And in this sense
the question would be simply metaphysical, like the famous
Byzantine discussions as to whether there was originally an egg
before a hen or a hen before an egg.
the question would be simply metaphysical, like the famous
Byzantine discussions as to whether there was originally an egg
before a hen or a hen before an egg.
Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri
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9
14 '' . . . . . . -- . . . . . . . . . 1. 4
15 '' . . . . . . -- . . . . . . . . . . 9
20 '' . . . . . . -- . . . . . . . . . . 5
------------------------------------------------
Actual totals of relapses 128 212
Chronic relapse is naturally less frequent in the case of those
condemned to long terms; but it is a conspicuous symptom of
individual and social pathology in the two classes of born and
habitual criminals.
Lombroso, in the second volume of his work on ``The Criminal,''
denies that precocity and relapse are characteristics
distinguishing born and habitual from occasional criminals. But
it is only a question of terms. He considers that born and
habitual criminals confine themselves almost exclusively to
serious crime, and occasional criminals to minor offences. And as
the figures which I have given show that precocity and relapse are
even more frequent for minor offences than for crimes, he thinks
that they contradict instead of confirming my conclusions.
The mere seriousness of an act cannot by any means divide the
categories of criminals; for homicide as well as theft, assault
and battery as well as forgery, may be committed, though in
different psychological and social conditions, as easily by born
and habitual criminals as by occasional criminals and criminals of
passion.
Moreover, the figures which I have given show that precocity and
relapse are more frequent in the forms of criminality which, apart
from their gravity, are the common practices of born and habitual
criminals, such as murder, homicide, robbery, rape, &c. , whilst
they are far more uncommon, even if they can be said to be
observed at all, in the case of the crimes and offences usually
committed by occasional criminals, such as infanticide, and
certain of the offences mentioned above.
It remains to say something of the occasional criminals, and the
criminals of passion.
The latter are but a variety of the occasional criminals, but
their characteristics are so specific that they may be very
readily distinguished. In fact Lombroso, in his second edition,
supplementing the observations of Despine and Bittinger, separated
them from other criminals, and classified them according to their
symptoms. I need only summarise his observations.
In the first place, the criminals who constitute the strongly
marked class of criminals by irresistible impulse are very rare,
and their crimes are almost invariably against the person. Thus,
out of 71 criminals of passion inquired into by Lombroso, 69 were
homicides, 6 had in addition been convicted of theft, 3 of
incendiarism, and 1 of rape.
It may be shown that they number about 5 per cent. of crimes
against the person.
They are as a rule persons of previous good behaviour, sanguine or
nervous by temperament, of excessive sensibility, unlike born or
habitual criminals, and they are often of a neurotic or epileptoid
temperament, of which their crimes may be, strictly speaking, an
unrecognised consequence.
Frequently they transgress in their youth, especially in the case
of women, under stress of a passion which suddenly spurns
constraint, like anger, or outraged love, or injured honour. They
are highly emotional before, during, or after the crime, which
they do not commit treacherously, but openly, and often by ill-
chosen methods, the first that present themselves. Now and then,
however, one encounters criminals of passion who premeditate a
crime, and carry it out treacherously, either by reason of
their colder and less impulsive temperament, or as the outcome of
preconceived ideas or a widespread sentiment, in cases where we
have to do with a popular form of lawlessness, such as the
vendetta.
This is why the test of premeditation has no absolute value in
criminal psychology, as a distinction between the born criminal
and the criminal of passion; for premeditation depends especially
on the temperament of the individual, and is exemplified in crimes
committed by both anthropological types.
Amongst other symptoms of the criminal of passion, there is also
the precise motive which leads to a crime complete in itself, and
never as a means of attaining another criminal purpose.
These offenders immediately acknowledge their crime, with
unassumed remorse, frequently so keen that they instantly commit,
or attempt to commit suicide. When convicted--as they seldom are
by a jury--they are always repentant prisoners, and amend their
lives, or do not become degraded, so that in this way they
encourage superficial observers to affirm as a general fact, and
one possible in all circumstances, that ameliorative effect of
imprisonment which is really a mere illusion in the case of the
far more numerous classes of born and habitual criminals.
In these same offenders we very rarely observe, if at all, the
organic anomalies which create a criminal type. And even the
psychological characteristics are much slighter in countries where
certain crimes of passion are endemic, almost ranking
amongst the customs of the community, like the homicides which
occur in Corsica and Sardinia for the vindication of honour, or
the political assassinations in Russia and Ireland.
The last class is that of occasional criminals, who without any
inborn and active tendency to crime lapse into crime at an early
age through the temptation of their personal condition, and of
their physical and social environment, and who do not lapse into
it, or do not relapse, if these temptations disappear.
Thus they commit those crimes and offences which do not indicate
natural criminality, or else crimes and offences against person or
property, but under personal and social conditions altogether
different from those in which they are committed by born and
habitual criminals.
There is no doubt that, even with the occasional criminal, some of
the causes which lead him into crime belong to the anthropological
class; for external causes would not suffice without individual
predispositions. For instance, during a scarcity or a hard
winter, not all of those who experience privation have recourse to
theft, but some prefer to endure want, however undeserved, without
ceasing to be honest, whilst others are at the utmost driven to
beg their food; and amongst those who yield to the suggestion of
crime, some stop short at simple theft, whilst others go as far as
robbery with violence.
But the true difference between the born and the occasional
criminal is that, with the former, the external cause is
less operative than the internal tendency, because this tendency
possesses, as it were, a centrifugal force, driving the individual
to commit crime, whilst, for the occasional criminal, it is rather
a case of feeble power of resistance against external causes, to
which most of the inducement to crime is due.
The casual provocation of crime in the born criminal is generally
the outcome of an instinct or tendency already existing, and far
more of a pretext than an occasion of crime. With the occasional
criminal, on the other hand, it is the casual provocation which
matures, no doubt in a favouring soil, the growth of criminal
tendencies not previously developed.
For this reason Lombroso calls the occasional criminals
``criminaloids,'' in order to show precisely that they have a
distinctly abnormal constitution, though in a less degree than the
born criminals, just as we have the metal and the metalloid, the
epileptic and the epileptoid.
And this, again, is the reason why Lombroso's criticisms on my
description of occasional criminals are lacking in force. He
says, as Benedikt said at the Congress at Rome, that all criminals
are criminals by birth, so that there is no such thing as an
occasional criminal, in the sense of a NORMAL individual
casually launched into crime. But I have not, any more than
Garofalo, drawn such a picture of the occasional criminal, for as
a matter of fact I have said precisely the opposite, as indeed
Lombroso himself acknowledges a little further on (ii. 422),
namely, that between the born and the occasional criminal
there is only a difference of degree and modality, as in all the
criminal classes.
To cite a few details of criminal psychology, it may be stated
that of the two physiological conditions of crime, moral
insensibility and improvidence, occasional crime is especially due
to the latter, and inborn and habitual crime to the former. With
the born criminal it is, above all, the lack or the weakness of
moral sense which fails to withstand crime, whereas with the
occasional criminal the moral sense is almost normal, but
inability to realise beforehand the consequences of his act causes
him to yield to external influences.
Every man, however pure and honest he may be, is conscious now and
then of a transitory notion of some dishonest or criminal action.
But with the honest man, exactly because he is physically and
morally normal, this notion of crime, which simultaneously summons
up the idea of its grievous consequences, glances off the surface
of the normal conscience, and is a mere flash without the thunder.
With the man who is less normal and has less forethought, the
notion dwells, resists the weak repulsion of a not too vigorous
moral sense, and finally prevails; for, as Victor Hugo says,
``Face to face with duty, to hesitate is to be lost. ''[11]
[11] For instance, I will recall a fact which Morel has related of
himself, how one day, as he was crossing a bridge in Paris, he saw
a working-man gazing into the water, and a homicidal idea flashed
across his mind, so that he had to hurry away, for fear of
yielding to the temptation to throw the man into the water.
Again, there is the case of Humboldt's nurse, who was attacked one
day by the temptation to kill her charge, and ran with him to his
mother in order to avoid a disaster. Brierre de Boismont
also tells us of a learned man who, at the sight of a picture in a
public gallery, was tempted to cut the canvas, and ran away from
his impulse to crime.
The criminal of passion is one who is strong enough to resist
ordinary temptations of no exceptional force, to which the
occasional criminal would yield, but who does not resist
psychological storms which indeed are sometimes actually
irresistible.
The forms of occasional criminality, which are determined by these
ordinary temptations, are also determined by age, sex, poverty,
worldly influences, influences of moral environment, alcoholism,
personal surroundings, and imitation. Tarde has ably demonstrated
the persistent influence of these conditions on the actions of
men.
In this connection, Lombroso has drawn a clear distinction between
two varieties of occasional criminals: the ``pseudo-criminals,''
or normal human beings who commit involuntary offences, or
offences which do not spring from perversity, and do not hurt
society, though they are punishable by law, and ``criminaloids,''
who commit ordinary offences, but differ from true criminals for
the reasons already given.
A final observation is necessary in regard to this anthropological
classification of criminals, and it meets various objections
raised by our syllogistic critics. The difference existing
amongst the five categories is only one of degree, and depends
upon their organic and psychological types, and upon the influence
of physical and social environment.
In every natural classification the differences between
various groups and varieties are never anything but relative.
This deprives them of none of their theoretical and practical
importance, and so it is with this anthropological classification
of criminals.
It follows that, as in natural history we advance by degrees and
shades from the inorganic to the organic creation, life beginning
in the mineral domain with the laws of crystallisation, so in
criminal anthropology we pass by degrees and shades from the mad
to the born criminal, through the links of moral madmen and
epileptics; and from the born criminal to the occasional, through
the link of the habitual criminal, who begins by being an
occasional criminal, and ends by acquiring and transmitting to his
children the characteristics of the born criminal. And finally,
we pass from the occasional criminal to the criminal of passion,
who is but a species of the other, and who further, with his
neurotic and epileptoid temperament, not infrequently approximates
to the criminal of unsound mind.
Thus in our everyday life, as in science, we very often find
intermediate types, for complete and unmixed types are always the
most uncommon. And whilst legislators and judges, in their
complacent psychology, exact and establish marked lines of
cleavage between the sane and the insane criminal, experts in
psychiatry and anthropology are often constrained to place a
prisoner somewhere between the mad and the born criminal, or
between the occasional criminal and the normal man.
But it is evident that even when a criminal cannot be classed
precisely in one or the other category, and stands between
the two, this is in itself a sufficiently definite classification,
especially from a sociological point of view. There is
consequently no weight in the objection of those who, basing their
argument on an abstract and nebulous idea of the criminal in
general, and judging him merely according to the crime which has
been committed, without knowing his personal characteristics and
the circumstances of his environment, affirm that criminal
anthropology cannot classify all who are detained and accused.
In my experience, however, as a counsel and as an observer, I have
never had any difficulty in classifying all persons detained or
condemned for crimes and offences, by relying upon organic, and
especially upon psychological symptoms.
Thus, as Garofalo recently said, whilst the accepted criminal
science recognises only two terms, the offence and the punishment,
criminal sociology on the other hand recognises three: the crime,
the criminal, and the means best calculated for social self-
defence. And it may be concluded that up to this time, science,
legislation, and, in a minor degree, but without any scientific
method, the administration of justice, have judged and punished
crime in the person of the criminal, but that hereafter it will be
necessary to judge the criminal as well as the crime.
After these general observations on the anthropological classes of
criminals, it might seem necessary to establish their respective
numerical proportions. But as there is no absolute separation
between one and another, and as the frequency of the several
criminal types varies according to the crimes or offences, natural
or otherwise, against persons or property, no precise account can
be rendered of the criminal world as a whole.
By way of approximation, however, it may be said in the first
place that the classes of mad criminals and criminals of passion
are the least numerous, and represent something like 5 or 10 per
cent. of the total.
On the other hand, we have seen that born and habitual criminals
are about 40 or 50 per cent. ; so that the occasional criminals
would also be between 40 and 50 per cent.
These are figures which naturally vary according to the different
groups of crime and of criminals which come under observation, and
which cannot be more accurately determined without a series of
special studies in criminal anthropology, as I said when answering
the objections which have been raised against the methods of this
novel science.
It remains for us, before concluding our first chapter, to
establish a fact of great scientific and practical value. This is
that, after the anthropological classification which I have
maintained for some ten years past, all who have been devoting
themselves to the subject of crime as regarded from a biological
and social standpoint have recognised the need for a
classification less simple than that of habitual and occasional
criminals, and which will be more or less complex according to the
criterion which may be adopted.
In the first place, the necessity is generally recognised of
abandoning the old arbitrary and algebraic type in favour of a
classification which shall correspond more accurately with the
facts of the case. This classification, originating in
observations made within the prison walls, I have extended in the
domain of criminal sociology, wherein it is now established as a
fundamental criterion of legislative measures which must be taken
as a protection against criminals, as well as a criterion of their
responsibility.
Secondly, the classifications of criminals hitherto given are not
essentially and integrally distinct. It has been seen, as a
matter of fact, that all the classifications which have been set
forth amount to a recognition of four types, the born, the insane,
the occasional criminals, and the criminals of passion; and this
again resolves itself into the simple and primitive distinction
between occasional and instinctive criminals. The category of
criminals by contracted habit would not be accepted by all
observers, but it corresponds too closely to our daily experience
to stand in need of further proof. And on the other hand I must
frankly decline to accept the authority of those who put forward
classifications more or less symmetrical without having made a
direct study of criminals; for the experimental method does not
admit systems based on mere imagination, or on vague recollections
of criminal trials, or on argumentative constructions built up
from the systems of others.
As a matter of fact, apart from the differences of
nomenclature, it is evident that the partial discrepancies in this
anthropological classification of criminals are due in some
measure to the different points of view taken by observers. For
instance, the classification of Lacassagne, Joly, Krauss, Badik,
and Marro rest upon a purely descriptive criterion of the organic
or psychological characteristics of criminals. The
classifications of Liszt, Medem, and Minzloff, on the other hand,
depend solely upon the curative and defensive influence of
punishment; and those of Foehring and Starke upon certain special
points of view, such as the assistance of released prisoners, on
their tendency to relapse.
My own point of view, on the contrary, has been general and
reproductive, for my classification is based upon the natural
causes of crime, individual, physical, and social, and to this
extent it corresponds more closely with the theoretical and
practical requirements of criminal sociology. If the curative art
of society, like that of individuals, expects from positive
knowledge an indication of remedies, it is clear that a
classification based on the fundamental causes of crime is best
fitted to indicate a social cure for this manifestation of
disease, which is the essential object of criminal sociology.
For, as in biology one is carried from purely descriptive anatomy
to genetic anatomy and physiology, so in sociology we must pass on
from purely legal descriptions of crimes to the genetic knowledge
of the criminals who commit these crimes.
For this reason all the chief classifications of criminals, as has
been seen, may be brought into line with my own, by virtue
of the more complete and fruitful test which has established it.
And thus we have a manifest proof that this classification
actually represents the common and permanent basis of all the
chief anthropological categories of criminals, whether in regard
to their natural causality and their specific character, or in
regard to the different forms of social self-defence which spring
out of them, and which must be adapted to the natural causes of
crime, and to the principal criminal types.
But whatever classification may be accepted, we shall always have,
as the fundamental axiom of criminal anthropology, this variety in
the types of criminals, which must henceforth be indispensable to
all who are theoretically or practically concerned with crime.
CHAPTER II.
THE DATA OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS.
For moral and social facts, unlike physical and biological facts,
experiment is very difficult, and frequently even impossible;
observation in this domain brings the greatest aid to scientific
research. And statistics are amongst the most efficacious
instruments of such observation.
It is natural, therefore, that criminal sociology, after studying
the individual aspect of the natural genesis of crime, should have
recourse to criminal statistics for the study of the social
aspect. Statistical information in the words of Krohne, ``is the
first condition of success in opposing the armies of crime, for it
discharges the same function as the Intelligence department in
war. ''
From statistics, in fact, the modern idea of the close relation
between offences and the conditions of social life, in some of its
aspects, and above all in certain particular forms, has most
directly sprung.
The science of criminal statistics is to criminal sociology what
histology is to biology, for it exhibits, in the conditions of the
individual elements of the collective organism, the factors of
crime as a social phenomenon. And that not only for
scientific inductions, but also for practical and legislative
purposes; for, as Lord Brougham said at the London Statistical
Congress in 1860, ``criminal statistics are for the legislator
what the chart and the compass are for the navigator. ''
The experimental school, accepting the fundamental and
incontestible idea, apart from its numerical and optimistic
exaggerations, that the statistics of crime must be considered in
regard to the growth and activity of the population, has opened up
an entirely new channel of fruitful observations, in the
classification and study of the natural factors of crime.
In my ``Studies of Crime in France'' (1881) I arranged in three
natural orders the whole series of causes leading to crime, which
had previously been indicated in a fragmentary and incomplete
manner. [12]
[12] Bentham, in his ``Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation,'' enumerates the following circumstances as
necessary to be considered in legislation:--temperament, health,
strength, physical imperfections, culture, intellectual faculties,
strength of mind, dispositions, ideas of honour and religion,
feelings of sympathy and antipathy, insanity, economic conditions,
sex, age, social status, education, profession, climate, race,
government, religious profession.
Lombroso, in the second edition of his ``Criminal,'' which
embraces all the divisions of his classical work, has made but a
rapid enumeration of the principal points:--race civilisation,
poverty, heredity, age sex, civil status, profession, education,
organic anomalies, sensations imitation. Morselli, treating of
suicide, has given a fuller classification of its contributory
causes:--worldly or natural influences, ethnical or demographical
influences, social influences, biopsychical influences.
From the consideration that human actions, whether honest or
dishonest, social or anti-social, are always the outcome of a
man's physio-psychical organism, and of the physical and social
atmosphere which surrounds him, I have drawn attention to
the anthropological or individual factors of crime, the
physical factors, and the social factors.
The anthropological factors, inherent in the individual criminal,
are the first condition of crime; and they may be divided into
three sub-classes, according as we regard the criminal organically
physically, or socially.
The organic constitution of the criminal comprises all anomalies
of the skull, the brain, the vital organs, the sensibility, and
the reflex activity, and all the bodily characteristics taken
together, such as the physiognomy, tattooing, and so on.
The mental constitution of the criminal comprises anomalies of
intelligence and feeling, especially of the moral sense, and the
specialities of criminal writing and slang.
The personal characteristics of the criminal comprise his purely
biological conditions, such as race, age, sex; bio-social
conditions, such as civil status, profession, domicile, social
rank, instruction, education, which have hitherto been regarded as
almost the exclusive concern of criminal statistics.
The physical factors of crime are climate, the nature of the
soil, the relative length of day and night, the seasons, the
average temperature, meteoric conditions, agricultural pursuits.
The social factors comprise the density of population; public
opinion, manners and religion; family circumstances; the system of
education; industrial pursuits; alcoholism; economic and political
conditions; public administration, justice and police; and in
general, legislative, civil and penal institutions. We have
here a host of latent causes, commingling and combining in all
parts of the social organism, which generally escape the notice
both of theorists and of practical men, of criminologists and of
legislators.
This classification of the natural factors of crime, which has
indeed been accepted by almost all criminal anthropologists and
sociologists, seems to me more precise and complete than any other
which has been proposed.
In respect of this classification of the natural factors of crime,
it is necessary to make two final observations as to the practical
results which may be obtained in the struggle for just laws and
against the transgression of them.
In the first place, owing to ``the discovery of the unexpected
relation amongst the various forces of nature, which had
previously been thought to be independent,'' we must lay stress on
this positive deduction, that we cannot find an adequate reason
either for a single crime or for the aggregate criminality of a
nation if we do not take into account each and all of the
different natural factors, which we may isolate in the exigencies
of our studies, but which always act together in an indissoluble
union.
No crime, whoever commits it, and in whatever circumstances, can
be explained except as the outcome of individual free-will, or as
the natural effect of natural causes. Since the former of these
explanations has no scientific value, it is impossible to give a
scientific explanation of a crime (or indeed of any other
action of man or brute) unless it is considered as the product of
a particular organic and psychical constitution, acting in a
particular physical and social environment.
Therefore it is far from being exact to assert that the positive
criminal school reduces crime to a purely and exclusively
anthropological phenomenon. As a matter of fact, this school has
always from the beginning maintained that crime is the effect of
anthropological, physical, and social conditions, which evolve it
by their simultaneous and inseparable operation. And if inquiries
into biological conditions have been more abundant and more
conspicuous by their novelty, this in no way contradicts the
fundamental conclusion of criminal sociology.
That being stated, we have still to examine the relative value of
these three classes of conditions in the natural evolution of
crime.
It seems to me that this question is generally stated
inaccurately, and also that it cannot be answered absolutely, and
in a word.
It is generally stated inaccurately; because they who think, for
instance, that crime is nothing else than a purely and exclusively
social phenomenon in the evolution of which the organic and
psychical anomalies of the criminal have had no part, ignore more
or less consciously the universal correlation of natural forces,
and forget that, in regard to any phenomenon whatsoever, it is
impossible to set an absolute limit to the network of its causes,
immediate and remote, direct and indirect.
To put this question in an arbitrary sense would be like
asking if a mammal is the product of its lungs, or its heart, or
its stomach, or of vegetable constituents, or of the atmosphere;
whereas each of these conditions, internal and external, is
necessary to the life of the animal.
In fact, if crime were the exclusive product of the social
environment, how could one explain the familiar fact that in the
same social environment, and in identical circumstances of
poverty, abandonment, lack of education, sixty per cent. do not
commit crimes, and, of the other forty, five prefer suicide, five
go mad, five simply become beggars or tramps not dangerous to
society, whilst the remaining twenty-five actually commit crimes?
And amongst the latter, whilst some go no further than theft
without violence, why do others commit theft with violence, and
even kill their victim outright, before he offers resistance, or
threatens them, or calls for help, and this with no other object
than gain?
The secondary differences of social condition, which may be
observed even amongst the members of a single family, rotting in
one of the slums of our great towns, or amongst those who are
surrounded by the temptations of money or power, or the like, are
clearly not enough in themselves to explain the vast differences
in the actions which grow out of them, varying from honesty under
the greatest discouragement to suicide and murder.
The question, therefore, must be asked in a relative sense
altogether, and we must inquire which of the three kinds of
natural causes of crime has a greater or less influence in
determining each particular crime at any given moment in the
individual and social life.
No clear answer of general application can be given to this
question, for the relative influence of the anthropological,
physical, and social conditions varies with the psychological and
social characteristics of each offence against the law.
For instance, if we consider the three great classes of crimes
against the person, against property, and against personal purity,
it is evident that each class of determining causes, but
especially the biological and social conditions, have a distinctly
different influence in evolving homicide, theft, or indecent
assaults. And so it is in every category of crimes.
The undeniable influence of social conditions, and still more of
economic conditions, in leading up to the commission of theft, is
far inferior in the genesis of homicides and indecent assaults.
And similarly, in each category of crimes, the influence of the
determining conditions varies greatly according to the special
forms of crime.
Certain casual homicides are plainly the result of social
conditions (gambling, drink, public opinion, &c. ) in a much higher
degree than homicides which for the most part spring from
brutality, from the moral insensibility of individuals, or from
their psycho-pathological conditions, corresponding to abnormal
organic conditions.
In like manner, certain indecent assaults, incests, &c. , are
largely the outcome of social environment, which, condemning a
number of persons to live in hovels without air or light,
with a promiscuity of sex between parents and children such as
obtains amongst the brutes, effaces or deadens all normal sense of
modesty. On the other hand, there are cases of rape and the like
which are mostly due to the biological condition of the
individual, either in manifest forms of sexual disease or, less
manifest though none the less actual, of biological anomaly.
For thefts, again, whilst occasional simple thefts are largely the
effect of social and economical conditions, this influence becomes
feebler in comparison with impulses due to the personal
constitution, organic and psychical, as, for instance, in the case
of thefts with violence, and especially of murder for the purpose
of robbery, which scoundrels of the ``swell-mob'' so frequently
commit in cold blood.
The same observation applies to the conditions of physical
environment. For instance, if the regular increase of crimes
against property in winter (and, as I showed for the first time
from French statistics, in years when the cold is greatest) is
only an indirect result, through the social and economic
influences of temperature, the increase of crimes of passion and
indecent assaults during the months and years when the temperature
is highest is only a direct effect of temperature, even for such
as, by their biological conditions, offer the feeblest resistance
to these influences.
Meanwhile, a last objection has been raised against the
conclusions which I have maintained for many years past.
It has been said that, even if we admit that for certain
crimes and criminals the greatest influence must be recognised as
due to the physical and psychical conditions of the individual,
extending from slightly manifested anomalies of an anthropological
character to the most accentuated pathological condition, this
does not exclude the possibility of a crime being due to social
conditions. In fact, it is said the anomalies of the individual
are in their turn only an effect of a debasing social environment,
which condemns its victims to organic and psychical degeneration.
This objection is sound enough if it be taken in a relative sense,
but groundless if it be insisted on absolutely.
It must be considered, in the first place, that the distinctions
of cause and effect are only relative, for every effect has its
cause, and vice versa; so that if wretchedness, material and
moral, is a cause of degeneration, degeneration itself, like
biological anomaly, is a cause of wretchedness.
And in this sense
the question would be simply metaphysical, like the famous
Byzantine discussions as to whether there was originally an egg
before a hen or a hen before an egg.
And, in fact, when it was said, in regard to criminal geography,
that the extent and quality of crime in such and such a province,
instead of being the effect of biological conditions (race, &c. )
and physical conditions (climate, soil, &c. ), were but the effect
of social and economic conditions (of rural and industrial
pursuits, and the like), I was able to make a very simple reply.
For, apart even from statistical proofs, if the social
conditions of such and such a province, which have an
unquestionable influence, are really the absolute and exclusive
cause of crime, we may still ask whether these social conditions
of the province are not themselves the effect of the ethnical
qualities of energy, intelligence, and so forth, in its
inhabitants, and of the more or less favourable conditions of the
climate and the soil.
But it may also be observed, more precisely, that even apart from
strongly marked and conspicuous pathological conditions, which
meanwhile assert themselves amongst the biological factors of
crime, there is a very great number of these cases in which it
cannot actually be said that the bio-psychical anomalies of the
criminal are the effect of a physically and morally poisonous
environment.
In every family in which there are several children, we find (in
spite of identical surroundings and conditions of a favourable
kind, and suitable methods of training and education), individuals
who differ intellectually from the cradle; we also find in the
degree or in the kind of their talent, the same individuals also
differ from their cradle in physical and moral constitution. And
though the phenomenon may only be manifest in the less numerous
cases of types which are markedly normal or abnormal, it is none
the less true also in the more numerous cases of ordinary types.
In this connection I may observe that physical and social
conditions have a greater or a less influence in proportion as the
physical and psychical constitution of the individual is more or
less sound and vigorous.
The practical conclusion, therefore, of these general observations
on the natural genesis of crime is this: Every crime is the
result of individual physical and social conditions; and, since
these conditions have a more or less dominant influence for
various forms of crime, the most certain and profitable mode of
defence which society can employ against criminality is of a
twofold character, and both modes ought to be employed and brought
into action simultaneously--in the first place, the amelioration
of the social conditions, as a natural preventive of crime, in the
nature of a substitute for punishment; and, secondly, measures of
perpetual or temporary elimination of criminals, according as the
influence of biological conditions in the evolution of crime is
all but absolute, or more or less great, and more or less curable.
As a matter of fact, when we follow the periodic variations of
crime, with its measured growth and decrease, we cannot fail to
conclude that these constant and constantly occurring variations
depend upon a corresponding variation of anthropological and
physical factors. For, whilst criminal statistics are far from
showing the regularity which Quetelet claimed with much
exaggeration, the proportional figures in regard to the bearings
of age, sex, calling, &c. , upon criminality exhibit very
insignificant variations from year to year. And as for the
physical factors, if marked variations are explicable at some
given period, it is nevertheless evident that neither climate, nor
the nature of the soil, nor atmospheric conditions, nor the
seasons, nor the temperature of different years could have
undergone in the last half-century such constant and
repeated variations as to correspond to those waves of criminality
which we shall presently exhibit in almost every nation of Europe.
Thus it is to the social factors that we must chiefly attribute
the periodic variations of criminality. For even the variations
which can be detected in certain anthropological factors, like the
influences of age and sex upon crime, and the more or less marked
outbreak of anti-social and pathological tendencies, depend in
their turn upon social factors, such as the protection accorded to
abandoned infants, the participation of women in non-domestic,
commercial and industrial life, preventive and repressive
measures, and the like. And again, since the social factors have
special import in occasional crime, and crime by acquired habit,
and since these are the most numerous sections of crime as a
whole, it is clear that the periodic movement of crime must be
attributed in the main to the social factors. So true is this,
that, as we shall presently see, the gravest crimes, especially
against persons, precisely because they mostly indicate congenital
criminality, follow a more steady and regular movement than these
slighter but far more frequent offences against property, public
order, and persons, of a more occasional character, and that, as
microbes of the world of crime, they are the more direct outcome
of social environment.
It is therefore another point in favour of the experimental school
that it has insisted on this sociological aspect of the problem of
criminality, by showing legislators, outside the limits of
their punitive remedies, as easy as they are illusory, how they
might, as far as circumstances will permit, apply a genuine social
remedy to crime.
After these preliminary observations, it is time that we should
take a closer view of the general statistics of the movement of
crime in Europe, so far as they may be followed in official
figures.
Whilst we have no intention of offering a body of comparative
statistics, but only of giving a simple indication of the periodic
movement of crime, these data, which do not render it easy to
compare one country with another, though they are intimately
related so far as each particular country is concerned, suffice to
exhibit a few facts of some considerable importance.
The most conspicuous general phenomenon in the countries here
included is the steadiness of the gravest forms of crime side by
side with the continuous increase of slighter offences,
especially in the countries which show a long series of figures,
such as France, England, and Belgium. This proceeds mainly from
the progressive accumulation of offences against special
enactments, which are constantly being added to the original basis
of the penal code; but it is also a symptom of an actual
transformation in the criminal activity of the century, from
whence, through the gradual substitution of crimes against
property in the great towns for crimes against the person in
earlier centuries, we have a wider extension together with a lower
degree of intensity.
Another characteristic common to the countries under observation
is that, whilst the graver crimes against property show a somewhat
marked diminution, crimes against persons, on the other hand, show
more steadiness, either of regularity, as in France and Belgium,
or of increase, as in England, and still more in Germany. But
this phenomenon in the case of crimes against the person is in
actual correspondence with criminal activity arising from an
increase of population. On the other hand--apart from the
transformation of crimes of violence into crimes of craft and
fraud, due to the increase of movable property--the decrease of
offences against property is no more than the manifest effect of
an artificial change of judicial procedure, summary proceedings
taking the place of trial by jury.
An alternation, which is not invalidated by exceptions here and
there, has been observed in the criminality of different
countries, in the periodic movement of crimes and offences against
property and those against the person, of such a kind that years
of increase in the former usually answer to a diminution in the
latter, and vice versa. The principal factors in the annual
increase of theft, such as scarcity and extremes of weather, cause
a corresponding diminution of violent assaults and bodily harm, of
homicides and indecent assaults, and vice versa. On the
other hand, offences against property, which are very numerous,
contribute most of all to the total of annual crime; so that the
maximum of 1880 in Italy, as well as in France, Belgium and
Austria, is especially due to the great severity of the
winter of 1879-80, which in Italy coincided with an
agricultural crisis, attested by the very high price of corn.
Whereas from 1881 to 1885 there were very mild winters, with more
abundant harvests, and from 1886 a greater extreme of cold and a
more acute economic crisis.
The general tendency of these periodic oscillations of crime in
Italy, as in other European countries, is nevertheless far more
towards increase than towards decrease. This is also shown by the
proportional triennial averages of crimes and offences placed on
record, and of persons condemned to imprisonment.
In the movement of crime in each country it is necessary to
distinguish special oscillations, more or less prolonged, of
increase or decrease, from its general and permanent tendency.
The latter is determined by the fundamental conditions of each
nation, physical and social, apart from the purely artificial
section of transgressions brought into existence by new laws. The
special oscillations, on the other hand, are determined by the
annual variations in this or that factor of the more numerous
offences; that is to say, by abundance or scantiness of the
harvests, by the annual variations of temperature, by industrial
and political crises, and the like.
The oblivion of this marked distinction, coupled with the
prejudices of the scientific schools, and even of political
parties, leads to some curious disagreements, and to lively
discussions on the results of criminal statistics. For on one
side the champions of the classical school plainly see that the
persistent increase of crimes and offences amounts to a
proof of that breakdown of penal systems, practical and
theoretical, which have hitherto been applied--as was admitted by
Holtzendorff. And on the other hand, the increase of crimes is
denied or affirmed for the purpose of supporting or attacking some
particular ministry. For, in parliaments more than elsewhere,
there is always a deep-seated and vivacious prejudice, a kind of
social artificiality, which causes men to think that the condition
of States, moral and economic, is fundamentally determined far
more by the action of this or that government than by natural
factors, which are mainly superior to and outside of governments
and politicians.
And this is why in Italy there has been much discussion of late,
in scientific publications, at the sittings of the Central
Commission of Judicial Statistics, and even in Parliament, as to
whether crime was increasing or decreasing.
Beltrani-Scalia and Lombroso almost simultaneously called
attention to the growth of Italian crime, and they were succeeded
by various adherents of the positive school, such as Ferri,
Garofalo, Pavia, Pugliese, Guidi, Bournet, Barzilai, and Rossi,
who produced evidence that the general tendency of crime in Italy
was to increase, and that the diminutions observed after 1880 were
mere transitory oscillations; and after 1886 they were justified
by facts.
On the other hand, official returns of criminal statistics, and a
majority of the members of the Central Commission, when pursuing
an inquiry suggested by myself into Italian crime since 1873
--for previously to this date there are no criminal
statistics in Italy except for 1853 and 1869-70--came to the
conclusion that there was a tendency towards a diminution of
crime. But their decision was formed from an entirely partial
standpoint, which they had taken up in the exigency of polemical
discussion. They compared, in fact, the years just concluded,
1881-5, with 1880, and thus it naturally followed that after a
maximum they had a relative decrease. And it was only this
ingenious comparison which gave an appearance of actual proof to
their optimistic assertions; for when a fever is at forty degrees,
the fall of even half a degree is very important. They paid
special attention to the so-called high criminality, which is
tried by the Assize courts, and is actually decreasing, though by
the purely artificial effect of more and more effective measures
of correction. But I have always maintained, and I have the
support of M. Oettingen, that we cannot separate crimes and
offences tried by the Assizes from those tried by the Tribunals,
for there is only a difference of degree between them, as is clear
in regard to theft, assaults and wounding, forgery and the like.
It is a curious fact that similar illusions have existed in all
countries through the same causes and prejudices which have been
mentioned above. In France, for instance, we often find that the
keepers of the seals, reporting on volumes of the excellent and
valuable series of criminal statistics since the year 1826,
occasionally remark on these oscillatory diminutions, and make a
point of treating them as signs of a constant and general
tendency, which succeeding years have always contradicted.
In France also, the same controversy has been kept up since 1840,
with the same polemical artifices as were employed more recently
in Italy, on the question whether crime has increased or
decreased. Dufau, Beranger, Berrzat de St. Prix, and Legoyt
affirmed that it had diminished since 1826, against the true
opinion of de Metz, Dupin, Chassan, Mesuard, and Fayet, the last
of whom quotes the others in one of his essays on criminal
statistics, now undeservedly forgotten, though they abound in
striking and profound observation.
But, as for France in those days, so for Italy to-day, the
statistics of succeeding years quickly proved that what official
optimism and national self-complacency spoke of as pessimism on
our part was but a conscientious inference from lamentable facts,
established in every country by the influence of civilisation on
crime, which I have described in preceding pages.
After these general statements we ought logically to watch the
periodic movement of each leading category of crimes and offences
in each division of the country; for not all crimes, nor all
districts, pursue the same course from year to year. But as this
inquiry is impossible in the present work, we may pass on to the
general figures for other European countries.
FRAN 1826-8. 1895-7.
Police Contraventions . . . . . . . . . 100 391|
Offences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 397|
Crimes against the person . . . . . . 100 98|in 61 years
'' property . . . . . . . . . 100 41|
BELGIUM. 1850-2. 1883-5.
Tried by the Correctional Tribunals,
for crimes against the person 100 109|in 36 years
'' property . . . 100 162|
1840-2. 1883-5.
Tried by the Tribunals for ``Offences'' 100 260|
Tried at Assizes, crimes against the person 100 65|in 46 years
'' '' property 100 21|
ENGLAND. 1857-9. 1884-6.
Tried summarily, for offences . . . 100 176 in 30 years.
1835-7. 1884-6.
Criminal cases, against the person 100 143|
'' against property, and for |in 55 years.
circulation of false money . . . 100 55|
IRELAND. 1864-6. 1886-8.
Tried summarily . . . . . . . . . 100 95|
Crimes against the person . . . . . 100 57|in 25 years.
'' property, and false money 100 52|
PRUSSIA. 1854-6. 1876-8.
Contraventions and ``vols de bois'' 100 l32|in 25 years.
Crimes and offences . . . . . . 100 134|
GERMANY. 1882-4. 1885-7.
Crimes and offences against public order 100 110|
'' '' the person 100 116|in 6 years.
'' '' property 100 95|
AUSTRIA. 1867-9. 1884-6.
Prisoners condemned for crimes -- 100 122|in 20 years.
'' '' offences . . . 100 495|
SPAIN. 1883-4. 1886-7.
Tried for crimes and offences -- 100 {X}3|in 5 years.
'' contraventions . . . . . . 100 113|
The most constant general fact shown by these data is in all cases
the very remarkable increase of slighter delinquencies, side by
side with constancy or slight diminution in crimes against
the person, and a large diminution in crime against property.
This is seen in France, England, Belgium, whilst there is an
increase both of crimes and offences in Austria.
Behind the general fact, however, we must distinguish between the
actual and the apparent.
On the one hand, the decrease of more serious crime against
property is simply due to prisoners electing to be sentenced by
the inferior court, which is at the discretion of the Tribunals in
France, but legally established in Belgium, by the laws of 1838
and 1848, and in England by the Acts of 1856 and 1878--an election
of the slighter but more certain punishment of the magistrates in
preference to going before a jury. Indeed, crimes against the
person, in which there is less power of election, do not exhibit
so marked a decrease; and accordingly we see that in Belgium the
increase of ``correctionalised'' crimes is due far more to crimes
against property (62 per cent in 36 years) than to those against
the person (9 per cent. ).
On the other hand, the growth of slighter delinquency is partly
the effect of special enactments, which are constantly creating
new infractions, offences or contraventions. For France may be
mentioned the law of 1832 on eluding supervision, that of 1844 on
the game laws, that of 1857 on the false description of goods for
sale, of 1845 on railway offences, of 1849 on the expulsion of
refugees, of 1873 on drunkenness, and of 1874 on requisition of
horses. I dealt with the statistical results of these laws, and
with the influence of the increasing number of police
agents, in my ``Studies on Criminality in France'' (Rome,
1881); and I will here add only a single observation. If it is
true, as M. Joly says, that other laws, passed since 1826, have
extinguished a few offences, or at least have diminished their
frequency under less severe regulations, yet it is also true that
the new infractions created in the past half-century show far
higher numbers than those of the infractions which have been
extinguished or rendered less easy. So that amongst the 297 per
cent. of increase on the offences tried in France between 1826 and
1887, the element due to legal creation of new infractions must
not be ignored.
It cannot, however, be denied that for certain more frequent
offences we have a real and very noteworthy increase, apart from
any legislative or statistical cause of disturbance.
The same observation may be made in regard to England. There also
the increase of 76 per cent, during thirty years of offences tried
summarily is due in part to new infractions, created by special
legislation, and especially by the Education Act of 1873, under
which there were more than forty thousand infractions in 1878, and
more than sixty-five thousand in 1886.
In regard to this delinquency in England (wherein are included,
over and above real offences, certain infractions corresponding to
the police contraventions of the Italian, French, Belgian and
Austrian codes) it is to be observed that the increase of 76 per
cent. in thirty years is due rather to contraventions than to
offences. And this would establish a remarkable difference
between the variations of delinquency in England and in France.
If we analyse the record of infractions tried summarily in
England, we find that contraventions of the law in respect of
drunkenness account for most of this increase (from 82,196 in 1861
to 183,221 in 1885 and 165,139 in 1886). On the other hand,
offences against the person (assaults) and against property
(stealing, larceny, malicious offences) have not shown so large an
increase.
In fact, if we compare the variations in assaults and thefts in
France and England, we have the following figures:--
ENGLAND.
1861-3. 1879-81.
Prisoners tried summarily for assaults . . . . . . 100 102
Ditto for stealing, larceny, and malicious
offences .
14 '' . . . . . . -- . . . . . . . . . 1. 4
15 '' . . . . . . -- . . . . . . . . . . 9
20 '' . . . . . . -- . . . . . . . . . . 5
------------------------------------------------
Actual totals of relapses 128 212
Chronic relapse is naturally less frequent in the case of those
condemned to long terms; but it is a conspicuous symptom of
individual and social pathology in the two classes of born and
habitual criminals.
Lombroso, in the second volume of his work on ``The Criminal,''
denies that precocity and relapse are characteristics
distinguishing born and habitual from occasional criminals. But
it is only a question of terms. He considers that born and
habitual criminals confine themselves almost exclusively to
serious crime, and occasional criminals to minor offences. And as
the figures which I have given show that precocity and relapse are
even more frequent for minor offences than for crimes, he thinks
that they contradict instead of confirming my conclusions.
The mere seriousness of an act cannot by any means divide the
categories of criminals; for homicide as well as theft, assault
and battery as well as forgery, may be committed, though in
different psychological and social conditions, as easily by born
and habitual criminals as by occasional criminals and criminals of
passion.
Moreover, the figures which I have given show that precocity and
relapse are more frequent in the forms of criminality which, apart
from their gravity, are the common practices of born and habitual
criminals, such as murder, homicide, robbery, rape, &c. , whilst
they are far more uncommon, even if they can be said to be
observed at all, in the case of the crimes and offences usually
committed by occasional criminals, such as infanticide, and
certain of the offences mentioned above.
It remains to say something of the occasional criminals, and the
criminals of passion.
The latter are but a variety of the occasional criminals, but
their characteristics are so specific that they may be very
readily distinguished. In fact Lombroso, in his second edition,
supplementing the observations of Despine and Bittinger, separated
them from other criminals, and classified them according to their
symptoms. I need only summarise his observations.
In the first place, the criminals who constitute the strongly
marked class of criminals by irresistible impulse are very rare,
and their crimes are almost invariably against the person. Thus,
out of 71 criminals of passion inquired into by Lombroso, 69 were
homicides, 6 had in addition been convicted of theft, 3 of
incendiarism, and 1 of rape.
It may be shown that they number about 5 per cent. of crimes
against the person.
They are as a rule persons of previous good behaviour, sanguine or
nervous by temperament, of excessive sensibility, unlike born or
habitual criminals, and they are often of a neurotic or epileptoid
temperament, of which their crimes may be, strictly speaking, an
unrecognised consequence.
Frequently they transgress in their youth, especially in the case
of women, under stress of a passion which suddenly spurns
constraint, like anger, or outraged love, or injured honour. They
are highly emotional before, during, or after the crime, which
they do not commit treacherously, but openly, and often by ill-
chosen methods, the first that present themselves. Now and then,
however, one encounters criminals of passion who premeditate a
crime, and carry it out treacherously, either by reason of
their colder and less impulsive temperament, or as the outcome of
preconceived ideas or a widespread sentiment, in cases where we
have to do with a popular form of lawlessness, such as the
vendetta.
This is why the test of premeditation has no absolute value in
criminal psychology, as a distinction between the born criminal
and the criminal of passion; for premeditation depends especially
on the temperament of the individual, and is exemplified in crimes
committed by both anthropological types.
Amongst other symptoms of the criminal of passion, there is also
the precise motive which leads to a crime complete in itself, and
never as a means of attaining another criminal purpose.
These offenders immediately acknowledge their crime, with
unassumed remorse, frequently so keen that they instantly commit,
or attempt to commit suicide. When convicted--as they seldom are
by a jury--they are always repentant prisoners, and amend their
lives, or do not become degraded, so that in this way they
encourage superficial observers to affirm as a general fact, and
one possible in all circumstances, that ameliorative effect of
imprisonment which is really a mere illusion in the case of the
far more numerous classes of born and habitual criminals.
In these same offenders we very rarely observe, if at all, the
organic anomalies which create a criminal type. And even the
psychological characteristics are much slighter in countries where
certain crimes of passion are endemic, almost ranking
amongst the customs of the community, like the homicides which
occur in Corsica and Sardinia for the vindication of honour, or
the political assassinations in Russia and Ireland.
The last class is that of occasional criminals, who without any
inborn and active tendency to crime lapse into crime at an early
age through the temptation of their personal condition, and of
their physical and social environment, and who do not lapse into
it, or do not relapse, if these temptations disappear.
Thus they commit those crimes and offences which do not indicate
natural criminality, or else crimes and offences against person or
property, but under personal and social conditions altogether
different from those in which they are committed by born and
habitual criminals.
There is no doubt that, even with the occasional criminal, some of
the causes which lead him into crime belong to the anthropological
class; for external causes would not suffice without individual
predispositions. For instance, during a scarcity or a hard
winter, not all of those who experience privation have recourse to
theft, but some prefer to endure want, however undeserved, without
ceasing to be honest, whilst others are at the utmost driven to
beg their food; and amongst those who yield to the suggestion of
crime, some stop short at simple theft, whilst others go as far as
robbery with violence.
But the true difference between the born and the occasional
criminal is that, with the former, the external cause is
less operative than the internal tendency, because this tendency
possesses, as it were, a centrifugal force, driving the individual
to commit crime, whilst, for the occasional criminal, it is rather
a case of feeble power of resistance against external causes, to
which most of the inducement to crime is due.
The casual provocation of crime in the born criminal is generally
the outcome of an instinct or tendency already existing, and far
more of a pretext than an occasion of crime. With the occasional
criminal, on the other hand, it is the casual provocation which
matures, no doubt in a favouring soil, the growth of criminal
tendencies not previously developed.
For this reason Lombroso calls the occasional criminals
``criminaloids,'' in order to show precisely that they have a
distinctly abnormal constitution, though in a less degree than the
born criminals, just as we have the metal and the metalloid, the
epileptic and the epileptoid.
And this, again, is the reason why Lombroso's criticisms on my
description of occasional criminals are lacking in force. He
says, as Benedikt said at the Congress at Rome, that all criminals
are criminals by birth, so that there is no such thing as an
occasional criminal, in the sense of a NORMAL individual
casually launched into crime. But I have not, any more than
Garofalo, drawn such a picture of the occasional criminal, for as
a matter of fact I have said precisely the opposite, as indeed
Lombroso himself acknowledges a little further on (ii. 422),
namely, that between the born and the occasional criminal
there is only a difference of degree and modality, as in all the
criminal classes.
To cite a few details of criminal psychology, it may be stated
that of the two physiological conditions of crime, moral
insensibility and improvidence, occasional crime is especially due
to the latter, and inborn and habitual crime to the former. With
the born criminal it is, above all, the lack or the weakness of
moral sense which fails to withstand crime, whereas with the
occasional criminal the moral sense is almost normal, but
inability to realise beforehand the consequences of his act causes
him to yield to external influences.
Every man, however pure and honest he may be, is conscious now and
then of a transitory notion of some dishonest or criminal action.
But with the honest man, exactly because he is physically and
morally normal, this notion of crime, which simultaneously summons
up the idea of its grievous consequences, glances off the surface
of the normal conscience, and is a mere flash without the thunder.
With the man who is less normal and has less forethought, the
notion dwells, resists the weak repulsion of a not too vigorous
moral sense, and finally prevails; for, as Victor Hugo says,
``Face to face with duty, to hesitate is to be lost. ''[11]
[11] For instance, I will recall a fact which Morel has related of
himself, how one day, as he was crossing a bridge in Paris, he saw
a working-man gazing into the water, and a homicidal idea flashed
across his mind, so that he had to hurry away, for fear of
yielding to the temptation to throw the man into the water.
Again, there is the case of Humboldt's nurse, who was attacked one
day by the temptation to kill her charge, and ran with him to his
mother in order to avoid a disaster. Brierre de Boismont
also tells us of a learned man who, at the sight of a picture in a
public gallery, was tempted to cut the canvas, and ran away from
his impulse to crime.
The criminal of passion is one who is strong enough to resist
ordinary temptations of no exceptional force, to which the
occasional criminal would yield, but who does not resist
psychological storms which indeed are sometimes actually
irresistible.
The forms of occasional criminality, which are determined by these
ordinary temptations, are also determined by age, sex, poverty,
worldly influences, influences of moral environment, alcoholism,
personal surroundings, and imitation. Tarde has ably demonstrated
the persistent influence of these conditions on the actions of
men.
In this connection, Lombroso has drawn a clear distinction between
two varieties of occasional criminals: the ``pseudo-criminals,''
or normal human beings who commit involuntary offences, or
offences which do not spring from perversity, and do not hurt
society, though they are punishable by law, and ``criminaloids,''
who commit ordinary offences, but differ from true criminals for
the reasons already given.
A final observation is necessary in regard to this anthropological
classification of criminals, and it meets various objections
raised by our syllogistic critics. The difference existing
amongst the five categories is only one of degree, and depends
upon their organic and psychological types, and upon the influence
of physical and social environment.
In every natural classification the differences between
various groups and varieties are never anything but relative.
This deprives them of none of their theoretical and practical
importance, and so it is with this anthropological classification
of criminals.
It follows that, as in natural history we advance by degrees and
shades from the inorganic to the organic creation, life beginning
in the mineral domain with the laws of crystallisation, so in
criminal anthropology we pass by degrees and shades from the mad
to the born criminal, through the links of moral madmen and
epileptics; and from the born criminal to the occasional, through
the link of the habitual criminal, who begins by being an
occasional criminal, and ends by acquiring and transmitting to his
children the characteristics of the born criminal. And finally,
we pass from the occasional criminal to the criminal of passion,
who is but a species of the other, and who further, with his
neurotic and epileptoid temperament, not infrequently approximates
to the criminal of unsound mind.
Thus in our everyday life, as in science, we very often find
intermediate types, for complete and unmixed types are always the
most uncommon. And whilst legislators and judges, in their
complacent psychology, exact and establish marked lines of
cleavage between the sane and the insane criminal, experts in
psychiatry and anthropology are often constrained to place a
prisoner somewhere between the mad and the born criminal, or
between the occasional criminal and the normal man.
But it is evident that even when a criminal cannot be classed
precisely in one or the other category, and stands between
the two, this is in itself a sufficiently definite classification,
especially from a sociological point of view. There is
consequently no weight in the objection of those who, basing their
argument on an abstract and nebulous idea of the criminal in
general, and judging him merely according to the crime which has
been committed, without knowing his personal characteristics and
the circumstances of his environment, affirm that criminal
anthropology cannot classify all who are detained and accused.
In my experience, however, as a counsel and as an observer, I have
never had any difficulty in classifying all persons detained or
condemned for crimes and offences, by relying upon organic, and
especially upon psychological symptoms.
Thus, as Garofalo recently said, whilst the accepted criminal
science recognises only two terms, the offence and the punishment,
criminal sociology on the other hand recognises three: the crime,
the criminal, and the means best calculated for social self-
defence. And it may be concluded that up to this time, science,
legislation, and, in a minor degree, but without any scientific
method, the administration of justice, have judged and punished
crime in the person of the criminal, but that hereafter it will be
necessary to judge the criminal as well as the crime.
After these general observations on the anthropological classes of
criminals, it might seem necessary to establish their respective
numerical proportions. But as there is no absolute separation
between one and another, and as the frequency of the several
criminal types varies according to the crimes or offences, natural
or otherwise, against persons or property, no precise account can
be rendered of the criminal world as a whole.
By way of approximation, however, it may be said in the first
place that the classes of mad criminals and criminals of passion
are the least numerous, and represent something like 5 or 10 per
cent. of the total.
On the other hand, we have seen that born and habitual criminals
are about 40 or 50 per cent. ; so that the occasional criminals
would also be between 40 and 50 per cent.
These are figures which naturally vary according to the different
groups of crime and of criminals which come under observation, and
which cannot be more accurately determined without a series of
special studies in criminal anthropology, as I said when answering
the objections which have been raised against the methods of this
novel science.
It remains for us, before concluding our first chapter, to
establish a fact of great scientific and practical value. This is
that, after the anthropological classification which I have
maintained for some ten years past, all who have been devoting
themselves to the subject of crime as regarded from a biological
and social standpoint have recognised the need for a
classification less simple than that of habitual and occasional
criminals, and which will be more or less complex according to the
criterion which may be adopted.
In the first place, the necessity is generally recognised of
abandoning the old arbitrary and algebraic type in favour of a
classification which shall correspond more accurately with the
facts of the case. This classification, originating in
observations made within the prison walls, I have extended in the
domain of criminal sociology, wherein it is now established as a
fundamental criterion of legislative measures which must be taken
as a protection against criminals, as well as a criterion of their
responsibility.
Secondly, the classifications of criminals hitherto given are not
essentially and integrally distinct. It has been seen, as a
matter of fact, that all the classifications which have been set
forth amount to a recognition of four types, the born, the insane,
the occasional criminals, and the criminals of passion; and this
again resolves itself into the simple and primitive distinction
between occasional and instinctive criminals. The category of
criminals by contracted habit would not be accepted by all
observers, but it corresponds too closely to our daily experience
to stand in need of further proof. And on the other hand I must
frankly decline to accept the authority of those who put forward
classifications more or less symmetrical without having made a
direct study of criminals; for the experimental method does not
admit systems based on mere imagination, or on vague recollections
of criminal trials, or on argumentative constructions built up
from the systems of others.
As a matter of fact, apart from the differences of
nomenclature, it is evident that the partial discrepancies in this
anthropological classification of criminals are due in some
measure to the different points of view taken by observers. For
instance, the classification of Lacassagne, Joly, Krauss, Badik,
and Marro rest upon a purely descriptive criterion of the organic
or psychological characteristics of criminals. The
classifications of Liszt, Medem, and Minzloff, on the other hand,
depend solely upon the curative and defensive influence of
punishment; and those of Foehring and Starke upon certain special
points of view, such as the assistance of released prisoners, on
their tendency to relapse.
My own point of view, on the contrary, has been general and
reproductive, for my classification is based upon the natural
causes of crime, individual, physical, and social, and to this
extent it corresponds more closely with the theoretical and
practical requirements of criminal sociology. If the curative art
of society, like that of individuals, expects from positive
knowledge an indication of remedies, it is clear that a
classification based on the fundamental causes of crime is best
fitted to indicate a social cure for this manifestation of
disease, which is the essential object of criminal sociology.
For, as in biology one is carried from purely descriptive anatomy
to genetic anatomy and physiology, so in sociology we must pass on
from purely legal descriptions of crimes to the genetic knowledge
of the criminals who commit these crimes.
For this reason all the chief classifications of criminals, as has
been seen, may be brought into line with my own, by virtue
of the more complete and fruitful test which has established it.
And thus we have a manifest proof that this classification
actually represents the common and permanent basis of all the
chief anthropological categories of criminals, whether in regard
to their natural causality and their specific character, or in
regard to the different forms of social self-defence which spring
out of them, and which must be adapted to the natural causes of
crime, and to the principal criminal types.
But whatever classification may be accepted, we shall always have,
as the fundamental axiom of criminal anthropology, this variety in
the types of criminals, which must henceforth be indispensable to
all who are theoretically or practically concerned with crime.
CHAPTER II.
THE DATA OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS.
For moral and social facts, unlike physical and biological facts,
experiment is very difficult, and frequently even impossible;
observation in this domain brings the greatest aid to scientific
research. And statistics are amongst the most efficacious
instruments of such observation.
It is natural, therefore, that criminal sociology, after studying
the individual aspect of the natural genesis of crime, should have
recourse to criminal statistics for the study of the social
aspect. Statistical information in the words of Krohne, ``is the
first condition of success in opposing the armies of crime, for it
discharges the same function as the Intelligence department in
war. ''
From statistics, in fact, the modern idea of the close relation
between offences and the conditions of social life, in some of its
aspects, and above all in certain particular forms, has most
directly sprung.
The science of criminal statistics is to criminal sociology what
histology is to biology, for it exhibits, in the conditions of the
individual elements of the collective organism, the factors of
crime as a social phenomenon. And that not only for
scientific inductions, but also for practical and legislative
purposes; for, as Lord Brougham said at the London Statistical
Congress in 1860, ``criminal statistics are for the legislator
what the chart and the compass are for the navigator. ''
The experimental school, accepting the fundamental and
incontestible idea, apart from its numerical and optimistic
exaggerations, that the statistics of crime must be considered in
regard to the growth and activity of the population, has opened up
an entirely new channel of fruitful observations, in the
classification and study of the natural factors of crime.
In my ``Studies of Crime in France'' (1881) I arranged in three
natural orders the whole series of causes leading to crime, which
had previously been indicated in a fragmentary and incomplete
manner. [12]
[12] Bentham, in his ``Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation,'' enumerates the following circumstances as
necessary to be considered in legislation:--temperament, health,
strength, physical imperfections, culture, intellectual faculties,
strength of mind, dispositions, ideas of honour and religion,
feelings of sympathy and antipathy, insanity, economic conditions,
sex, age, social status, education, profession, climate, race,
government, religious profession.
Lombroso, in the second edition of his ``Criminal,'' which
embraces all the divisions of his classical work, has made but a
rapid enumeration of the principal points:--race civilisation,
poverty, heredity, age sex, civil status, profession, education,
organic anomalies, sensations imitation. Morselli, treating of
suicide, has given a fuller classification of its contributory
causes:--worldly or natural influences, ethnical or demographical
influences, social influences, biopsychical influences.
From the consideration that human actions, whether honest or
dishonest, social or anti-social, are always the outcome of a
man's physio-psychical organism, and of the physical and social
atmosphere which surrounds him, I have drawn attention to
the anthropological or individual factors of crime, the
physical factors, and the social factors.
The anthropological factors, inherent in the individual criminal,
are the first condition of crime; and they may be divided into
three sub-classes, according as we regard the criminal organically
physically, or socially.
The organic constitution of the criminal comprises all anomalies
of the skull, the brain, the vital organs, the sensibility, and
the reflex activity, and all the bodily characteristics taken
together, such as the physiognomy, tattooing, and so on.
The mental constitution of the criminal comprises anomalies of
intelligence and feeling, especially of the moral sense, and the
specialities of criminal writing and slang.
The personal characteristics of the criminal comprise his purely
biological conditions, such as race, age, sex; bio-social
conditions, such as civil status, profession, domicile, social
rank, instruction, education, which have hitherto been regarded as
almost the exclusive concern of criminal statistics.
The physical factors of crime are climate, the nature of the
soil, the relative length of day and night, the seasons, the
average temperature, meteoric conditions, agricultural pursuits.
The social factors comprise the density of population; public
opinion, manners and religion; family circumstances; the system of
education; industrial pursuits; alcoholism; economic and political
conditions; public administration, justice and police; and in
general, legislative, civil and penal institutions. We have
here a host of latent causes, commingling and combining in all
parts of the social organism, which generally escape the notice
both of theorists and of practical men, of criminologists and of
legislators.
This classification of the natural factors of crime, which has
indeed been accepted by almost all criminal anthropologists and
sociologists, seems to me more precise and complete than any other
which has been proposed.
In respect of this classification of the natural factors of crime,
it is necessary to make two final observations as to the practical
results which may be obtained in the struggle for just laws and
against the transgression of them.
In the first place, owing to ``the discovery of the unexpected
relation amongst the various forces of nature, which had
previously been thought to be independent,'' we must lay stress on
this positive deduction, that we cannot find an adequate reason
either for a single crime or for the aggregate criminality of a
nation if we do not take into account each and all of the
different natural factors, which we may isolate in the exigencies
of our studies, but which always act together in an indissoluble
union.
No crime, whoever commits it, and in whatever circumstances, can
be explained except as the outcome of individual free-will, or as
the natural effect of natural causes. Since the former of these
explanations has no scientific value, it is impossible to give a
scientific explanation of a crime (or indeed of any other
action of man or brute) unless it is considered as the product of
a particular organic and psychical constitution, acting in a
particular physical and social environment.
Therefore it is far from being exact to assert that the positive
criminal school reduces crime to a purely and exclusively
anthropological phenomenon. As a matter of fact, this school has
always from the beginning maintained that crime is the effect of
anthropological, physical, and social conditions, which evolve it
by their simultaneous and inseparable operation. And if inquiries
into biological conditions have been more abundant and more
conspicuous by their novelty, this in no way contradicts the
fundamental conclusion of criminal sociology.
That being stated, we have still to examine the relative value of
these three classes of conditions in the natural evolution of
crime.
It seems to me that this question is generally stated
inaccurately, and also that it cannot be answered absolutely, and
in a word.
It is generally stated inaccurately; because they who think, for
instance, that crime is nothing else than a purely and exclusively
social phenomenon in the evolution of which the organic and
psychical anomalies of the criminal have had no part, ignore more
or less consciously the universal correlation of natural forces,
and forget that, in regard to any phenomenon whatsoever, it is
impossible to set an absolute limit to the network of its causes,
immediate and remote, direct and indirect.
To put this question in an arbitrary sense would be like
asking if a mammal is the product of its lungs, or its heart, or
its stomach, or of vegetable constituents, or of the atmosphere;
whereas each of these conditions, internal and external, is
necessary to the life of the animal.
In fact, if crime were the exclusive product of the social
environment, how could one explain the familiar fact that in the
same social environment, and in identical circumstances of
poverty, abandonment, lack of education, sixty per cent. do not
commit crimes, and, of the other forty, five prefer suicide, five
go mad, five simply become beggars or tramps not dangerous to
society, whilst the remaining twenty-five actually commit crimes?
And amongst the latter, whilst some go no further than theft
without violence, why do others commit theft with violence, and
even kill their victim outright, before he offers resistance, or
threatens them, or calls for help, and this with no other object
than gain?
The secondary differences of social condition, which may be
observed even amongst the members of a single family, rotting in
one of the slums of our great towns, or amongst those who are
surrounded by the temptations of money or power, or the like, are
clearly not enough in themselves to explain the vast differences
in the actions which grow out of them, varying from honesty under
the greatest discouragement to suicide and murder.
The question, therefore, must be asked in a relative sense
altogether, and we must inquire which of the three kinds of
natural causes of crime has a greater or less influence in
determining each particular crime at any given moment in the
individual and social life.
No clear answer of general application can be given to this
question, for the relative influence of the anthropological,
physical, and social conditions varies with the psychological and
social characteristics of each offence against the law.
For instance, if we consider the three great classes of crimes
against the person, against property, and against personal purity,
it is evident that each class of determining causes, but
especially the biological and social conditions, have a distinctly
different influence in evolving homicide, theft, or indecent
assaults. And so it is in every category of crimes.
The undeniable influence of social conditions, and still more of
economic conditions, in leading up to the commission of theft, is
far inferior in the genesis of homicides and indecent assaults.
And similarly, in each category of crimes, the influence of the
determining conditions varies greatly according to the special
forms of crime.
Certain casual homicides are plainly the result of social
conditions (gambling, drink, public opinion, &c. ) in a much higher
degree than homicides which for the most part spring from
brutality, from the moral insensibility of individuals, or from
their psycho-pathological conditions, corresponding to abnormal
organic conditions.
In like manner, certain indecent assaults, incests, &c. , are
largely the outcome of social environment, which, condemning a
number of persons to live in hovels without air or light,
with a promiscuity of sex between parents and children such as
obtains amongst the brutes, effaces or deadens all normal sense of
modesty. On the other hand, there are cases of rape and the like
which are mostly due to the biological condition of the
individual, either in manifest forms of sexual disease or, less
manifest though none the less actual, of biological anomaly.
For thefts, again, whilst occasional simple thefts are largely the
effect of social and economical conditions, this influence becomes
feebler in comparison with impulses due to the personal
constitution, organic and psychical, as, for instance, in the case
of thefts with violence, and especially of murder for the purpose
of robbery, which scoundrels of the ``swell-mob'' so frequently
commit in cold blood.
The same observation applies to the conditions of physical
environment. For instance, if the regular increase of crimes
against property in winter (and, as I showed for the first time
from French statistics, in years when the cold is greatest) is
only an indirect result, through the social and economic
influences of temperature, the increase of crimes of passion and
indecent assaults during the months and years when the temperature
is highest is only a direct effect of temperature, even for such
as, by their biological conditions, offer the feeblest resistance
to these influences.
Meanwhile, a last objection has been raised against the
conclusions which I have maintained for many years past.
It has been said that, even if we admit that for certain
crimes and criminals the greatest influence must be recognised as
due to the physical and psychical conditions of the individual,
extending from slightly manifested anomalies of an anthropological
character to the most accentuated pathological condition, this
does not exclude the possibility of a crime being due to social
conditions. In fact, it is said the anomalies of the individual
are in their turn only an effect of a debasing social environment,
which condemns its victims to organic and psychical degeneration.
This objection is sound enough if it be taken in a relative sense,
but groundless if it be insisted on absolutely.
It must be considered, in the first place, that the distinctions
of cause and effect are only relative, for every effect has its
cause, and vice versa; so that if wretchedness, material and
moral, is a cause of degeneration, degeneration itself, like
biological anomaly, is a cause of wretchedness.
And in this sense
the question would be simply metaphysical, like the famous
Byzantine discussions as to whether there was originally an egg
before a hen or a hen before an egg.
And, in fact, when it was said, in regard to criminal geography,
that the extent and quality of crime in such and such a province,
instead of being the effect of biological conditions (race, &c. )
and physical conditions (climate, soil, &c. ), were but the effect
of social and economic conditions (of rural and industrial
pursuits, and the like), I was able to make a very simple reply.
For, apart even from statistical proofs, if the social
conditions of such and such a province, which have an
unquestionable influence, are really the absolute and exclusive
cause of crime, we may still ask whether these social conditions
of the province are not themselves the effect of the ethnical
qualities of energy, intelligence, and so forth, in its
inhabitants, and of the more or less favourable conditions of the
climate and the soil.
But it may also be observed, more precisely, that even apart from
strongly marked and conspicuous pathological conditions, which
meanwhile assert themselves amongst the biological factors of
crime, there is a very great number of these cases in which it
cannot actually be said that the bio-psychical anomalies of the
criminal are the effect of a physically and morally poisonous
environment.
In every family in which there are several children, we find (in
spite of identical surroundings and conditions of a favourable
kind, and suitable methods of training and education), individuals
who differ intellectually from the cradle; we also find in the
degree or in the kind of their talent, the same individuals also
differ from their cradle in physical and moral constitution. And
though the phenomenon may only be manifest in the less numerous
cases of types which are markedly normal or abnormal, it is none
the less true also in the more numerous cases of ordinary types.
In this connection I may observe that physical and social
conditions have a greater or a less influence in proportion as the
physical and psychical constitution of the individual is more or
less sound and vigorous.
The practical conclusion, therefore, of these general observations
on the natural genesis of crime is this: Every crime is the
result of individual physical and social conditions; and, since
these conditions have a more or less dominant influence for
various forms of crime, the most certain and profitable mode of
defence which society can employ against criminality is of a
twofold character, and both modes ought to be employed and brought
into action simultaneously--in the first place, the amelioration
of the social conditions, as a natural preventive of crime, in the
nature of a substitute for punishment; and, secondly, measures of
perpetual or temporary elimination of criminals, according as the
influence of biological conditions in the evolution of crime is
all but absolute, or more or less great, and more or less curable.
As a matter of fact, when we follow the periodic variations of
crime, with its measured growth and decrease, we cannot fail to
conclude that these constant and constantly occurring variations
depend upon a corresponding variation of anthropological and
physical factors. For, whilst criminal statistics are far from
showing the regularity which Quetelet claimed with much
exaggeration, the proportional figures in regard to the bearings
of age, sex, calling, &c. , upon criminality exhibit very
insignificant variations from year to year. And as for the
physical factors, if marked variations are explicable at some
given period, it is nevertheless evident that neither climate, nor
the nature of the soil, nor atmospheric conditions, nor the
seasons, nor the temperature of different years could have
undergone in the last half-century such constant and
repeated variations as to correspond to those waves of criminality
which we shall presently exhibit in almost every nation of Europe.
Thus it is to the social factors that we must chiefly attribute
the periodic variations of criminality. For even the variations
which can be detected in certain anthropological factors, like the
influences of age and sex upon crime, and the more or less marked
outbreak of anti-social and pathological tendencies, depend in
their turn upon social factors, such as the protection accorded to
abandoned infants, the participation of women in non-domestic,
commercial and industrial life, preventive and repressive
measures, and the like. And again, since the social factors have
special import in occasional crime, and crime by acquired habit,
and since these are the most numerous sections of crime as a
whole, it is clear that the periodic movement of crime must be
attributed in the main to the social factors. So true is this,
that, as we shall presently see, the gravest crimes, especially
against persons, precisely because they mostly indicate congenital
criminality, follow a more steady and regular movement than these
slighter but far more frequent offences against property, public
order, and persons, of a more occasional character, and that, as
microbes of the world of crime, they are the more direct outcome
of social environment.
It is therefore another point in favour of the experimental school
that it has insisted on this sociological aspect of the problem of
criminality, by showing legislators, outside the limits of
their punitive remedies, as easy as they are illusory, how they
might, as far as circumstances will permit, apply a genuine social
remedy to crime.
After these preliminary observations, it is time that we should
take a closer view of the general statistics of the movement of
crime in Europe, so far as they may be followed in official
figures.
Whilst we have no intention of offering a body of comparative
statistics, but only of giving a simple indication of the periodic
movement of crime, these data, which do not render it easy to
compare one country with another, though they are intimately
related so far as each particular country is concerned, suffice to
exhibit a few facts of some considerable importance.
The most conspicuous general phenomenon in the countries here
included is the steadiness of the gravest forms of crime side by
side with the continuous increase of slighter offences,
especially in the countries which show a long series of figures,
such as France, England, and Belgium. This proceeds mainly from
the progressive accumulation of offences against special
enactments, which are constantly being added to the original basis
of the penal code; but it is also a symptom of an actual
transformation in the criminal activity of the century, from
whence, through the gradual substitution of crimes against
property in the great towns for crimes against the person in
earlier centuries, we have a wider extension together with a lower
degree of intensity.
Another characteristic common to the countries under observation
is that, whilst the graver crimes against property show a somewhat
marked diminution, crimes against persons, on the other hand, show
more steadiness, either of regularity, as in France and Belgium,
or of increase, as in England, and still more in Germany. But
this phenomenon in the case of crimes against the person is in
actual correspondence with criminal activity arising from an
increase of population. On the other hand--apart from the
transformation of crimes of violence into crimes of craft and
fraud, due to the increase of movable property--the decrease of
offences against property is no more than the manifest effect of
an artificial change of judicial procedure, summary proceedings
taking the place of trial by jury.
An alternation, which is not invalidated by exceptions here and
there, has been observed in the criminality of different
countries, in the periodic movement of crimes and offences against
property and those against the person, of such a kind that years
of increase in the former usually answer to a diminution in the
latter, and vice versa. The principal factors in the annual
increase of theft, such as scarcity and extremes of weather, cause
a corresponding diminution of violent assaults and bodily harm, of
homicides and indecent assaults, and vice versa. On the
other hand, offences against property, which are very numerous,
contribute most of all to the total of annual crime; so that the
maximum of 1880 in Italy, as well as in France, Belgium and
Austria, is especially due to the great severity of the
winter of 1879-80, which in Italy coincided with an
agricultural crisis, attested by the very high price of corn.
Whereas from 1881 to 1885 there were very mild winters, with more
abundant harvests, and from 1886 a greater extreme of cold and a
more acute economic crisis.
The general tendency of these periodic oscillations of crime in
Italy, as in other European countries, is nevertheless far more
towards increase than towards decrease. This is also shown by the
proportional triennial averages of crimes and offences placed on
record, and of persons condemned to imprisonment.
In the movement of crime in each country it is necessary to
distinguish special oscillations, more or less prolonged, of
increase or decrease, from its general and permanent tendency.
The latter is determined by the fundamental conditions of each
nation, physical and social, apart from the purely artificial
section of transgressions brought into existence by new laws. The
special oscillations, on the other hand, are determined by the
annual variations in this or that factor of the more numerous
offences; that is to say, by abundance or scantiness of the
harvests, by the annual variations of temperature, by industrial
and political crises, and the like.
The oblivion of this marked distinction, coupled with the
prejudices of the scientific schools, and even of political
parties, leads to some curious disagreements, and to lively
discussions on the results of criminal statistics. For on one
side the champions of the classical school plainly see that the
persistent increase of crimes and offences amounts to a
proof of that breakdown of penal systems, practical and
theoretical, which have hitherto been applied--as was admitted by
Holtzendorff. And on the other hand, the increase of crimes is
denied or affirmed for the purpose of supporting or attacking some
particular ministry. For, in parliaments more than elsewhere,
there is always a deep-seated and vivacious prejudice, a kind of
social artificiality, which causes men to think that the condition
of States, moral and economic, is fundamentally determined far
more by the action of this or that government than by natural
factors, which are mainly superior to and outside of governments
and politicians.
And this is why in Italy there has been much discussion of late,
in scientific publications, at the sittings of the Central
Commission of Judicial Statistics, and even in Parliament, as to
whether crime was increasing or decreasing.
Beltrani-Scalia and Lombroso almost simultaneously called
attention to the growth of Italian crime, and they were succeeded
by various adherents of the positive school, such as Ferri,
Garofalo, Pavia, Pugliese, Guidi, Bournet, Barzilai, and Rossi,
who produced evidence that the general tendency of crime in Italy
was to increase, and that the diminutions observed after 1880 were
mere transitory oscillations; and after 1886 they were justified
by facts.
On the other hand, official returns of criminal statistics, and a
majority of the members of the Central Commission, when pursuing
an inquiry suggested by myself into Italian crime since 1873
--for previously to this date there are no criminal
statistics in Italy except for 1853 and 1869-70--came to the
conclusion that there was a tendency towards a diminution of
crime. But their decision was formed from an entirely partial
standpoint, which they had taken up in the exigency of polemical
discussion. They compared, in fact, the years just concluded,
1881-5, with 1880, and thus it naturally followed that after a
maximum they had a relative decrease. And it was only this
ingenious comparison which gave an appearance of actual proof to
their optimistic assertions; for when a fever is at forty degrees,
the fall of even half a degree is very important. They paid
special attention to the so-called high criminality, which is
tried by the Assize courts, and is actually decreasing, though by
the purely artificial effect of more and more effective measures
of correction. But I have always maintained, and I have the
support of M. Oettingen, that we cannot separate crimes and
offences tried by the Assizes from those tried by the Tribunals,
for there is only a difference of degree between them, as is clear
in regard to theft, assaults and wounding, forgery and the like.
It is a curious fact that similar illusions have existed in all
countries through the same causes and prejudices which have been
mentioned above. In France, for instance, we often find that the
keepers of the seals, reporting on volumes of the excellent and
valuable series of criminal statistics since the year 1826,
occasionally remark on these oscillatory diminutions, and make a
point of treating them as signs of a constant and general
tendency, which succeeding years have always contradicted.
In France also, the same controversy has been kept up since 1840,
with the same polemical artifices as were employed more recently
in Italy, on the question whether crime has increased or
decreased. Dufau, Beranger, Berrzat de St. Prix, and Legoyt
affirmed that it had diminished since 1826, against the true
opinion of de Metz, Dupin, Chassan, Mesuard, and Fayet, the last
of whom quotes the others in one of his essays on criminal
statistics, now undeservedly forgotten, though they abound in
striking and profound observation.
But, as for France in those days, so for Italy to-day, the
statistics of succeeding years quickly proved that what official
optimism and national self-complacency spoke of as pessimism on
our part was but a conscientious inference from lamentable facts,
established in every country by the influence of civilisation on
crime, which I have described in preceding pages.
After these general statements we ought logically to watch the
periodic movement of each leading category of crimes and offences
in each division of the country; for not all crimes, nor all
districts, pursue the same course from year to year. But as this
inquiry is impossible in the present work, we may pass on to the
general figures for other European countries.
FRAN 1826-8. 1895-7.
Police Contraventions . . . . . . . . . 100 391|
Offences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 397|
Crimes against the person . . . . . . 100 98|in 61 years
'' property . . . . . . . . . 100 41|
BELGIUM. 1850-2. 1883-5.
Tried by the Correctional Tribunals,
for crimes against the person 100 109|in 36 years
'' property . . . 100 162|
1840-2. 1883-5.
Tried by the Tribunals for ``Offences'' 100 260|
Tried at Assizes, crimes against the person 100 65|in 46 years
'' '' property 100 21|
ENGLAND. 1857-9. 1884-6.
Tried summarily, for offences . . . 100 176 in 30 years.
1835-7. 1884-6.
Criminal cases, against the person 100 143|
'' against property, and for |in 55 years.
circulation of false money . . . 100 55|
IRELAND. 1864-6. 1886-8.
Tried summarily . . . . . . . . . 100 95|
Crimes against the person . . . . . 100 57|in 25 years.
'' property, and false money 100 52|
PRUSSIA. 1854-6. 1876-8.
Contraventions and ``vols de bois'' 100 l32|in 25 years.
Crimes and offences . . . . . . 100 134|
GERMANY. 1882-4. 1885-7.
Crimes and offences against public order 100 110|
'' '' the person 100 116|in 6 years.
'' '' property 100 95|
AUSTRIA. 1867-9. 1884-6.
Prisoners condemned for crimes -- 100 122|in 20 years.
'' '' offences . . . 100 495|
SPAIN. 1883-4. 1886-7.
Tried for crimes and offences -- 100 {X}3|in 5 years.
'' contraventions . . . . . . 100 113|
The most constant general fact shown by these data is in all cases
the very remarkable increase of slighter delinquencies, side by
side with constancy or slight diminution in crimes against
the person, and a large diminution in crime against property.
This is seen in France, England, Belgium, whilst there is an
increase both of crimes and offences in Austria.
Behind the general fact, however, we must distinguish between the
actual and the apparent.
On the one hand, the decrease of more serious crime against
property is simply due to prisoners electing to be sentenced by
the inferior court, which is at the discretion of the Tribunals in
France, but legally established in Belgium, by the laws of 1838
and 1848, and in England by the Acts of 1856 and 1878--an election
of the slighter but more certain punishment of the magistrates in
preference to going before a jury. Indeed, crimes against the
person, in which there is less power of election, do not exhibit
so marked a decrease; and accordingly we see that in Belgium the
increase of ``correctionalised'' crimes is due far more to crimes
against property (62 per cent in 36 years) than to those against
the person (9 per cent. ).
On the other hand, the growth of slighter delinquency is partly
the effect of special enactments, which are constantly creating
new infractions, offences or contraventions. For France may be
mentioned the law of 1832 on eluding supervision, that of 1844 on
the game laws, that of 1857 on the false description of goods for
sale, of 1845 on railway offences, of 1849 on the expulsion of
refugees, of 1873 on drunkenness, and of 1874 on requisition of
horses. I dealt with the statistical results of these laws, and
with the influence of the increasing number of police
agents, in my ``Studies on Criminality in France'' (Rome,
1881); and I will here add only a single observation. If it is
true, as M. Joly says, that other laws, passed since 1826, have
extinguished a few offences, or at least have diminished their
frequency under less severe regulations, yet it is also true that
the new infractions created in the past half-century show far
higher numbers than those of the infractions which have been
extinguished or rendered less easy. So that amongst the 297 per
cent. of increase on the offences tried in France between 1826 and
1887, the element due to legal creation of new infractions must
not be ignored.
It cannot, however, be denied that for certain more frequent
offences we have a real and very noteworthy increase, apart from
any legislative or statistical cause of disturbance.
The same observation may be made in regard to England. There also
the increase of 76 per cent, during thirty years of offences tried
summarily is due in part to new infractions, created by special
legislation, and especially by the Education Act of 1873, under
which there were more than forty thousand infractions in 1878, and
more than sixty-five thousand in 1886.
In regard to this delinquency in England (wherein are included,
over and above real offences, certain infractions corresponding to
the police contraventions of the Italian, French, Belgian and
Austrian codes) it is to be observed that the increase of 76 per
cent. in thirty years is due rather to contraventions than to
offences. And this would establish a remarkable difference
between the variations of delinquency in England and in France.
If we analyse the record of infractions tried summarily in
England, we find that contraventions of the law in respect of
drunkenness account for most of this increase (from 82,196 in 1861
to 183,221 in 1885 and 165,139 in 1886). On the other hand,
offences against the person (assaults) and against property
(stealing, larceny, malicious offences) have not shown so large an
increase.
In fact, if we compare the variations in assaults and thefts in
France and England, we have the following figures:--
ENGLAND.
1861-3. 1879-81.
Prisoners tried summarily for assaults . . . . . . 100 102
Ditto for stealing, larceny, and malicious
offences .
