Facts such as these should serve to remind us that the growth of wealth may be accompanied, and is accompanied, by degeneracy of the worst character unless there is a corresponding growth of the moral sentiments of the community. "The perfection of man," says M. de Laveleye, "consists in the full development of all his forces, physical as well as intellectual, and of all his sentiments; in the feeling of affection for the family and humanity; in a feeling for the beautiful in nature and art." It is in proportion as men strive after this ideal that crime will decay, and material prosperity only becomes a good when it is used as a means to this supreme end. Otherwise, the mere growth of wealth, be it ever so widely diffused, will deprave the world instead of elevating it. The mere possession of wealth is not a moralising agent; as Professor Marshall^[25] truly tells us, "Money is general purchasing power, and is sought as a means to all kinds of ends, high as well as low, spiritual as well as material." According to this definition, money may as readily become a source of mischief as an instrument for good; its wider diffusion among the community has, therefore, a mixed effect, and it works for evil or for good, according to the character of the individual. It is only when the character is disciplined by the habitual exercise of self-restraint, and ennobled by a generous devotion to the higher aims of life, that money becomes a real blessing to its possessor. If, on the other hand, money has merely the effect of making the well-to-do rich, and the poor well-to-do, it will never diminish crime; it will merely cause crime to modify its present forms. Such, at least, is the conclusion to which a consideration of the contents of this chapter would seem to lead.

CHAPTER VI.

CRIME IN RELATION TO SEX AND AGE.

In the present chapter we shall proceed to discuss the effect exercised by two characteristics of a distinctly personal nature in the production of crime, namely, age and sex.

As sex is the most fundamental of all human distinctions we shall begin by considering the part it plays among criminal phenomena. According to the judicial statistics of all civilised peoples, women are less addicted to crime than men, and boys are more addicted to crime than girls. Among most European peoples between five and six males are tried for offences against the law to every one female. In the southern countries of Europe, females form a smaller proportion of the criminal population than in the northern. This circumstance may be accounted for in several ways. In the first place, it may be the case that women in the south of Europe are better morally than in the north; it may be that the social conditions of their existence shield them from crime; or it may be that the crimes men are most prone to commit in the south are of such a nature that women are more or less incapable of perpetrating them. It is perfectly well known that in the south of Europe women lead more secluded lives than is the case in the north; they are much less immersed in the whirl and movement of life; it is not surprising, therefore, to find that they are less addicted to crime. Nor is this all. The crimes committed in the South consist to a large extent of offences against the person; physical weakness in a multitude of cases prevents women from committing such crimes. In the North, on the other hand, a large proportion of crimes are in the nature of thefts and offences against property. Most of these crimes women can commit with comparative ease; the result is that they form a larger proportion of the criminal population. Assaults are offences women are less capable of committing than men; hence, if we find that the crime of a country consists largely of personal violence, we shall also find that the percentage of female criminals will be relatively small. In Italy, where offences against the person are so prevalent, females only form about nine per cent. of the criminal population; in England, where personal violence is seldom resorted to, females form between 17 and 18 per cent. of the persons proceeded against, and about 15 per cent. of the numbers convicted.

A consideration of these circumstances tends to show that although southern women commit fewer crimes in proportion to men than northern women, this fact is partly owing to the character of the crime. But it is also owing to more secluded habits of life, and to the freedom from moral contamination of a criminal nature which these habits secure.

Proceeding from quantity to quality we find that although females commit much fewer crimes in proportion than males, the offences they do commit are frequently of a more serious nature than the crimes to which men are addicted. According to the investigations of Guerry and Quetelet, women in France commit more crimes of infanticide, abortion, poisoning, and domestic theft than men. They are addicted equally with men to the perpetration of parricide, and are more frequently convicted than men for the ill-treatment of children. English criminal statistics also show that the proportion of women to men rises with the seriousness of the offence. The proportion of women to men summarily proceeded against is 17 per cent., the proportion proceeded against for murder and attempts to murder is as high as 36 per cent. Women are also more hardened criminals than men. According to the statistics of English prisons, women who have been once convicted are much more likely to be reconvicted than men,^[26] and the prison returns of Continental countries tell the same tale.

The facts relating to female crime having been stated, it will now be our business to inquire why women, on the whole, commit fewer crimes than men. The most obvious answer is that they are better morally. The care and nurture of children has been their lot in life for untold centuries; the duties of maternity have perpetually kept alive a certain number of unselfish instincts; those instincts have become part and parcel of woman's natural inheritance, and, as a result of possessing them to a larger extent than man, she is less disposed to crime. It is very probable that there is an element of truth in the idea that the care of offspring has had a moralising effect upon women, and that this effect has acquired the power of a hereditary characteristic; at the same time, it must be remembered that other causes are also in operation which prevent women figuring as largely in criminal returns as men.

Among the most prominent of these causes is the want of physical power. In all crimes requiring a certain amount of brute strength, such as burglary, robbery with violence, and so on, the proportion of women to men is small. A woman very rarely possesses the animal force requisite for the perpetration of crimes accompanied with much personal violence. But where the element of personal violence does not come conspicuously to the front the proportion of female criminals to male immediately rises, and in such crimes as poisoning, child murder, abortion, domestic theft, women are more criminally disposed than men. Undoubtedly the lack of power has as much to do with keeping down female crime as the want of will. This is especially manifest in the crime of infanticide. For the perpetration of this crime women possess the power, and the vast number of women convicted of this offence in proportion to men is ample proof that they often possess the will. Of course the temptation to women to commit this kind of crime is often extreme; it is the product, in many instances, of an overwhelming sense of shame; and the perpetrators of infanticide are often far from being the most debased of their sex. Still, the prevalence of infanticide among women is an evidence that, where the temptation is strong and the power sufficient, women are just as criminally inclined as men.

It has also to be borne in mind that women are very frequently the instigators of crime and escape punishment because they are not actually engaged in its commission. In almost all cases where robberies are committed by a pack of thieves, a part of the preparatory arrangements is entrusted to women, and women lend a helping hand in disposing of the spoil. It is the men, as a rule, who receive all the punishment, but the guilt of both sexes is very much the same. In many cases of forgery and fraudulent bankruptcy among the well-to-do classes, for which men only are punished, the guilt of women is equally great. Household extravagance, extravagance in dress, the mad ambition of many English women to live in what they call "better style" than their neighbours sends not a few men to penal servitude. The proportion of female crime in a community is also to a very considerable extent determined by the social condition of women. In all countries where social habits and customs constrain women to lead retiring and secluded lives the number of female criminals descends to a minimum. The small amount of female crime in Greece^[27] is an instance of this law. On the other hand, in all countries where women are accustomed to share largely the active work of life with men, female crime has a distinct tendency to reach its maximum. An instance of this is the high percentage of female crime in Scotland. According to the Judicial Statistics for the year 1888 no less than 37 per cent. of the cases tried before the Scotch courts consisted of offences committed by women. It is true only 11 per cent. of these offences were of a serious nature—the remainder being more or less trivial, but, even after taking this circumstance into consideration, the unwelcome fact remains that Scotch women commit a higher percentage of crimes in proportion to men than the female population of any other country in Europe. The proportion of English female offenders to male is not half so high; it was only 17 per cent. in 1888, and is showing a tendency to decrease, being as high as 20 per cent. for the twenty years ended 1876. The proportion of female offenders in Scotland to the total criminal population is moving in an opposite direction. The late Professor Leone Levi, in a paper read before the Statistical Society in 1880, stated that Scotch women formed 27 per cent. of the persons tried before the criminal courts; they now form 37 per cent., a most alarming rate of increase.

It hardly admits of doubt that the high ratio of female crime in Scotland is to be attributed to the social status of women. In no other country of Europe do women perform so much heavy manual work; working in the fields and factories along with men; depending little upon men for their subsistence; in all economic matters leading what is called a more emancipated life than women do elsewhere; in short, resembling man in their social activities, they also resemble him in criminal proclivities. Scotch criminal statistics are thus a striking confirmation of the general law revealed by the study of criminal statistics as a whole; namely, that the more women are driven to enter upon the economic struggle for life the more criminal they will become. This is not a very consoling outlook for the future of society. It is not consoling, for the simple reason that the whole drift of opinion at the present time is in the direction of opening out industrial and public life to women to the utmost extent possible. In so far as public opinion is favouring the growth of female political leagues and other female organisations of a distinctly militant character, it is undoubtedly tending on the whole to lower the moral nature of women. The combative attitude required to be maintained by all members of such organisations is injurious to the higher instincts of women, and in numbers of cases must affect their moral tone. The amount of mischief done by these public organisations for purposes of political combat is not confined to women alone. The overwhelming influence exercised by mothers on the minds of children is notorious; and that influence is not so likely to be for good where the mother's mind is contaminated by a knowledge of, and sometimes by practising, the shady tricks of electioneering.

The present tendency to create a greater number of openings in trade and industry for women is not to be dismissed as pernicious because of its evil effect in multiplying female crime. After all, an enlarged industrial career for women may be the lesser of two evils. According to the present industrial constitution of society a very large number of females must earn a living in the sweat of their brow, and until some higher social development supersedes the existing order of things it is only right that as wide a career as possible should be opened out for the activities of women who must work to live. At the same time it would be an infinitely superior state of things if society did not require women's work beyond the confines of the home and the primary school. In these two spheres there is ample occupation of the very highest character for the energies of women; in them their work is immeasurably superior to men's; and it is because the work required in the home and the school is at the present moment so improperly performed that our existing civilisation is such a hot-bed of physical degeneracy, pauperism, and crime. One thing at least is certain, that crime will never permanently decrease till the material conditions of existence are such that women will not be called upon to fight the battle of life as men are, but will be able to concentrate their influence on the nurture and education of the young, after having themselves been educated mainly with a view to that great end. European society at the present moment is moving away from this ideal of woman's functions in the world; she is getting to be regarded in the light of a mere intellectual or industrial unit; and the flower of womankind is being more and more drafted into commercial and other enterprises. Some affect to look upon this condition, of things as being in the line of progress; it may be, and to all appearance is, in the line of material necessity, but it is unquestionably opposed to the moral interests of the community. These interests demand that women should not be debased, as criminal statistics prove that they are by active participation in modern industrialism; they demand that the all-important duties of motherhood should be in the hands of persons capable of fulfilling them worthily, and not in the hands of persons whose previous occupations have often rendered them unfit for being a centre of grace and purity in the home. It cannot be too emphatically insisted on that the home is the great school for the formation of character among the young, and it is on character that conduct depends. In proportion as this school of character is improved, in the same proportion will crime decrease. But how is it to be improved when the tendencies of industrialism are to degrade the women who stand by nature at the head of it? Indifferent mothers cannot make children good citizens; and the present course of things industrial is slowly but surely tending to debase the fountain head of the race. At the International Conference concerning the regulation of labour held recently at Berlin, M. Jules Simon, at the close of an excellent speech to the delegates, pointed out the remedy for the present condition of things. "You will pardon me," he said, "for concluding my observations with a personal remark, which is perhaps authorised by a past entirely consecrated to a defence of the cause which brings us here. The object we are aiming at is moral as well as material; it is not only in the physical interests of the human race that we are endeavouring to rescue children, youths, and women from excessive toil; we are also labouring to restore woman to the home, the child to its mother, for it is from her only that those lessons of affection and respect which make the good citizen can be learned. We wish to call a halt in the path of demoralisation down which the loosening of the family tie is leading the human mind."

Passing from the question of sex and crime we shall now consider the proportions which crime bears to age. According to the calculations of the late Mr. Clay, chaplain of Preston prison, the practice of dishonesty among persons, who afterwards find their way into prisons, begins at a very early age. In a communication addressed to Lord Shaftesbury, in 1853, he said that 58 per cent. of criminals were dishonest under 15 years of age; 14 per cent. became dishonest between 15 and 16; 8 per cent. became dishonest between 17 and 19; 20 per cent. became dishonest under 20.

I have little doubt that these proportions are still in the main correct, and that the criminal instinct begins to show itself at a very early period in life. In Staffordshire "it is an ascertained fact, that there is scarcely an habitual criminal in the county who has not been imprisoned as a child."^[28] But it is after the age of twenty has been reached that the criminality of a people attains its highest point. A glance at the subjoined table will make this clear:—

These figures show that in proportion to the population, crime is, as we should expect, at its lowest level from infancy till the age of sixteen. From that age it goes on steadily increasing in volume till it reaches a maximum between thirty and forty. After forty has been passed the criminal population begins rapidly to descend, but never touches the same low point in old age as in early youth.

Females do not enter upon a criminal career so early in life as males;^[29] in the year 1888, while 20 per cent. of the male population of our local prisons in England and Wales were under 21, only 12 per cent. of the female prison population were under that age. On the other hand, women between 21 and 50, form a larger proportion of the female prison population, than men between the same ages do of the male prison population. The criminal age among women is later in its commencement, and earlier in coming to a close than in the case of men. It is later in commencing because of the greater care and watchfulness exercised over girls than boys; but it is more persistent while it lasts, because a plunge into crime is a more irreparable thing in a woman than in a man. A woman's past has a far worse effect on her future than a man's. She incurs a far graver degree of odium from her own sex; it is much more difficult for her to get into the way of earning an honest livelihood, and a woman who has once been shut up within bolts and bars is much more likely to be irretrievably lost than a man. If it is important to keep men as much as possible out of prison, it is doubly necessary to keep out women; but it is, at the same time, a much harder thing to accomplish. This arises from the fact that the great bulk of female offenders enter the criminal arena after the age of twenty-one, and can only be dealt with by a sentence of imprisonment. If females began crime at an earlier period of life, it would be possible to send them to Reformatories or Industrial Schools, and a fair hope of ultimately saving them would still remain; but as this is impossible with grown-up persons, prison is the only alternative, and it is after imprisonment is over that a woman begins to recognise the terrible social penalties it has involved.

The proportion of offenders under sixteen years of age to the total local prison population of England and Wales, has decreased in a remarkable way within the last twenty or thirty years. The proportion of offenders under sixteen committed to prison between 1857-66, amounted to six and three-quarters per cent. of the prison population, and if we go back behind that period it was higher still. In fact, during the first quarter of the present century, the extent and ramifications of juvenile crime had almost reduced statesmen to despair. But the spread of the Reformatory system and the introduction more recently of Industrial and Truant Schools for children who have just drifted, or are fast drifting, into criminal courses, has had a remarkable effect in diminishing the juvenile population of our prisons. At the present time the proportion of juveniles under sixteen to the rest of the local prison population is only a little over two per cent. and it is not likely that it will ever reach a higher figure. It might easily be reduced almost to zero if children destined for Reformatories were sent off to these institutions at once, instead of being detained for a month or so in prison till a suitable school is found for them. Some persons object to the idea of sending children to Reformatories at once, on the ground that to abolish the terror of imprisonment from the youthful mind would embolden the juvenile inclined to crime and lead him more readily to commit it. Others object on the ground that it is only right the child should be punished for his offence. In answer to the last objection, it may pertinently be said that a sentence of three or four years to a Reformatory is surely sufficient punishment for offences usually committed by small boys. With regard to the first objection, our own experience is that the ordinary juvenile is much more afraid of the policeman than of the prison, and that the fear of being caught would operate just as strongly upon him if he were sent straight to the Reformatory as it does now. The evils connected with the present system of sending children destined for Reformatories to prison are of two kinds. At the present time many magistrates will not send children to Reformatories who sorely need the restraints of such an institution, because they know it involves a period of preliminary imprisonment before they can get there. Secondly, it enables a lad to know what the inside of a prison really is. On these two points let me quote the words of an experienced magistrate. "I have many times," said Mr. Whitwell, at the fourth Reformatory Conference, "when having to deal with young people, felt it very desirable to send them to a Reformatory, but have shrunk from it because we are obliged to send them to prison first. I think it should be left to the discretion of the magistrates and not made compulsory. I feel very strongly indeed that it is most desirable to keep the child from knowing what the inside of a prison is. Let them think it something awful to look forward to. When they have been in the prison they are of opinion that it is not such a very bad place after all, and they are not afraid of going there again; but if they are sent to a Reformatory and told that they will be sent to a prison if they do not reform, they will think it an awful place." These are wise words. It is impossible to make imprisonment such a severe discipline for children as it is for grown-up men and women, and as it is not so severe, children leave our gaols with a false impression on their minds. The terror of being imprisoned has, to a large extent, departed; they think they know the worst and cease to be much afraid of what the law can do. Hence the fact that society has less chance of reclaiming a child who has been imprisoned than it has of reclaiming one who has not undergone that form of punishment although he has committed precisely the same offence. In England, many authorities on Reformatory Schools are strongly in favour of retaining preliminary imprisonment for Reformatory children; in Scotland, experienced opinion is decisively on the other side. On this point, the Scotch are undoubtedly in the right. The working of prison systems, whether at home or abroad, teaches us that any person, be he child or man, who has once been in prison, is much more likely to come back than a person who, for a similar offence, has received punishment in a different form. The application of this principle to the case of Reformatory children decisively settles the matter in favour of sending such children to Reformatories at once. If this simple reform were effected, the child population of our prisons would almost cease to exist. In the year 1888, this population amounted to 239 for England and Wales under the age of twelve, and 4,826 under the age of sixteen, thus making a total of 5,065 or 2.9 per cent. of the whole local prison population.

In the preceding remarks on juvenile offenders under 16, it has been pointed out that the great decrease in the numbers of such offenders among the prison population is mainly owing to the development of Industrial and Reformatory Schools. In order, therefore, to form an accurate estimate of juvenile delinquency, we must look not merely at the number of juveniles in prison; attention must also be directed to the number of juveniles in Reformatory and Industrial Institutions. Although these institutions are not places of imprisonment, yet they are places of compulsory detention, and contain a very considerable proportion of juvenile delinquents. All juveniles sent to Reformatories have, indeed, been actually convicted of criminal offences, and in 1888 the number of young people in the Reformatory Schools of Great Britain (excluding Ireland) was in round numbers six thousand (5,984). These must be added to the total juvenile prison population in order to form a true conception of the extent of juvenile crime. It is almost certain that if these young people were not in Reformatories they would be in prisons, for, in almost the same proportion as the Reformatory and Industrial School inmates have increased, the juvenile prison population has decreased.

To the population of the Reformatory Schools must also be added a large percentage of the Industrial School population. Since the year 1864, the number of boys and girls in Industrial and Truant Schools has gone on steadily increasing. In that year the inmates amounted to 1,608; twenty-four years afterwards, that is to say, in 1888, the number of children in Great Britain in Industrial and Truant Schools amounted to 21,426.^[30] It is true that a considerable proportion of these children were not sent to the schools on account of having committed crime; at the same time it has to be remembered that nearly all of them were on the way to it, and would in all probability have become criminals had the State left them alone for a year or two longer. At the time of their committal the children we are now dealing with were either children who had been found begging, or who were wandering about without a settled home, or who were found destitute, or who had a parent in gaol, or who lived in the company of female criminals, prostitutes, and thieves. Such children may not actually have come within the clutches of the criminal law, but it is sufficient to look for a moment at the surroundings they had lived in to see that this was only a question of time. We must, therefore, add those children, along with the Reformatory population, to the number of juveniles in gaol if we wish to form a proper estimate of the extent of juvenile delinquency. If this is done we arrive at the conclusion that the criminal and semi-criminal juvenile population is at the present time more than 25,000 strong in England and Wales alone; if Scotland be included it is more than 30,000 strong. These figures are enough to show that it is only compulsory detention in State establishments which keeps down the numbers of juvenile offenders; and there can be little doubt, if the inmates of these institutions were let loose upon the country, juveniles would very soon constitute seven, eight, or, perhaps, ten per cent. of the prison population.

Let us now consider the case of young offenders between the ages of 16 and 21. This is the most momentous for weal or woe of all periods of life. During this stage, the transition from youth to manhood is taking place; the habits then formed acquire a more enduring character, and, in the majority of cases, determine the whole future of the individual. If youths between the ages just mentioned could by any possibility be prevented from embarking on a criminal career, the drop in the criminal population would be far-reaching in its effects. It is from the ranks of young people just entering early manhood that a large proportion of the habitual criminal population is recruited; and if this critical period of life can be tided over without repeated acts of crime, there is much less likelihood of a young man degenerating afterwards into a criminal of the professional class. It is most important that the professional criminal class should be diminished at a quicker rate than is the case at present; and, in spite of police statistics to the contrary, it is a class which has not become perceptibly smaller within the last twenty or five and twenty years. A proof of this statement is to be seen in the fact that offences against property with violence display a tendency to increase, and it is offences of this nature which are pre-eminently the work of the habitual criminal. It is a comparatively rare thing to find a habitual criminal stop mid-way in his sinister career; the accumulated impressions resulting from a life of crime have too effectively succeeded in shaping his character and conduct, and he persists, as a rule, in leading an anti-social life so long as he has physical strength to do it.

The only hope, therefore, of diminishing the habitual criminal population, is to lessen the number of recruits; and as most of these recruits are to be found among lads of between sixteen and twenty-one, it is to these lads that serious attention must be directed. Every year a certain proportion of youths ranging between these two ages shows a pronounced disposition to enter permanently upon a criminal life by repeatedly returning to prison. The deterrent effect of short sentences has ceased to operate upon them, and all the symptoms are present that a downright career of crime has begun. In such circumstances what is to be done? A plan has been proposed by Mr. Lloyd Baker for dealing with refractory and unmanageable Reformatory children, the substance of which is to send them to another institution of a stricter character than the ordinary Reformatory School, and which for want of a better name he calls a Penal Reformatory. It is very probable that something in the nature of a Penal Reformatory is just what is wanted to prevent a youth on the downward road from finally swelling the proportions of the professional criminal population. If Great Britain ever established such institutions, she would then possess a graded set of organisations for dealing with the young, which would cover the whole period of youthful life. The Truant School would catch the child on the first symptoms of waywardness, the Industrial School would arrest him standing on the verge of crime, the Reformatory School would dual with actual offenders against the law, and the Penal Reformatory would grapple with habitual offenders under the age of manhood.^[31]

After the age of manhood has been reached, and the main lines of character are formed, punitive methods of dealing with criminal offenders must assume a more prominent position, and the prison should then take the place of the Reformatory. In youth the deterrent effects of punishment are small, and the beneficial effects of reformative measures are at their maximum. In manhood, on the other hand, this condition of things is reversed, and the deterrent effects of punishment exceed the beneficial effects of reformative influences. An interesting example of the value of punishment for adults, as compared with other methods, is given by Sir John Strachey in his account of infanticide in certain parts of India. "For many years past," he says, "measures have been taken in the North-West Provinces for the prevention of this crime. For a long time, when our civilisation was less belligerent than it has since become, it was thought that the best hope of success lay in the removal of the causes which appeared to lead to its commission, and especially in the prevention of extravagant expenditure on marriages; but although these benevolent efforts were undoubtedly useful, their practical results were not great, and it gradually became clear that it was only by a stringent and organised system of coercion that these practices would ever be eradicated. In 1870 an act of the legislature was passed which enabled the Government to deal with the subject. A system of registration of births and deaths among the suspected classes was established, with constant inspection and enumeration of children; special police-officers were entertained at the cost of the guilty communities, and no efforts were spared to convince them that the Government had firmly resolved that it would put down these practices, and would treat the people who followed them as murderers. Although the time is, I fear, distant when preventive measures will cease to be necessary, much progress has been made, and there are now thousands of girls where formerly there were none. In the Mainpuri district, where, as I have said, there was not many years ago hardly a single Chauhán girl, nearly half of the Chauhán children at the present time are girls; and it is hoped that three-fourths of the villages have abandoned the practice."^[32]

These facts speak for themselves and afford an incontestable proof of the value of punishment as a remedial measure when other remedies have failed.^[33] In the re-action which is now in full force, and rightly so, against the excessive punishments of past times, there is a marked tendency among some minds to go to the opposite extreme, and an attempt is being made to show that imprisonment has hardly any curative effect at all. Its evils, and from the very nature of things they are not a few, are almost exclusively elaborated and dwelt upon, little attention being paid to the vast amount of good which imprisonment alone is able to effect. It is possible that imprisonment sends a few to utter perdition at a quicker pace than they would have gone of their own accord, but on the other hand, it rescues many a man before he has irrevocably committed himself to a life of crime. If it fails the first time, it very often succeeds after the second or the third, and no one is justified in saying imprisonment is worthless as a reformative agency till it has failed at least three times. According to the judicial statistics for England and Wales, imprisonment is successful after the third time in about 80 per cent. of the cases annually submitted to the criminal courts, and although it is a pity that the percentage is not higher, yet it cannot fairly be said that such results are an evidence of failure. The prison is unquestionably a much less effective weapon for dealing with crime among Continental peoples, and in the United States, than it has shown itself to be in Great Britain; but this failure arises in the main from the laxity and indulgence with which criminals are treated in foreign prisons. A prison to possess any reformative value must always be made an uncomfortable place to live in; Continental peoples and the people of America have to a large extent lost sight of this fact; hence the failure of their penal systems to stop the growth of the delinquent population. If, however, imprisonment is not allowed to degenerate into mere detention, it is bound to act as a powerful deterrent upon grown-up offenders, and it is the only menace which will effectually keep many of them within the law. The hope of reward and the fear of punishment, or, in other words, love of pleasure, and dread of pain, are the two most deeply seated instincts in the human breast; if Mr. Darwin's theory be correct, it is through the operation of these fundamental instincts that such a being as man has come into existence at all. In any case these instincts have hitherto been the chief ingredients of all human progress, the most effective spur to energy of all kinds, and when properly utilised they are the most potent of all deterrents to crime. Were it possible for the hand of social justice to descend on every criminal with infallible certainty; were it universally true that no crime could possibly escape punishment, that every offence against society would inevitably and immediately be visited on the offender, the tendency to commit crime would probably become as rare as the tendency of an ordinary human being to thrust his hand into the fire. The uncertainty of punishment is the great bulwark of crime, and crime has a marvellous knack of diminishing in proportion as this uncertainty decreases. No amelioration of the material circumstances of the community can destroy all the causes of crime, and till moral progress has reached a height hitherto attained only by the elect of the race, one of the most efficient curbs upon the criminally disposed will consist in increasing the probability of punishment.

In proportion as the probability of being punished is augmented, the severity of punishment can be safely diminished. This is one of the paramount advantages to be derived from a highly efficient police system. The barbarity of punishments in the Middle Ages is always attributed by historians to the barbarous ideas of those rude times. But this is only partially true; one important consideration is overlooked. In the Middle Ages it was extremely difficult to catch the criminal; in fact, it is only within the present century that an organised system for effecting the capture of criminals has come into existence. The result of the nebulous police system of past times was that very few offenders were brought to justice at all, and society, in order to prevent lawlessness from completely getting the upper hand, was obliged to make a terrible example of all offenders coming within its grasp. As soon, however, as it became less difficult to arrest and convict lawless persons, the old severities of the criminal code immediately began to fall into abeyance. Sentences were shortened, punishments were mitigated, the death penalty was abolished for almost all crimes except murder. But even now, the moment society sees any form of crime showing a tendency to evade the vigilance of the law, a cry is immediately raised for sterner measures of repression against the perpetrators of that particular form of crime. The Flogging Bill recently passed by Parliament is a case in point. These instances afford a fairly accurate insight into the action of society with regard to the punishment of crime. It punishes severely when the criminal is seldom caught; it punishes more lightly when he is often caught; and its punishments will become more mitigated still, as soon as the probability of capture is made more complete. A comparatively light sentence is in most cases a very effective deterrent, when it is made almost a certainty, and all alterations in the future in criminal administration should be in the direction of making punishment more certain rather than more severe. Such efforts are sure to be rewarded by a decrease in the amount of crime.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CRIMINAL IN BODY AND MIND.

Has the criminal any bodily and mental characteristics which differentiate him from the ordinary man? Does he differ from his fellows in height and weight? Does he possess a peculiar conformation of skull and brain? Is he anomalous in face and feature, in intellect, in will, in feeling? Is he, in short, an individual separated from the rest of humanity by any set or combination of qualities which clearly mark him off as an abnormal being? As these matters are at present exciting considerable attention, let us now look at the criminal from a purely biological point of view.

A good deal of diversity of opinion exists among competent authorities respecting the stature of criminals. Lombroso says that Italian criminals are above the average height; Knecht says German criminals do not differ in this respect from other men; Marro says the stature of criminals is variable; Thomson and Wilson say that criminals are inferior in point of stature to the average man. Whatever may be the case on the Continent, there can be little doubt that as far as the United Kingdom is concerned, the height of the criminal class is lower than that of the ordinary citizen. In Scotland the average height of the ordinary population is (559) 67.30 inches; the average height of the criminal population, as given by Dr. Bruce Thomson, is (324) 66.95 inches. According to Dr. Beddoe, the average height of the London artizan population is (318) 66.72 inches; the average height of the London criminal (300) 54.70 inches; the average height of Liverpool criminals, according to Danson, is (1117) 66.39 inches. Danson's figures point to the fact that there is hardly any difference in height between the criminal classes of Liverpool and the artizan population of London It has, however, to be borne in mind that the population of the North of England, being largely of Scandinavian descent, is taller than the population of the South of England. The height of Liverpool criminals should be compared with the average height of the Scotch, to whom they are more nearly allied by race. If this is done, it will be seen that they fall considerably short of the normal stature.

The difference between the height of the criminal population and that of the most favoured classes is more remarkable still. According to Dr. Roberts' tables, the average height of the latter is 69.06 inches; the London criminal is only 64.70 inches. There is thus a difference of from four to five inches between the most highly favoured classes and the London criminal class. The difference between the criminal class and the merely well-to-do is not quite so great. Selecting Mr. Galton's Health Exhibition measurements as a test of the stature of the well-to-do classes, the results come out as follows:—Health Exhibition measurements, 67.9 inches; London criminals, 64.70 inches. The criminal is thus between two and three inches inferior in height to the well-to-do portion of the community. In fact, the height of the London criminal is very nearly the same as that of the East-End Jew. According to Mr. Jacobs, in a paper communicated to the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, the average stature of the East-End Jew is 64.3 inches; his co-religionist in the West-End is 67.5 inches. We may accordingly take it as the outcome of these measurements that the criminal population of Great Britain is inferior in point of stature to the ordinary population.

From stature we shall pass to weight. Lombroso and Marro say that the weight of Italian criminals is superior to the weight of the average Italian citizen. On the other hand, the weight of London criminals is almost the same as that of London artizans, but inferior to the weight of the artizan population in the large English towns taken as a whole. Average weight of London criminals (300) 136 pounds; average weight of London artizan (318) 137 pounds; average weight of artizans in large towns generally, 138 pounds. The London criminal is considerably inferior in weight to the well-to-do classes, as will be seen from Mr. Galton's Health Exhibition statistics. Average weight, Health Exhibition, 143 pounds; average weight, most favoured class (Roberts), 152 pounds. These figures show that the criminal class in London is seven pounds lighter than the well-to-do, and sixteen pounds lighter than the most favoured section of the population.

Hardly any investigations have been made in this country respecting the skulls of criminals, and the inquiries of continental investigators have so far led to very conflicting results. It is a contention of Lombroso's that the skulls of criminals exhibit a larger proportion of asymmetrical peculiarities than the skulls of other men. On this point Lombroso is supported by Manouvrier. But Topinard, an anthropologist of great eminence, is of the opposite opinion. He carefully examined the same series of skulls as been examined by Manouvrier—the skulls of murders—and he discovered no marked difference between these and other skulls. Heger, a Belgian anthropologist says that the skulls of delinquents do not differ from the skulls of the race to which the delinquent belongs. In fact, till more exactitude is introduced into the methods of skull measurement, all deduction based upon an examination of the criminal skull must be regarded as untrustworthy. A striking instance of this was witnessed at the proceedings of the Paris Congress of Criminal Anthropology held in 1889. When the skull of Charlotte Corday, who killed the revolutionist Marat, was subjected to examination, Lombroso declared that it was a truly criminal type of skull; Topinard, on the other hand, gave it as his opinion that it was a typical female skull. On this point Topinard was supported by Benedict.^[34] As long as such divergencies of view exist among anthropologists it is impossible to place much stress upon inquiries relative to the conformation of the criminal skull. Before a beginning can be made with inquiries of this character, there must be some fundamental basis of agreement among investigators as to what is to be accounted asymmetrical in skull measurements and what is not. Even then it will have to be remembered, before coming to conclusions, that no skull is perfectly symmetrical—every one showing some variation from the ideal type. When the extent of this variation has been absolutely demonstrated to be greater in the case of criminals than among other sections of the community, we shall then be approaching solid ground. At present we must wait for further light before anything can be said with certainty with respect to the criminal skull.

Just as little is known at present about the brain of criminals as about the skull. Some years ago Professor Benedict startled the world by stating that he had discovered the seat of crime in the convolutions of the brain. He found a certain number of anomalies in the convolutions of the frontal lobes, and he came to the conclusion that crime was connected with the existence of these anomalies. But he had omitted to examine the frontal convolutions of honest people. When this was done by other investigators, it was found that the brain convolutions of normal men presented just as many anomalies, some investigators (Dr. Giacomini) said even more than the brains of criminals. According to Dr. Bardeleben, there is no such thing as a normal type of brain. Weight of brain is a much simpler question than brain type, but so far it is impossible to say whether the criminal brain is heavier or lighter than the ordinary brain. The solution of this comparatively simple point is beset by a certain number of obstacles. It is not enough, Dr. Binswanger tells us, to weigh the brains of criminals and the brains of ordinary persons and then strike an average of the results. The height and weight of the persons whose brains are averaged are essential to the formation of accurate conclusions; till these important factors are taken into account, all deductions based upon weight of brain only rest upon an unsure foundation.

But supposing we had a trustworthy body of facts bearing upon the weight and structure of the criminal brain, we should still require to know much more of brain functions in general before satisfactory conclusions could be drawn from these facts. We know something, it is true, of the physiological functions at certain cerebral regions, but as yet nothing is known of the localisation of any particular mental faculty, whether criminal or otherwise. A conclusive proof that the study of the brain, as an organ of thought, is still in its infancy, is found in the fact that the fundamental question is still unsolved, whether the whole brain is to be considered one in all its parts, so far as the performance of psychic functions is concerned, or whether these functions are localised in certain definite centres. Till these fundamental difficulties are cleared away, the presence of anomalies in certain convolutions of the brain will not prove very much one way or the other.^[35]

An examination of the criminal face has so far led to no definite and assured results. In the imagination of artists the criminal is almost always credited with the possession of a retreating forehead. As a matter of fact, Dr. Marro, one of the most eminent representatives of the anthropological school, assures us that this is not the case. After comparing the foreheads of 539 delinquents with the foreheads of 100 ordinary men, he found that criminals had a smaller percentage of retreating foreheads than the average man.^[36] He also found that projecting eyebrows, another trait which is supposed to be a criminal peculiarity, were almost as common among ordinary people as among offenders against the law. Projecting ears is another peculiarity which is often associated with the idea of a criminal. But Dr. Lannois states that after a careful examination of the ears of 43 young offenders, he found them as free from anomalies as the ears of other people.^[37]

As it is the Italians who have studied these matters most exhaustively, it is mainly to them we must go for information. In a little book on the skeleton and the form of the nose, Dr. Salvator Ottolenghi comes to the somewhat curious result that the bones of the criminal nose offer many anomalies of a pre-human or bestial character; but the nose itself is straight and long, or, in other words, just as highly developed as the noses of ordinary men. Careful inquiries have been undertaken by criminal anthropologists into the colour of the hair, the length of the arms, the colour of the skin, tattooing, sensitiveness to pain among the criminal population, but these laborious investigations have so far led to few solid conclusions. According to Lombroso, insensibility to pain is a marked characteristic of the typical criminal.^[38] "Individuals," he says, "who possess this quality consider themselves as privileged, and they despise delicate and sensitive persons. It is a pleasure to such hardened men to torment others whom they look upon as inferior beings." On this point M. Joly is at variance with Lombroso. "I asked," he says, "at the central hospital, the Santé, where all persons who become seriously ill in the prisons of the Seine are looked after, if this disvulnerability had ever been noticed. I was told that far from that, prisoners were always found very sensitive to pain ... Honest people, industrious workmen, the fathers of families treated at the Charité or the Hôtel-Dieu (Paris hospitals), undergo operations with much more fortitude than the sick prisoners of the Santé."^[39] On this point, therefore, as on so many others, we are still without a sufficient body of evidence, and must, meanwhile, suspend our judgment.

Let us now consider the criminal's physiognomy. In this connection it must be borne in mind that a prolonged period of imprisonment will change the face of any man, whether he is a criminal or not. Political offenders who have undergone a sentence of penal servitude, and who may be men of the highest character, acquire the prison look and never altogether get rid of it. If a man spends a certain number of years sharing the life, the food, the occupations of five or six hundred other men, if he mixes with them and with no one else, he will inevitably come to resemble them in face and feature. A remarkable illustration of this fact has recently been brought to light by the Photographic Society of Geneva. "From photographs of seventy-eight old couples, and of as many adult brothers and sisters, it was found that twenty-four of the former resembled each other much more strongly than as many of the latter who were thought most like one another."^[40] It would, therefore, seem that the action of unconscious imitation, arising from constant contact, is capable of producing a remarkable change in the features, the acquired expression frequently tending to obliterate inherited family resemblances. According to Piderit, physiognomy is to be considered as a mimetic expression which has become habitual. The criminal type of face, so conspicuous in old offenders, is in many cases merely a prison type; it is not congenital; men who do not originally have it almost always acquire it after a prolonged period of penal servitude.

But apart from the prison type of countenance, it is highly probable that a distinct criminal type also exists. Certain professions generate distinctive castes of feature, as, for instance, the Army and the Church. This distinctiveness is not confined to features alone, it diffuses itself over the whole man; it is observable in manner, in gesture, in bearing, in demeanour, and is constantly breaking out in a variety of unexpected ways. In like manner the habitual criminal acquires the habits of his class. Crime is his profession; it is also the profession of all his associates. The constant practice of this profession results in the acquisition of a certain demeanour, a certain aspect, gait, and general appearance, in many instances too subtle to define, but, at the same time, plain and palpable to an expert.

The slang of criminals is also explicable on the same principle. Every trade and calling has its technical terms. The meaning of these terms is hidden from the rest of the world, but the origin of their existence is not difficult to explain. The jargon of the criminal arises from the same causes and is constructed on exactly the same principles as the technical words and phrases of the man of science. When a man of science is compelled to make frequent use of a phrase, he generally gets rid of it by inventing some technical word; it is precisely the same with criminals. With them technical words are used instead of phrases, and short words instead of long ones in all matters where criminal interests are intimately concerned, and on all topics which are habitually the subjects of conversation among the criminal classes. The language of the Stock Exchange with its Bulls, Bears, Contangos, and other short and comprehensive expressions for various kinds of stocks, is on all fours with the slang of criminals, and it is not necessary to resort to atavism in order to explain it. It arises to supply professional needs, and criminal argot springs up from exactly the same cause.

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. In combination these two types form a professional type and constitute what Dr. Bruce Thomson^[41] has called "a physique distinctly characteristic of the criminal class." It is not, however, a type which admits of accurate description, and its practical utility is impaired by the fact that certain of its features are sometimes visible in men who have never been convicted of crime. The position of the case, with respect to the criminal type, may be best described by saying that an experienced detective officer will be sure in nine cases out of ten that he has got hold of a criminal by profession, but in the tenth case he will probably make a mistake. In other words, face, manner and demeanor are no infallible index of character or habits of life.

When crime is not an inherited taint, but merely an acquired habit, this fact has an important practical bearing upon the proper method of dealing with it. Acquired habits, we are now being taught by Professor Weismann, are incapable of being transmitted to posterity, and Mr. Galton is of the same opinion.^[42] This is not the place to elaborate the theory of inheritance, as understood by those writers; its essence, however, is that we only inherit the natural faculties of our forebears, and not those faculties which they have acquired by practice and experience. The son of a rope-dancer does not inherit his father's faculties for rope-dancing, nor the son of an orator his father's ready aptitude for public speech, nor the son of a designer his father's acquired skill in the making of designs. All that the son inherits is the natural faculties of the parent, but no more. Hence it follows that the son of a thief, on the supposition that thieving comes by habit and practice, does not by natural inheritance acquire the parent's criminal propensity. As far as his natural faculties are concerned he starts life free from the vicious habits of his parent, and should he in turn become a thief, as sometimes happens, it is not because he has inherited his father's thievish habits, but because he has himself acquired them. It is imitation, not instinct, which transforms him into a thief; and if he is removed from the influence of evil example he will have almost as small a chance of falling into a criminal life as any other member of the community. It will not be quite so small, because no public institution, however well conducted, can ever exercise so moralising an effect as a good home, but it will be much smaller than if he grew up to maturity under the pernicious surroundings of a criminal home.

If we do not inherit the acquired faculties and habits of our parents, it is unfortunately too true that we inherit their diseases and the connection between disease and crime is a fact which cannot be denied. In many cases it is perfectly true that persons suffering from disease or physical degeneracy do not become criminals, in most cases they do not; at the same time a larger proportion of such persons fall into a lawless life than is the case with people who are free from inherited infirmities. The undoubted tendency of physical infirmity is to disturb the temper, to weaken the will, and generally to disorganise the mental equilibrium. Such a tendency, when it becomes very pronounced, leads its unhappy possessor to perpetrate offenses against his fellow-men, or, in other words, to commit crime. In a recent communication to a German periodical, Herr Sichart, director of prisons in the kingdom of Wurtemburg, has shown that a very high percentage of criminals are the descendants of degenerate parents. Herr Sichart's inquiries extended over several years and included 1,714 prisoners. Of this number 16 per cent. were descended from drunken parents; 6 per cent. from families in which there was madness; 4 per cent. from families addicted to suicide; 1 per cent. from families in which there was epilepsy. In all, 27 per cent. of the offenders, examined by Herr Sichart were descended from families in which there was degeneracy. According to these figures more than one fourth of the German prison population have received a defective organisation from their ancestry, which manifests itself in a life of crime.

In France and Italy the same state of things prevails. Dr. Corre is of opinion that a very large proportion of persons convicted of bad conduct in the French military service are distinctly degenerate either in body or mind. Dr. Virgilio says that in Italy 32 per cent. of the criminal population have inherited criminal tendencies from their parents. In England there is no direct means of testing the amount of degeneracy among the criminal classes, but, in all likelihood, it is quite as great as elsewhere. According to the report of the Medical Inspector of convict prisons for 1888-9, the annual number of deaths from natural causes, among the convict population, is from 10 to 12 per 1000. Let us compare those figures with the death rate of the general population as recorded in the Registrar-General's report for 1888. The annual death rate from all causes of the general population, between the ages of 15 and 45, is about 7 per 1000. I have selected the period of life between 15 and 45 for the reason that it corresponds most closely with the average age of criminals. If deaths from accident are excluded from the mortality returns of the general population, it will be found that the rate of mortality among criminals, in convict prisons, is from one third to one half higher than the rate of mortality among the rest of the community of a similar age. If the rate of mortality of the criminal population is so high inside convict prisons, where the health of the inmates is so carefully attended to, what must it be among the criminal classes when in a state of liberty? Independently of the premature deaths brought on by irregularity of life, it is certain that a high proportion of criminals bear within them the seeds of inherited disorders, and it is these disorders which largely account for the high rate of mortality amongst them when in prison.

The high percentage of disease and degeneracy among the English criminal population may be seen in other ways. The population in the local gaols in 1888-9, between the ages of 21 and 40, constituted 54 per cent. of the total prison population, whilst the same class between the ages of 40 and CO formed only 20 per cent. of the prison population. One half of this drop in the percentage of prisoners between 40 and 60 may be accounted for by the decreased percentage of persons between these two ages in the general population. The other half can only be accounted for by the extent to which premature decay and death rage among criminals who have passed their fortieth year. In other words, the number of criminals alive after forty is much smaller than the number of normal men alive after that age.

A direct proof of the extent of degeneracy in the shape of insanity among persons convicted of murder can be found in the Judicial Statistics. The number of persons convicted of wilful murder, not including manslaughter or non-capital homicides, from 1879 to 1888 amounted to 441. Out of this total 143 or 32 per cent. were found insane. Of the 299 condemned to death, no less than 145, or nearly one half, had their sentences commuted, many of them on the ground of mental infirmity. The whole of these figures decisively prove that between 40 and 50 per cent. of the convictions for wilful murder are cases in which the murderers were either insane or mentally infirm. Murder cases are almost the only ones respecting which the antecedents of the offender are seriously inquired into. But when this inquiry does take place the vast amount of degeneracy among criminals at once becomes apparent.

Passing from the mental condition of murderers, let us now take into consideration the mental state of criminals generally. Beginning with the senses, it may be said that very little stress can be laid on the experiments conducted by the Anthropological School as to peculiarities in the sense of smell, taste, sight, and so on, discovered among criminals. In all these inquiries it is so easy for the subject to deceive the investigator, and he has often so direct an interest in doing it that all results in this department must be accepted with the utmost caution. Wherever investigations necessitate the acceptance upon trust of statements made by criminals, their scientific value descends to the lowest level. As this must be largely the case with respect to the senses of hearing, taste, smell, etc., it is almost impossible to reach assured conclusions.

It is different in inquiries respecting the intellect. Here the investigator is able to judge for himself. According to Dr. Ogle, 86.5 per cent. of the general population were able to read and write in the years 1881-4, and as this represents an increase of 10 per cent. since the passing of the Elementary Education Act, it is probably not far from the mark to say that at the present time almost 90 per cent. of the English population can read and write. In other words, only 10 per cent. of the population is wholly ignorant. In the local prisons on the other hand, no less than 25 per cent. of the prisoners can neither read nor write, and 72 per cent. can only read or read and write imperfectly. The vast difference in the proportion of uninstructed among the prison, as compared with the general population, is not to be explained by the defective early training of the former. This explanation only covers a portion of the ground: the other portion is covered by the fact that a certain number of criminals are almost incapable of acquiring instruction. The memory and the reasoning powers of such persons are so utterly feeble that attempts to school them is a waste of time.^[43] Deficiencies in memory, imagination, reason, are three undoubted characteristics of the ordinary criminal intellect. Of course, there are very many criminals in which all these qualities are present, and whose defects lie in another direction, but taken as a whole the criminal is unquestionably less gifted intellectually than the rest of the community.

Respecting the emotions of criminals, it is much more difficult to speak, and much more easy to fall into error. The only thing that can be said of them for certain, is, that they do not, as a rule, possess the same keenness of feeling as the ordinary man. Some Italian writers make much of the religiosity of delinquents; such a sentiment may be common among offenders in Italy; it is certainly rare among the same class in Great Britain. The cellular system puts an effective stop to any thing like active hostility to religion; but it is a mistake to argue from this that the criminal is addicted to the exercise of religious sentiments. The family sentiment is also feebly developed; the exceptions to this rule form a small fraction of the criminal population.

The will in criminals, when it is not impaired by disease, is, in the main, dominated by a boundless egoism. Let us first consider those whose wills are impaired by disease. Among drunkards and the degenerate generally the power of sustained volition is often as good as gone. Nothing can be more pitiful or hopeless than the position of wretched beings in a condition such as this. Often animated by good resolutions, often anxious to do what is right, often possessing a sense of moral responsibility, these unhappy creatures plunge again and again into vice and crime. In some cases of this description the will is practically annihilated; in others it is under the dominion of momentary caprice; in others again it has no power of concentration, or it is the victim of sudden hurricanes of feeling which drive everything before them. Persons afflicted in this way, when not drunkards, are generally convicted for crimes of violence, such as assault, manslaughter, murder. They experience real sentiments of remorse, but neither remorse nor penitence enables them to grapple with their evil star. The will is stricken with disease, and the man is dashed hither and thither, a helpless wreck on the sea of life.^[44]

Let us now consider the class of criminals whose wills are not diseased, but are, on the other hand, dominated by a boundless egoism. Of such criminals it may be said that there is no essential difference between them and immoral men. Egoism, selfishness, a lack of consideration for the rights and feelings of others, are the dominant principles in the life of both. The dividing line between the two types consists in this, that the egoism of the immoral man is bounded by the criminal law; but the egoism of the criminal is bounded by no law either without him or within. It does not follow from this that the criminal is without a sense of duty or a dread of legal punishment. In most cases he possesses both in a more or less developed form. But his immense egoism so completely overpowers both his sense of duty and his fear of punishment that it demands gratification at whatever cost. He sees what he ought to do; he knows how he ought to act; he is perfectly alive to the consequences of transgression, but these motives are not strong enough to induce him to alter his ways of life.

On summing up the results of this inquiry into criminal biology we arrive at the following conclusions. In the first place, it cannot be proved that the criminal has any distinct physical conformation, whether anatomical or morphological; and, in the second place, it cannot be proved that there is any inevitable alliance between anomalies of physical structure and a criminal mode of life. But it can be shown that criminals, taken as a whole, exhibit a higher proportion of physical anomalies, and a higher percentage of physical degeneracy than the rest of the community. With respect to the mental condition of criminals, it cannot be established that it is, on the whole, a condition of insanity, or even verging on insanity. But it can be established that the bulk of the criminal classes are of a humbly developed mental organisation. Whether we call this low state of mental development, atavism, or degeneracy is, to a large extent, a matter of words; the fact of its wide-spread existence among criminals is the important point.

The results of this inquiry also show that degeneracy among criminals is sometimes inherited and sometimes acquired. It is inherited when the criminal is descended from insane, drunken, epileptic, scrofulous parents; it is often acquired when the criminal adopts and deliberately persists in a life of crime. The closeness of the connection between degeneracy and crime is, to a considerable extent, determined by social conditions. A degenerate person, who has to earn his own livelihood, is much more likely to become a criminal than another degenerate person who has not. Almost all forms of degeneracy render a man more or less unsuited for the common work of life; it is not easy for such a man to obtain employment; in certain forms of degeneracy it becomes almost impossible. A person in this unfortunate position often becomes a criminal, not because he has strong anti-social instincts, but because he cannot get work. Physically, he is unfit for work, and he takes to crime as an alternative.

Another important result is the close connection between madness and crimes of blood. We have seen that almost one third of the cases of conviction for wilful murder are cases in which the murderer is found to be insane. And this does not represent the full proportion of murderers afflicted mentally; a considerable percentage of those sentenced to death have this sentence commuted on mental grounds. In Germany, from 26 to 28 per cent. of criminals suffering from mental weakness escape the observation of the court in this important particular, and the same state of things unquestionably exists in the United Kingdom. The actual percentage of criminals who suffer from mental disorders in the prisons of Europe is probably much greater than is generally supposed. At the present time a knowledge of insanity is no part of the ordinary medical curriculum. "With respect to this malady the great majority of medical men are themselves in the position of laymen. They have not studied it. It was not included in their examinations."^[45] Till this state of things is altered we shall never exactly know the intimacy of the connection between nervous disorders and crime.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME.

In a previous chapter the deterrent action of punishment on the criminal population has been pointed out. It now remains for us to consider the nature of punishment, and the methods by which punishment should be carried out. What is punishment as applied to crime? According to Kant it is an act of retribution; it consists in inflicting upon the criminal the same injury as he has inflicted on his victim. It is an application by society of the principle of "jus talionis." Such a definition of punishment does not harmonise with the facts. We cannot punish the slanderer by slandering him in turn; and in punishing the murderer, it is impossible to torture him in the same way as he has probably tortured his victim. According to the theory of retribution, punishment becomes an end in itself; it is quite unrelated to the benefits it may confer on the person who is punished, or on the community which punishes him.

The difficulties surrounding the theory of retribution have led to other definitions of punishment. Punishment, it is said, is not inflicted on the offender as a retribution for his misdeeds, it is inflicted for the purpose of protecting society against its enemies. Such a view leaves moral considerations entirely out of account; it leaves no room for the just indignation of the public at the spectacle of crime. It is defective in other ways. For instance, a criminal has a particular animosity against some single individual; it may be he murders this person, or does him grievous bodily harm. Such an offender has no similar animosity against any one else; as far as the rest of the community is concerned he is perfectly harmless. On the supposition that punishment is only intended to protect society against the criminal, a man of this description would escape punishment altogether. Or supposing a man (and this often happens), after committing some serious crime for which he is sent to penal servitude, sincerely and bitterly repented of it, and would be, if released, a perfectly harmless member of the community, such a man, according to the theory we are now discussing, should be released at once. The certainty that the public conscience would tolerate no such step shows that punishment has a wider object than the mere attainment of social security.

Punishment is only a means say some; its real end is the reformation of the offender. The practical application of such a principle would lead to very astonishing results. It is perfectly well known that there is no more incorrigible set of offenders than habitual vagrants and drunkards. And on the other hand, the most easily reformed of all offenders is often some person who has committed a serious crime under circumstances which could not possibly recur. According to the theory that reformation is the only end of punishment, petty offenders would be shut up all their lives, while the perpetrator of a grave crime would soon be set free. An absurd result of this kind is fatal to the pretention that punishment is merely a means and not also an end.

Is it the end of punishment to act as a deterrent? We are often told from the judicial bench that a man receives a certain sentence as a warning and example to others. If such is the end of punishment it lamentably fails in its purpose, for in a number of cases it neither deters the offender nor the class from which the offender springs. It was under the influence of this idea that criminals used to be hanged in public, but experience failed to show that these ghastly exhibitions had much deterrent effect on the community. Besides, it is rather ridiculous to say, I do not punish you for the crime you have committed, I punish you as a warning to others. In these circumstances the effect of punishment is not to be upon the person punished, but upon a third party who has not fallen into crime. Unless the punishment is just in itself, society has no right to inflict it in the hope of scaring others from criminal courses. Justice administered in this spirit, turns the convicted offender into a whipping boy; the punishment ceases to be related to the offence, and is merely related to the effect it will have on a certain circle of spectators.