Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76

III

III.

If now I have rightly described the "criminal" it must be clear that the idea of punishment can have no place in our dealings with him; indignation, disgust, revenge are feelings which must be repressed, however horrible his crimes may have been; there is but one sentiment that must remain in our hearts—compassion, pity—we must exercise towards him "mercy and not judgment "—just as we do not allow our natural disgust to influence our care for the idiot or the leper, however foul may be his habits or his person.

For let us, remembering what has been said in the last section as to the nature of the criminal, briefly consider how he comes to be what he is. He is in the beginning one whose peculiarities, physical, mental, moral, separate him more or less from the bulk of his fellow men—these peculiarities individually are not different from those of other men, it is in their combination that they differentiate him, and even in this he shares them with many others. The actual development of crime depends upon his being placed in a page 21 suitable environment as a seed does not germinate unless it be placed in a suitable soil This suitable environment arises from three principal causes—two positive, one negative. The first is the association with those in whom these same tendencies have already developed, that is criminal surroundings. The second is poverty that sets him in opposition to the existing conditions of society and tends therefore to accentuate those features of his character which separate him from other men. The third is the lack of educational influences, which leaves his better impulses uncultivated and his will weak, or which by training solely his intellectual powers tends still further to weaken the moral ones at whose expense these are strengthened. Even if we allow to the full the existence of the criminal character—as claimed by moderate writers of the Lombroso school—it is evident that without criminal surroundings, in circumstances that make the chief amenities of life available, under educational influences that shall strengthen the will and religious principles that shall give a motive for self restraint, this criminal character can seldom or never blossom into "habitual" crime. And even without these educational influences the man of weak will or of vicious propensities may pass through life, at least outwardly, free from blame, if the circumstances under which he lives shield him from strong temptation, or perhaps permit him to indulge his propensities without coming into conflict with the opinions or regulations of his fellows. For-and perhaps the distinction should have been introduced earlier—crime must be distinguished from sin. Crime and sin often cover the same ground, but crime is opposed to the laws of society, sin to those of the Creator, crime is measured by its external manifestation, the force of sin is in its internal intensity, crime is sometimes not sin, sin is very often not crime.

Now, for this fostering environment of crime—criminal surroundings, poverty, lack of moral education—who is most to blame, the criminal who is powerless to protect himself till the full mischief is wrought or the State which page 22 deliberately allows these conditions to exist? If the answer is the State, another question follows—a question already asked, but only now to be fully answered—on what grounds of justice can the State assume to itself the right to punish the criminal? "Society prepares crime," says Quetelet, and to the great jurist and penologist, Lacassagne, is due the often-quoted declaration, "Every State has the criminals it deserves." And it was a woman who grandly said, that no one can be really great and noble in a State while one other in it remains base and degraded.

Clearly, then, the duty of the State towards the criminal is reformation, not punishment. Owing to causes for which the State is chiefly responsible, he has become a bad citizen—an enemy to himself, a burden to the State to which he ought to be a support. It is the business of the State to undo all this, to restore him to good citizenship, to happiness and usefulness. Perhaps the task will not, when it is fairly entered upon, be found so difficult as it at first appears. Whatever a man is by nature, the development of his-character depends upon his environment: and man has the power, which no other animal has, of improving—either by himself or his fellows—that environment. The treatment of the criminal, then, consists in placing him under such conditions that his good impulses, now weak, may be made strong, and that his evil tendencies, now strong, may be made weak; that his strength may be turned into good and useful directions, and, specially, that his will may be braced and his powers of self-control fostered and increased. It remains for me to-enquire how our present system is accomplishing this work, and what changes are necessary to render it efficient for the purpose. But before entering upon this part of my subject it will be necessary to say something, of the classification of the criminal, for upon this essential points of prison reform will be found to depend.

Now, criminals are variously classified, but four divisions will be sufficiently inclusive. The first will include those in whom crime has not developed. They have criminal instincts, but happily circumstances have been page 23 kind, and no vicious growth has resulted. On the contrary, perhaps, educational influences have led them to recognise their weakness and to seek for external strength to supplement internal deficiences, and now out of weakness itself has come power, and the direst temptation would attack them in vain. In this class would be placed many of the greatest and best of our race—resisted temptation makes the saint—and in its lower ranks, perhaps, most of us should be included. My readers will recall the famous "There, but for the grace of God, gees Richard Baxter." The second division will include those who, having strong passions which they have been taught to control and have, perhaps, long controlled, have yet in some unhappy moment been placed in circumstances of exceptional trial and have fallen, perhaps, before they have had time to gather together their powers for resistance. These are "criminals by passion" and cause the assaults, the murders, many of the more horrible crimes by which our sense of security is often rudely disturbed. Yet, contrary to the prevailing opinion, these are not the most dangerous of our criminals; apart from their special evil instincts, they are commonly good, clever, amiable people, and (except in the cases in which their special instinct, being once aroused, is so strong as to dominate and overpower their other faculties, in which case they become monomaniacs, and should be treated as such) seldom repeat their offence. Prince Krapotkine says that districts of Siberia which swarm with assassins and all varieties of homicides are yet notable for their security and the pleasantness of their society, while the contrary holds of those to which chiefly thieves and swindlers have been banished. It is precisely these, from whom the community has least to fear, for whom alone is now reserved in almost all countries the penalty of death. The first of these divisions will not trouble the State at all; the second can only be dealt with by the improvement of social conditions, and especially of educational methods, except in the one case mentioned which falls under the general head of insanity. It is for the third division that reformatory measures are chiefly page 24 needed. This is that of the "occasional criminal," a man whose evil instincts may not be strong, but his will is weak, and it is simply the accidental circumstance of the occasion that decides whether he commits crime or refrains from it. Up to a certain point he will resist, beyond that point he will certainly fail, and the point of yielding becomes lower and lower the oftener the occasion recurs. Such as these form the bulk of our prison population; and the method of their treatment is obvious, though it may have to be modified to suit particular cases. And criminals of this class have a special claim upon us, because they are so evidently the victims either of evil surroundings or neglected education. From them is developed the fourth division, that of the "habitual criminal." When a man has yielded to his evil instincts so often that the power to resist has nearly reached the point of disappearance, when the will, growing weaker day by day, has almost ceased to exercise any influence at all, then crime may be said to become a habit with him, and the time sooner or later arrives when his will disappears altogether and he becomes incurable. So difficult is it to deal with this class that some writers have regarded it as hopeless. Garofalo, an eminent Neapolitan jurist, while inveighing against the penalty of death in regard to the criminal by passion, advocates it for some members of this division, for he says their lives can clearly be of no further advantage either to themselves or to the community. Without endorsing this—for, even leaving aside the question of the right to take a man's life, it is evident how impossible it would be to fix the exact time when the point of hopelessness is reached—I may at least urge the supreme importance of treating members of this division in a different manner and in different institutions from those of other divisions.

In certain cases members of the third division would be regarded by almost all in these days as maniacs. It is a serious question how far the same term ought to be applied to the whole of this fourth division also. The usual rule in criminal cases has been to regard as lunatics those whose will has become so weakened or is naturally page 25 so weak that under the circumstances of the particular temptation it may reasonably be supposed that they had no real power of resistance. But in the case of the habitual criminal the will is disappearing or has disappeared altogether—it is becoming atrophied—is he not then a lunatic? The difficulty is of course to decide the point of weakness at which a man becomes incapable of resistance. In a true sense all crime may be considered the result of a weak or perverted will, and it is in the opinion of most penologists a very hard matter indeed to draw the line between lunacy and crime.

Nothing has been said or, indeed, can be said in this connection of the class of so called criminals known as political, ecclesiastical, or civil offenders. To these an entirely different set of considerations apply and they are only mentioned for the sake of completeness. It is only when political or civil quarrels develope other propensities, as in the case of brigands or condottieri, that the offenders can be classed as true criminals. Then the quarrels in question may be regarded as a vicious environment and the crimes produced will place their perpetrator sin the third of the divisions described above.