Habitual 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before jumping at this conclusion it must not be forgotten that there is such a person as the habitual criminal. The habitual criminal, as he will very soon tell you if you possess his confidence absolutely, declines to work. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ The instinctive criminal generally complains that he is unfortunate, or that he has never had a chance, and that society is always contriving to keep him down.
The Habitual Criminal, or the Recidivist.—When once a man has fallen into the clutches of the law and been incarcerated it is very difficult for him to keep his self-respect. His first crime may present many features to indicate that he is more the victim of circumstances than well-defined ill-will. ”

“ The degrading influence of prison life and contact with vulgar criminals, or the abuse of alcohol, to which better natures frequently have recourse in order to stifle the pangs of conscience, may cause criminaloids who have committed their initial offences [Pg 111] with repugnance and hesitation, to develop later into habitual criminals,—that is, individuals who regard systematic violation of the law in the light of an ordinary trade or occupation and commit their offences with indifference. ”

“ Professional thieves, who are habitual offenders, ought, with few exceptions, to be sentenced to imprisonment for life, or for a term equivalent to the probable remainder of their life.'' The draft Russian code, in 1883, provides that, ``If it is found that the accused is guilty of several offences, and that he has committed them through habitual criminality, or as a profession, the court, when deciding upon the punishment in relation to the different crimes, may increase it,'' &c. ”

“ It is easy indeed to suppose that born and habitual criminals do not generally commit political crimes and offences, nor offences connected with the press, nor against freedom of worship, nor in corruption of public functionaries, nor misuse of title or authority; nor calumny, making false attestations or false reports; nor adultery, incest, or abduction of minors; nor infanticide, abortion, or palming of children; nor betrayal of professional secrets; nor bankruptcy offences, nor damage to property, nor violation of domicile, nor illegal arrests, nor duels, nor defamation, nor abuse. ”

“ It is estimated that habitual criminals of both types mentioned constitute from 40 per cent to 50 per cent of our prison population. (3) The single offender. The single offender is a normal person who commits only a single crime through some sudden stress or temptation, but lives ever after a law-abiding life. The two types of the single offender are the criminal by passion and the accidental criminal. The criminal by passion is a moral, and oftentimes a conscientious, person who commits a crime through some sudden stress of passion, under great provocation. ”

“ In the great majority of cases he is ruined for life, familiarised with the prison, introduced to bad company. We have, as well as we are able, manufactured him into what is called the habitual criminal. ”

“ We have an examination of occasional, habitual, and latent criminals, who represent an attenuated type of delinquency, following on the investigations of these serious forms, admitting of correction, prevention, or cure. It develops much later in life than the vicious propensities of instinctive [Pg 308] criminals or may even remain latent; yet at the root we always find the same anatomical and pathological anomalies, although less marked and fewer in number. ”

“ Thus, for instance, in the case of murders, especially by born criminals, the first crime should lead to an order for imprisonment for life. In the case of less serious crimes, such as rape, theft, wounding, swindling, &c., from two to four relapses should be necessary before the habitual criminal is sentenced to such imprisonment. ”

“ A casual criminal, for example, whom external conditions, accidental circumstances, sudden temptations or bad influences have led astray, should not be treated in the same manner, although guilty of the same overt act, as the habitual or constitutional criminal, [Pg 221] whose wrong-doing arises from a diseased, ill-balanced or undeveloped mental or physical organization, and is therefore an inborn and perhaps irresistible proclivity. ”

“ These are the momentous problems; in comparison with these, all fine-spun definitions respecting the difference between one crime and another are mere dust in the balance. There can be little doubt that a neglect of those considerations on the part of many magistrates and judges, is at the root of the capricious sentences so often passed upon criminals. The effects of this neglect result in the passing of sentences of too great severity on first offenders and the young; and of too much leniency on hardened and habitual criminals. ”

“ We have lost the personal interest we ought to have in our [Pg 94] neighbours; we have gone out from among them; we have cast on officials duties we ought to undertake ourselves as citizens, and the result is an increase in the number of offences. In themselves these offences are small matters, but the offenders in many cases find themselves in prison for the first time as a result; and it is the first time that counts. Every time a man is sent to prison for a small offence committed he has been given a push towards the life of a habitual offender ”

“ The plea of anger or of drunkenness—as having placed the criminal for the moment beyond the control of his reason—relieves him from the charge of premeditated and malicious intent; but a rational legislation will rather provide more severe than milder punishment for such cases, particularly if such a state of mind is habitual with the accused; for a single unlawful act may well constitute an exception from an otherwise blameless life. But a person who pleads, "I habitually get so angry or so drunk as not to be any longer master of my senses!" ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In what is comprehended under the general and vague term of "crime," everything depends upon the values of the individual performer; and again and again do we find that a criminal has struck before counting the cost to himself, or considering the unsleeping detectives, hidden in his own faulty heart and brain, who will sooner or later discover and denounce him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I say NO—that if there be blood guiltiness let the offender be punished in accordance with our criminal code; if there be none then is he blameless, and to deprive a person of his property because of a harmless act is a 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 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. ”

“ Garbed in the vestment of dishonor and disgrace, I myself am what the world terms a criminal. Should I not know the meaning of the appellation far better than the casual observer? For many years my life has been the life of an habitue of the underworld. Criminals, so called, have been my associates and my friends. I have known them in the moments of their success, I have known them in the hours of their failure. Failure that spells oblivion, the oblivion of cold gray walls and heart-breaking, monotonous, man-killing routine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Next comes the “délit,” which includes all offences punished by imprisonment over a week and under five years. Then, finally, we arrive at the “crime,” the highest form of offence in French criminal law. It includes all offences subject to a more severe sentence than the punishment assigned to a délit. All cases are held to be crimes where death, life-imprisonment with or without hard labour, deportation out of the kingdom, detention or seclusion in a fortress or other expressly assigned place, are the punishments mentioned by the law. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ What expect other than that certain types of men will gladly dare issues written to their hands, hearts, and natural predilections? Why wouldn’t such go after what they want with murderous tools?
How repress the criminal by bidding for him, and how deter him through laying odds in his favor that are close to prohibitive as against society?
Where the sense in penal procedure that puts a premium, both in and out of prison, on the won’t-work criminal rounder, and blisters the itinerant who does no worse than hawk harmless wares? ”

“ There can be no general rule based merely on the name or kind of crime committed which is going to tell us which offender is really the worst. A misdemeanor may be very much more heinous than a felony. The adulterator of drugs or the employer of illegal child labor may well be regarded as vastly more reprehensible than the tramp who steals part of the family wash. So far as that goes there are an [Pg 7] alarming multitude of acts and omissions not forbidden by statute or classed as crimes which are to all intents and purposes fully as criminal as those designated as such by law. ”

“ 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. ”