Criminology

“ This is the conception of our science, which thus succeeds in distinguishing traits of character even among the unlucky and forlorn people of the criminal world, while the classic school of criminology regards a criminal as a sort of abstract and normal man, with the exception of cases of minors, deaf mutes, inebriates, and maniacs. ”

“ The study of criminology has, however, gone far to satisfy us that the true genesis of crime is not to be sought in the anatomical anomalies of individuals, or in the fact that there are people who under “any social conditions whatever and of any nationality at no matter what epoch, would have undoubtedly become murderers and thieves.” On the contrary it may be safely assumed that many such would have done no wrong if they had, e.g., been born rich, had been free from the pressing needs that drove them into crime, and had escaped the evil influences of their surroundings. ”

“ Modern criminology leans toward both moral and physical care in allotting the daily tasks of criminals. It assumes that the state has no right to make the criminal a worse or a weaker member of society than when he entered the prison walls. ”

“ Criminology draws upon many independent branches of science, such as Psychology, Anthropology, Neurology, Medicine, Education, Sociology, and Law. These sciences contribute to our understanding of the nature of the delinquent and to our knowledge of those conditions in home, occupation, school, prison, etc., which are best adapted to elicit the behavior that the race has learned to approve and cherish. ”

“ How much the subject of criminology has been overdone because of the morbid popularity of the idea that many persons are, as it were, forced by their natures into the commission of crime, can best be appreciated from some recent publications with regard to left-handed individuals. ”

“ This radical change of tendency cannot be looked upon as a mere misdirected sentimentality on the part of modern society, but is the inevitable result of the final conviction that the solely punitive criminology upon which society has been relying in its efforts to eradicate criminal behavior from its midst has proved a total failure. ”

“ Though in vigorous language he preached the gospel of 'grinding rogues honest,' it was part of his plan to educate, to classify, to make methodical provision for discharge, and, lastly, he may be said to be the founder of the modern school of criminology in laying stress on the absolute necessity of preventing crime by discovering and combating its causes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not until the experimental and scientific method shall look for the causes of that dangerous malady, which we call crime, in the physical and psychic organism, and in the family and the environment, of the criminal, will justice guided by science discard the sword which now descends bloody upon those poor fellow-beings who have fallen victims to crime, and become a clinical function, whose prime object shall be to remove or lessen in society and individuals the causes which incite to 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. ”

“ We have now demonstrated that crime has its natural source in the combined interaction of three classes of causes, the anthropological (organic and psychological) factor, the telluric factor, and the social factor. And by this last factor we must not only mean want, but any other condition of administrative instability in political, moral, and intellectual life. Every social condition which makes the life of man in society insincere and imperfect is a social factor contributing towards criminality. ”

“ But an objective, methodical, observation demonstrates that social conditions alone do not suffice to explain the origin of criminality, although it is true that the prevalence of the influence of social conditions is an incontestable fact in the case of the greater number of crimes, especially of the lesser ones. But there are crimes which cannot be explained by the influence of social conditions alone. ”

“ However, we positivists give to this statement a less fatalistic interpretation, since we have demonstrated that crime is not our immutable destiny, even though it is a vain beginning to attempt to attenuate or eliminate crime by mere schemes. The truth is that the balance of crime is determined by the physical and social environment. ”

“ Whatever light has been thrown in recent years upon this most important social problem, criminality, did not issue from a contemplation of the abstract and more or less sterile theses on crime and punishment as reflected in current works on criminal law and procedure, but was the result of research carried on at the hands of the physician, especially the psychopathologist, sociologist, and economist. ”

“ Thus we are not concerned merely with the construction of a theory of anthropology or psychology, or a system of criminal statistics, nor merely with the setting of abstract legal theories against other theories which are still more abstract. Our task is to show that the basis of every theory concerning the self-defence of the community against evil-doers must be the observation of the individual and of society in their criminal activity. In one word, our task is to construct a criminal sociology. ”

“ He must also possess an understanding of the economic and social causes of crime as well as of its individual causes. An understanding of its economic and social causes supposes that he should be acquainted with the principles of sociology and political economy; an understanding of its individual causes supposes that he should know something of psychology. The historical, philosophic, and legal aspects of criminal jurisprudence as well as its formal contents ought not to be unknown ground. In the domain of prison science he should be thoroughly at home. ”

“ If the curative art of society, like that of individuals, expects from positive knowledge an indication of remedies, it is clear that a classification based on the fundamental causes of crime is best fitted to indicate a social cure for this manifestation of disease, which is the essential object of criminal sociology. For, as in biology one is carried from purely descriptive anatomy to genetic anatomy and physiology, so in sociology we must pass on from purely legal descriptions of crimes to the genetic knowledge of the criminals who commit these crimes. ”

“ The first chanter, on the data of Criminal Anthropology, is an inquiry into the individual conditions which tend to produce criminal habits of mind and action. The second chapter, on the data of criminal statistics, is an examination of the adverse social conditions which tend to drive certain sections of the population into crime. It is Professor Ferri's contention that the volume of crime will not be materially diminished by codes of criminal law however skilfully they may be constructed, but by an amelioration of the adverse individual and social conditions of the community as a whole. ”

“ If this classification of criminals is correct, it is evident that it is very important both in studying the causes of crime and in devising practical measures for dealing with the criminal class; for the instinctive criminal, the habitual criminal, and the single offender manifestly need very different methods of treatment. One of the gravest faults of the criminal law and of penal institutions hitherto is that they have not provided for the different treatment of different classes of criminals. ”

“ I say advisedly, after taking counsel with and making friends of many who have been only too familiar with prison, that the present methods conduce to that state of mind and body which renders discharged prisoners almost certain to commit crime. Crime, generally, is the result of some peculiar condition of the mind or, it may be, of the body of the perpetrator. I cannot differentiate, but men whose business it is to know should be able to do so. Certain actions follow, and we say that crime has been committed, and that the criminal is morally diseased ”

“ And your psychological detective wants to pick out the kind of man who committed a crime; after which he hunts around till he finds one and says, ‘Behold the murderer,’ whether the evidence supports him or not. I hope you'll permit me to say damned nonsense. There is no man who is incapable of a crime under any circumstances; to say that a daring crime was necessarily committed by a daring person is to argue that a drunken author can write on the subject of nothing but liquor, or that an atheistical artist could not paint the Crucifixion. ”

“ Summing up our inquiries respecting the criminal type we arrive, in the first place, at the general conclusion, that so far as it has a real existence it is not born with a man, but originates either in the prison, and is then merely a prison type, or in criminal habits of life, and is then a truly criminal type. As a matter of fact, the two types are in most cases blended together, the prison type with its hard, impassive rigidity of feature being superadded to the gait, gesture and demeanour of the habitual criminal. ”

“ It can have no other end than to prove, first, that the person under trial is the author of the crime, and, then, to which type of criminals he belongs, and, as a consequence, what degree of anti-social depravity and re-adaptability is indicated by his physical and mental qualities. ”

“ CHAPTER IV CRIMINALOIDS We have seen how, owing to disease, alcoholism and epilepsy, physically and psychically degenerate individuals make their appearance in a community of normal persons. But a large proportion of the crimes committed cannot be attributed to lunatics, epileptics, or the morally insane, nor do all criminals show that aggregate of atavistic and morbid characters,—the cruelty and bestial insensibility of the savage, the impulsiveness of the epileptic, the licentiousness, delusions, and impetuosity of the madman,—which we find united in the born criminal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ It is natural, therefore, that criminal sociology, after studying the individual aspect of the natural genesis of crime, should have recourse to criminal statistics for the study of the social aspect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”