Property crime

“ You may talk of legal limitations as much as you like, but conscience will revolt against a doctrine that makes stolen property sacred after a certain period of impunity, and leads to the cynical conclusion that any article or piece of land, acquired by crime, is the legitimate possession of the bandit if during 5, 10, 20, 30 years he succeeds in warding off the attacks of the law.”22 Not only has property often been acquired in an illegal manner, but the transmission of it is also immoral. ”

“ If, however, the owner of a house should be boldly and violently prevented from entering the same, in such a manner that he is, for the time, entirely deprived of control over his house, his family, and his other property, which is a far more serious offence, the author of such an infamous crime shall be liable for all damages incurred, and shall also receive a hundred lashes. ”

“ There is a crime, of which he can be convicted, and he is charged with that crime, and the law expressly declares, that the property cannot be condemned, unless that crime shall have been committed by the owner. ”

“ Those very places and domiciles, and all that are like them, are to-day nurseries of crime, and of the vices and disorderly courses which lead to crime. By far the largest part—eighty per cent. at least—of crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life, or never had any, or whose homes had ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family.... ”

“ Murder, manslaughter, and arson, on the other hand, are not committed unless the evil is accomplished, and they all consist of acts the tendency of which under the surrounding circumstances is to hurt or destroy person or property by the mere working of natural laws.
In larceny the consequences immediately flowing from the act are generally exhausted with little or no harm to the owner. Goods are removed from his possession by [71] trespass, and that is all, when the crime is complete. But they must be permanently kept from him before the harm is done which the law seeks to prevent. ”

“ As I have stated elsewhere in this narrative, stealing property from some one to whom that property does not rightfully belong can hardly be accounted a crime; and when property thus purloined is restored to its rightful owner, the theft is transformed into a high and noble act. ”

“ But though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. ”

“ If these statistics show that in those countries where there is most poverty there is also most theft, the elucidation of such a fact will at once raise a strong presumption that the connection between poverty and offences against property is one of cause and effect. If, on the other hand, international statistics are not at all conclusive upon this important point, it will show that there are other factors at work besides poverty in the production of offences against property. ”

“ If an unknown stranger or person without property caught red-handed in the commission of a crime refused to submit to arrest, it was lawful to maim or slay him according to the magnitude of the attempted crime. “A person who came to inflict a wound on the body may be safely killed when unknown and without a name, and when there is no power to arrest him at the time of committing the trespass.” For crimes against property the usual penalty, as in breach of contract, was generic restitution, the quantity, subject to modifying circumstances, being twice the amount taken or destroyed. ”

“ His parents owned the property, and about their only means of livelihood was the [Pg 157] rent derived from the larger cottage, when they were fortunate enough to secure a tenant. Good luck, however, had failed to attend them. Early in the year, the man, who, with his family, had occupied it for some time, was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the penitentiary, and his wife and children, lacking the wherewithal to pay the rent, were forced to vacate. ”

“ Thus, since burglary is the entering of a house with the intent to commit a felony therein, one who blunders into a strange house because he is too drunk to know where he is or what he is doing has not committed the crime of burglary. So one who carried off the property of another through drunken ignorance does not commit larceny, as there is no intent in such a case to convert the property to the taker's own use. ”

“ This is sufficient to render the broad inference probable that want or necessity induces but the minor degrees of crime against property, while the more serious phases of crime belong to the opposite conditions of society, or have their mainspring in other motives. In the Compte Général de l'Administration de la Justice, the occupation of the accused is given by sex, and under the article Domestiques we find one hundred and forty-nine men and one hundred and seventy-five women employed as personal servants, nearly all of whom were accused of the minor degrees of crimes against property. ”

“ Each victimized nation should appoint commissions to investigate and gather evidence concerning the stolen property. The secretion or destruction of such property or the refusal to reveal its whereabouts, should be deemed a crime and should be severely punished. The property courts should have criminal jurisdiction for this purpose. ”

“ Every crime is an offence against the State. It is also in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred an offence against a fellow-creature, which fellow-creature is called a victim, and interests nobody. Sir Alfred Wills and Sir Robert Anderson both held that thieves, big thieves especially, should be compelled to say what disposition had been made of stolen property, and that they should be imprisoned for life if they refused. ”

“ Criminal courts, police, jails and the like would go also. Crime is due almost wholly to poverty. In a reign of plenty for all, it would practically disappear.... People would no longer have to wrangle over property rights. ”

“ As it is organized with use, it is often immoral and one of the most active factors in anti-social crime, latent or actual.”21 According to the author, one who owns property is a supporter of the state. For this reason the number of small proprietors ought to be increased, even if this is possible only by dividing great estates, which, however, have almost always been gotten together by immoral means, by pillaging, by paying very small wages in manufacturing, by gambling, etc. ”

“ Chancellor Kent has expressed the opinion, that those crimes "which strike deeply at the rights of property and are inconsistent with the safety and harmony of commercial intercourse, come within the mischief to be prevented, and within the necessity as well as the equity of the remedy. If larceny may be committed and the fugitive protected, why not compound larceny, as burglary and robbery—and why not forgery and arson? They are all equally invasions of the rights of property." ”

“ But though there may not be the smallest doubt in the world that our money was our lawful property, the law seldom recovers it for us, even when it punishes the robber. This is usually the case even in the more vulgar branches of theft, such as burglary and pocket-picking, but when it comes to the more complicated devices of the swindler, our chances are poor indeed. ”

“ Again, if a labourer had anything stolen from his cottage, he had to put his hand in his pocket for half-a-crown, or more, before he could employ a parish-constable, and should there be no committal, all the expense of the investigation and subsequent proceedings fell on the man whose only offence had been that he had lost his property ”

“ To hold that when the government finds its own property in hands but one remove from these willful trespassers, and asserts its right to such property by the slow processes of the law, the holder can set up a claim for the value which has been added to the property by the guilty party in the act of cutting down the trees and removing the timber, is to given encouragement and reward to the wrong-doer, by providing a safe market for what he has stolen and compensation for the labor he has been compelled to do to make his theft effectual and profitable. ”

“ They invariably paid rent, and, considering the value of such houses, enormous rent, to the landlords. ↑ In those days thievery was incredibly prevalent. Everybody stole property from everybody else. The lords of society stole legally or else legalized their stealing, while the poorer classes stole illegally. Nothing was safe unless guarded. ”

“ The people themselves who observe, though they do not reason, begin to have an idea that property exposes the safety of the owner and that the legislature is less inexorable when guilt is unproductive, than when the conviction of a criminal comprehends the forfeiture of an estate.—A poor tradesman was lamenting to me yesterday, that he had neglected an offer of going to live in England ”

“ If the informer cannot prove what he alleged, he alone shall be liable to make amends for the consequences of his act. If the property stolen is of great value, and a freeborn person is implicated, he shall return ninefold the value of the property, by way of reparation, and shall be rendered infamous; and, if the culprit is a slave, he shall pay sixfold the value of the property, and shall receive in addition, a hundred lashes. ”

“ Yet land nationalisers seem to be prepared to treat as sacred the landlords' claim to private property in capital acquired by thefts of this kind, although they will not hear of their claim to property in land. ”

“ We even occasionally find amongst Australians the formal duel employed to decide cases of the violation of property-rights. Not, however, until the arts of life have advanced, and wealth has created the two classes of "haves" and "have-nots," does theft become an offence of the first magnitude, which the central authority punishes with corresponding severity. ”

“ If, however, one person should attempt to gain possession of property occupied by another, not through fraud or insolence, but by a judicial proceeding, if his claim is just, he shall be entitled to possession of said property. But if, unknown to the owner, he should unexpectedly attempt to gain possession of the land of the latter, the owner of the same shall have the right to accuse him of being a trespasser with violence, and, by legal proceedings, compel him to surrender said property. ”

“ And indeed, all so-called political revolutions were started for the protection of one kind of property by the confiscation, also called theft, of another kind of property. It is absolutely true that for more than 2,500 years private property could only be protected by the violation of private property. ”

“ As I said before, the civil law-courts were upheld for the defence of private property; for nobody ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each other by means of brute force. Well, private property being abolished, all the laws and all the legal 'crimes' which it had manufactured of course came to an end. Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into, Thou shalt work in order to live happily. Is there any need to enforce that commandment by violence? ”

“ Distresses, executions, forfeitures, taxes, etc., are all of this description, wherein every man by common consent gives up that right for the sake of justice and the general good. By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. ”

“ I will confess that, of all abuses, the most hateful to me are those of property; but once more, there is a remedy for this evil without violating it, all the more without destroying it. If the present laws allow abuse, we can reconstruct them. Our civil code is not the Koran; it is not wrong to examine it. Change, then, the laws which govern the use of property, but be sparing of anathemas; for, logically, where is the honest man whose hands are entirely clean? Do you think that one can be a robber without knowing it, without wishing it, without suspecting it? ”

“ If theft is discovered on anyone's land and the thief is discovered, the lord of the estate and the thief's wife shall have half of his property and the claimants shall have their goods, if they find them. And with regard to the other half, if the theft is discovered in a district over which the lord has rights of jurisdiction, the wife shall lose her share and it shall pass to the lord.
"Further, we forbid the buying or selling of any livestock except within towns and before three trustworthy witnesses, likewise that of any second-hand goods without a surety and warrantor." ”

“ His property was believed to be in the hands of receivers, and the law of felon’s property is now altered. At one time when a felon was hanged all his property was forfeited to the Crown. The law has since taken a more merciful view of the convict’s family, and permits the felon to will his property as he pleases. Of course there will no doubt be certain restrictions in the event of the property being identified as the proceeds of burglaries, but a person of Peace’s habits would take care that his most valuable property was promptly realised and placed where it could be obtained. ”

“ Where functionaries of departments of housing administration or land administration take advantage of their functions and powers to extort money or properties from others or to illegally accept money or properties from others, thereby seeking gains for others, and the case constitutes a crime, they shall be investigated for criminal responsibilities in accordance with the supplementary provisions on punishing crimes of embezzlement and bribery ”