INTRODUCTION
It is not with a view to sensationalism that this little work is undertaken, but with a sense of helpfulness, of social obligation. It is submitted for the perusal and study of all those public officers and professional servants whose responsibilities are such as to bring them into casual or constant contact with the confirmed criminal classes.
It may fall into the hands of some unfit subjects and thereby contribute to the propagation of its contents in undesirable quarters. On the other hand we may consider that publicity is the speediest agent for the destruction of cankerous moral growths. Perhaps the possession of such knowledge as is here presented argues a sordidness; but Gordian knots can be untied only by use of the sword; to have cherries in the winter a can opener must be used, or to stand eggs on end you must smash them.
By the very nature of crime its efficient vehicle of transmission is ephemeral, very ephemeral. The vernacular of twenty-five years ago is almost oblivion today. So with the future; provided, of course, that the idiom of the underworld surrender its meaning to the social layers superimposed upon it. This process can be made effective by investigation and publicity. When bench and bar, the press, custodians of law and order and private agencies devoted to the detection, repression and correction of crime are made familiar with the wiles and mode of communication of criminals, the latter are rendered less powerful insofar as the evolved system of guile and wrong-doing are concerned.
It is noticeably true that our average law officer or advocate is necessarily a specialist in one or perhaps a few, at most, of the many recognized branches of professional crime. The limitation is occasioned in part by prescribed capacity and in part by inexperience or unfamiliarity with criminals of all types and their methods. Efficiency in general correctional labor may undoubtedly be promoted by a fuller understanding of the linguistic acquirements of subjects to be dealt with in every day practice. It is hoped that the publication of this vocabulary of criminal terms will render material advantages to the conscientious workers in this large field.
We are conscious of many errors of omission in the work and we request the co-operation of all who are interested in its utility. Only the essential and most pertinent or purely criminal vernacular usages have been selected from the mystical parlance of professional violators and their accomplices, for the reason that popular slang is so extensively comprehended as to make its publication of doubtful value as a new contribution to our literature.
An analysis of the four hundred and thirty terms included in the vocabulary reveals the interesting fact that criminal idiom is largely an ingenious combination of epithet suggested by similitude and a perverted construction of essential and accidental attributes of things and powers to imply or express the things and actions themselves. An occult jargon on its face, yet systematic enough when the key is acquired.
Some of the terms seem to have been derived by simple
partition of legitimate English words, occasionally with the
addition of euphonious prefix or suffix. As a prime example
of the transposition of an attribute for the thing itself, consider
what is perhaps the most popular slang term in use
today in the unregenerate world—“dope,” at present signifying
“news,” “intelligence,” or “meaning.” Originally this word
was derived from opium by partition, with the disguising
consonant “d” prefixed to the accented syllable. Amongst
narcotic habitues the most salient attribute of opium is
stimullationstimulation
of loquacity, or imaginativeness or of exaggeration. In
process of time any of these powers came to characterize
narcotic intoxication; thence information on any subject was
designated “dope.” The “dope sheet,” a “line of dope,” are
natural offshoots of this tendency to transpose attribute into
a new substantive. To philologists this noteworthy observation
should infallibly point out the utter lack of scientific relation
between an artificial sound—or visual—symbol and the thing,
quality or quantity symbolized thereby.
Without previous instruction a person gifted with intuition might divine the signification of the majority of these terms in vogue by weighing the context of the sentences in which they are included. Yet a practical working knowledge of them should be made more available by frequent reference to a complete list. The sole excuse for criminal slang is the protection afforded by secrecy, which once destroyed the slang is forced to die of neglect, though it will naturally be superseded by evolutionary linguistic devices.
To fraternize with a secret order we must equip ourselves with a knowledge of the ceremonies and aims as well as the selective means of the secret fraternists. To combat criminals successfully it is necessary to understand their complete vehicles of intercommunication, else the investigator is unqualified to fraternize with them so as to gain a fuller insight both into their actions and the living motives concealed behind them. Unquestionably, every term in the vocabulary is known to some officer of the law; unquestionably, too, every term contained therein is understood by but very few individuals even amongst criminals themselves. Therefore it would seem a distinct gain to become familiar with them all.
Aided by a panoramic view of recorded crime in the last generation we may roughly divide criminal offenses into the four great departments of crimes against self, or reflexive crimes against personal character, which have their fountain head in intemperance and gluttony; crimes against sex, which have their basis in the emotions flowing out of lust; crimes against property, fed by the sins of avarice or greed; and the crimes of violence, growing out of anger. Of these four, reflexive crimes and crimes of violence are distinctively psychological and must be left to the individual for corrective solution. Crimes against property and crimes of sexual depravity constitute the bulk of costly and troublesome cases which choke the machinery of our legal tribunals and necessitate a regrettable public tax for maintenance of penal and detentional institutions. The chronic defectives who most seriously menace the social body are comprised of prostitutes; gamblers; nondescriptively larcenous tramps; yeggs; burglars; sneak thieves; confidence men; dishonest solicitors; promoters and agents; forgers; merchandise thieves; pickpockets; highway robbers; and their accessories, the unscrupulous pawnbroker, the unrestrained liquor dealer, and the drug dispenser. It goes without saying that the volume and value of business transacted by these latter three attest the stupendous proportions of the direct losses sustained by the commonwealth through the misdirected energies of the principal professional criminal classes.
From an economical standpoint the traffic of professional crime is stupendous. We are mulcted some four hundred millions of dollars annually by reason of the criminal element in the nation. A conservative estimate of the number of active professional criminals of high and low degree is probably 100,000. We have one uniformed police officer for every thousand of population, and about one auxiliary officer per thousand of population in addition. Here are 200,000 more persons in the non-productive class. Criminal lawyers and criminal court functionaries contribute another ratio of one to the thousand of population, making a conservative total of 400,000 engaged in preying upon and relieving the producers from distress occasioned by crimes against person and property.
Admitting that the average income of the 300,000 police
officers, lawyers and court officials is about $1,200 per year, we
have a $360,000,000 over-headoverhead cost charged against production.
The loss sustained through the peculations of criminals and the
cost of detaining them is not less than another $88,000,000 per
year, on the estimated basis of $882 per year per criminal. A
grand total of $448,000,000!
Suppose the average age of the professional criminal to be 30 years. As the average financial investment in an individual of that age in the U. S. is $12,600, his productive capacity should be at least six per cent on the investment (if possessed of industrial training), plus the cost of human upkeep; which means a total of about $1,170 per year earning capacity for the average individual. Or at six per cent interest alone on the personality investment he represents an annual potential addition of $757 to the national wealth. Add to this the cost to the state of detaining him, say an average of $125 per year, and we have $882 per year per prisoner. The actual loss in interest on criminal personality investments is about $75,000,000 per 100,000 prisoners per year; a waste that is perpetuated by the present judicial and penal system.
Now, the average thief cannot steal $1,170 per year, nor even $757, when account is taken of time lost in prison. The crux of the situation seems to lie in the criminal’s lack of training in the useful arts, together with moral delinquency. So far we have experimented chiefly with two extremes in penology—employment of convicts for their exploitation by selfish interests on the one hand, and unemployment or else employment of such nature as tends to lower the standard of efficiency of the individual on the other hand. The evolution of labor unions has suppressed reform that makes for the criminal’s economical independence; and yet the criminal element is recruited mainly from the fourth estate. To date the history of penology shows some development of apprehenders and keepers in the practical side of the work, but at the prime expense of the apprehended. The producers at large pay the interest on the debt, whilst the principal is shouldered by the deficient themselves who are passing it along to the future generations.
As to the moral aspect of the problem with which the professional criminal confronts the nation, it must ultimately be determined by psychology. Intemperance, greed, lust and anger; these are the radical causes. Economical dependence is the first outgrowth of these known qualities but unknown quantities.
How are we going to reduce the overshadowing difficulty? By ostracism? By sterilization? By simple detaining repression without corresponding elimination of root causes? As for ostracism, folly flees a grave danger whilst moral courage fortified by intelligence faces and overcomes it. Ostracism revives and perpetuates caste divisions of society. Sterilization is as wrong in a larger moral view as infanticide in a smaller; the theory has emanated from higher intellectual, moral and spiritual darkness. It solves the criminal problem like national debt solves the economical problem—saddles a moral mortgage upon posterity. Detention without conferring assimilable moral uplift and increased economical efficiency is a parallel for the fabled delusion of the ostrich. Imprisonment as it obtains today costs much and produces little or nothing save waste. The maintenance of delinquents in rotting idleness or at labor which is subsequently unprofitable to the prisoner from the standpoint of talent and character development is an unbusiness-like as well as an inhumane make-shift which reacts upon society like a boomerang.
But it was not the aim to air views on criminology and penology in a preface, though it has seemed appropriate that the intelligence of interested men and women should be appealed to, as the widespread use of the following idioms has a deep significance. If this work achieves no other result than this it should be regarded as well worth while.
Portland, Oregon, October 3rd, 1914.
Should you find any terms missing from the following vocabulary which in your opinion should be included in it you will confer a favor by communicating same to the publisher.