed in their fraudulent enterprises by cunning stratagems. ”

“ Recollect all the greatest criminals within your own knowledge, and say whether they were not every one of them, according to their social positions, very decent, very respectable, or very genteel persons—until they were clearly convicted of capital crimes? ”

“ 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. ”

“ By spontaneous criminals we mean those who act from well-defined motives, from avarice, revenge, the gratification of pride, vanity, or the grosser passions—also those who from congenital defects of organization have strong natural tendencies toward the commission of crime—sporadic criminals against whom it is scarcely possible for society to protect itself, unless, like the ancient Spartans, it is prepared to undertake the entire education of the future citizen, morally, intellectually, and physically, including the ante-natal period. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Born criminals form about one third of the mass of offenders, but, though inferior in numbers, they constitute the most important part of the whole criminal army, partly because they are constantly appearing before the public and also because the crimes committed by them are of a peculiarly monstrous character ”

“ A generation ago, people who got arrested were usually thieves, or drunkards, or crooks and criminals of some kind. To be a law-breaker and in the clutches of the police was something that a reputable citizen shuddered at. ”

“ First: the determined and persistent criminal who lives by crime, desires to live by crime, and to whom no other life has any attraction.
Against these men, after being adjudged by a jury to be habitual criminals, we ought to be safeguarded even as we protect ourselves against known madmen. ”

“ Luke’s, and apply it to the inhabitants, as think to coerce or overawe the inmates of a gaol, or those whose practices make them candidates for that distinction, by the mere dry, detailed convictions of the understanding. Criminals are not to be influenced by reason; for it is of the very essence of crime to disregard consequences both to ourselves and others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor have I much altered the social position of the criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and intelligence. In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps, provoke the Reader's incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent a fiction [These criminals were not, however, in actual life, as in the novel, intimates and accomplices. Their crimes were of similar character, effected by similar agencies, and committed at dates which embrace their several careers of guilt within the same period; but I have no authority to suppose that the one was known to the other.] ”

“ The born criminals and the occasional criminals constitute the majority of the characteristic and diverse types of homicide and thief. Prison governors call them ``gaol-birds.'' They pass on from the police to the judge and to the prison, and from the prison to the police and to the judge, with a regularity which has not yet impaired the faith of law-makers in the efficacy of punishment as a cure for crime. ”

“ In a well-governed State, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a State is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity. ”

“ 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 lonely, isolated, desolate spot was the point where the old-time criminals who were guilty of murder, arson, and other capital offences, were always shipped, and left largely to their own devices for a livelihood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ According to some recent police records and statistics, only about one-half of the country’s criminals are apprehended; if this is true of those who violate the law, a much smaller per cent. of those who break the perfect moral law, as related to domestic and religious life, are ever exposed. ”

“ The public and the representatives of the public, the high officials, whether on the bench or in executive or legislative positions, need to remember that often the most dangerous criminals, so far as the life of the Nation is concerned, are not those who commit the crimes known to and condemned by the popular conscience for centuries, but those who commit crimes only rendered possible by the complex conditions of our modern industrial life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Criminals in this country, when the law took hold of them, used to be turned over to the care of men who often had more sympathy with the crime than with the criminal, or at least to those who were almost as coarse in feeling and as brutal in speech as their charges. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ But regarding criminals complexly and accurately, they are partly men, partly vermin; what is human in them you must punish—what is vermicular, abolish. Anything between—if you can find it—I wish you joy of, and hope you may be able to preserve it to society. ”

“ The pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool. ”

“ 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. ”

“ every society has the criminals that it deserves.” ”

“ I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the "political criminal," whom some wish to class in a special category, does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can be placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of criminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the born criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the insane-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical passion. ”

“ Among those there is ever a floating population of professional criminals, and others again who are not chronic evildoers, but have, perhaps, once been guilty of some grave offence which has separated them from home and friends. ”

“ But the chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime. ”

“ As a rule, criminals might be classed under either of two headings the coarse and callous, or the refined and crushed. But this man belonged to neither. He would have embodied the popular idea of a mild country curate, but of a murderer, never. ”

“ Physically, habitual criminals do not resemble born criminals, but they exhibit some of the characteristics of those offenders from whom their ranks are recruited, besides, in a more marked degree, certain acquired characters, like sinister wrinkles and a shifty and sneaking look. ”

“ Hence it is that little crimes and small criminals have been detested and punished, while great malefactors have been generally reverenced and obeyed: and that little rogues have been called thieves, and hanged; and great thieves have been styled conquerors and princes, and sometimes deified. ”

“ All those who purposely conceal and connive at the perpetration of this crime shall be strangled. Those who inform against, and bring to justice, criminals of this description shall be rewarded with the whole of their property. ”

“ PUNISHABLE, BUT NEVER PUNISHED.—Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals. ”

“ This same ineptitude has pursued society in its dealings with another class—the criminal. Criminologists do not nowadays assume the existence of a natural criminal class; but our way of treating criminals has created such a class. ”

“ The people, small and great, are given to highway robberies, villainies, and treachery. The nobles and officers imitate one another in violating the laws. There is no certainty that criminals will be apprehended. ”

“ The Modern, or Positive, School of Penal Jurisprudence, on the contrary, maintains that the anti-social tendencies of criminals are the result of their physical and psychic organisation, which differs essentially from that of normal individuals ”

“ EARLY METHODS OF TREATING CRIMINALS The methods of dealing with criminals have changed greatly with the progress of civilization, and especially in recent years since the causes of crime have become better understood. ”

“ New kinds of crime, such as forgery, grand larceny, intricate swindling schemes, were doubled, while sneak thieves, drunkards, and pick-pockets decreased, and the proportion of educated criminals was greatly augmented. ”

“ The greatest criminals were forward in a service which they regarded as a propitiation for all crimes; and the most enormous disorders were, during the course of those expeditions, committed by men inured to wickedness, encouraged by example, and impelled by necessity. ”

“ Of 102 tattooed criminals, 31 bore religious emblems. Vengeance frequently leads to it among criminals, and among the feebler ones the spirit of imitation. Idleness often explains it among prisoners, shepherds, and sailors. ”

“ On the whole, criminality is far more precocious than mental alienation, and its precocity, which is [Pg 152] greater among thieves than among murderers, swindlers, and those guilty of violence and assault is another proof of the congenital nature of crime and its atavistic origin, since precocity is a characteristic of savage races.
Seldom do we find among born criminals any indication of that so-called criminal scale, leading by degrees from petty offences to crimes of the most serious nature. ”