No More Learning

}



In Germany, in the prison at Waldheim, the proportion of mad
criminals to the corresponding classes of ordinary criminals was
as follows:--
Percentage
Crimes. In Prison. Insane.
Homicide, actual or attempted . . . 74 . . . 17. 6
Murder and malicious wounding . . . 51 . . . 9. 8
Highway robbery with violence . . . 64 . . . 12. 5
Incendiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 . . . 6. 8
Rape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 . . . 5. 8
Indecent assault . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 . . . 5. 7
Perjury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 . . . 2. 7
Military crimes . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 . . . 21. 7
Crimes against property . . . . . . . . . 5,116 . . . 1. 9
Other offences . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 . . . 0. 6
---- ----
Total . . . . . . 6,276 . . . 2. 7



That is to say, there was (1) a very large proportion of madmen
amongst the military offenders, which may point to the effect of
military life, or else a careless selection for conscription, or
both causes taken together; and (2) a greater proportion of mad
criminals amongst the more serious offenders, partly because the
authors of crimes of violence are subjected to more strict and
frequent observation for madness.

It seems to me that this fact, which is also confirmed by the
figures for England, is the most cogent argument in favour of
criminal lunatic asylums.


For born criminals, since, as Dr. Maudsley says, we are face to
face, if not exactly with a degenerate species, at least with a
degenerate variety of the human species, and the problem is
to diminish their number as much as possible, a preliminary
question at once arises, namely, whether the penalty of death is
not the most suitable and efficacious form of social defence
against the anti-social class, when they commit crimes of great
gravity.

It is a question which for a century past has divided the criminal
experts and wearied the general public, with perhaps more
sentimental declamations than positive contributions; a question
revived by the positive school, which, however, only brought it
forward, without discussing it, at the first Congress on Criminal
Anthropology at Rome; whilst it has been recently settled by the
new Italian penal code, which is the first code amongst the
leading States to decree (January 1, 1890) the legal abolition of
the death penalty, after its virtual abolition in Italy since the
year 1876, except for military crimes.

Amongst the classical experts, as amongst the positivists, there
are those who would abolish and those who would retain the death
penalty; but the disagreement on this subject is not equally
serious in the two camps. For whilst the classical abolitionists
almost all assert that the death penalty is inequitable, the
positivists are unanimous in declaring it legitimate, and only a
few contest its practical efficacy.

It seems to me that the death penalty is prescribed by nature, and
operates at every moment in the life of the universe. Nor is it
opposed to justice, for when the death of another man is
absolutely necessary it is legitimate, as in the cases of lawful
self-defence, whether of the individual or of society,
which is admitted by classical abolitionists such as Beccaria and
Carrara.

The universal law of evolution shows us also that vital progress
of every kind is due to continual selection, by the death of the
least fit in the struggle for life. Now this selection, in
humanity as with the lower animals, may be natural or artificial.
It would therefore be in agreement with natural laws that human
society should make an artificial selection, by the elimination of
anti-social and incongruous individuals.

We ought not, however, to carry these conclusions too far, for
every problem has its relative bearings, and positive observation,
unlike logic, does not admit simple and exact solutions. It must
be observed that this idea of artificial selection, though true,
would lead to exaggerated conclusions, if it were carried into the
sociological field without reserve, and without the necessary
balance between the interests and rights of the community and of
individuals. If this idea were taken absolutely, indeed, it would
render legitimate and even obligatory an ultra-Spartan elimination
of all children born abortive or incurably diseased, or anti-
social through their idiotcy or mental insanity.

On the other hand, to recognise that the death penalty may be
legitimate as an extreme and exceptional measure is not to
acknowledge that it is necessary in the normal conditions of
social life. Now it cannot be questioned that in these normal
conditions society may defend itself otherwise than by death, as
by perpetual seclusion or transportation, the failure of
which, by the escape of convicts, is too rare to be decisive
against it.

The preventive and deterrent efficacy of the death penalty is very
problematical when we examine it not by our own impressions as
average human beings, calmly and theoretically, but with the data
of criminal psychology, which is its only true sphere of
observation. Every one who commits a crime is either carried away
by sudden passion, when he thinks of nothing, or else he acts
coolly and with premeditation, and then he is determined in his
action, not by a dubious comparison between the death penalty and
imprisonment for life, but simply by a hope of impunity. This is
especially the case with born criminals, whose main psychological
characteristic is an excess of improvidence, combined with moral
insensibility.

If a convict tells us that he fears death, this merely means that
he has the momentary impression, which cannot, however, restrain
him from crime, for here again, by the same psychological
tendency, he will be subject only to the criminal temptation.

And if it is true that, when the criminal has been tried and
condemned, he fears death more than imprisonment for life (always
excepting condemned suicides, and those who by their physical and
moral insensibility laugh at death up to the foot of the
scaffold), it is none the less necessary to try and to condemn
them.

Indeed statistics prove that the periodic variations of the more
serious crimes is independent of the number of
condemnations and executions, for they are determined by very
different causes. Tuscany, where there has been no death penalty
for a century, is one of the provinces with the lowest number of
serious crimes; and in France, in spite of the increase of general
crime and of population, charges of murder, poisoning, parricide,
and homicide, dropped from 560 in 1826 to 430 in 1888, though the
number of executions diminished in the same period from 197 to 9.

The death penalty is an easy panacea, but it is far from being
capable of solving a problem so complex as that of serious crime.
The idea of killing off the incorrigibles and the born criminals
is easily conceived, and Diderot, in his Letter to Landois,
maintained that it was a natural consequence of the denial of
free-will, saying: ``What is the grand distinction between man
and man? Doing good and doing harm. The man who does harm ought
to be extinguished, not punished. '' But as against this too
facile notion we must look to experience, and to the other
material and moral conditions of social life, for the necessary
balance and completion.

I will not further discuss the death penalty, for it is by this
time an exhausted question from the intellectual standpoint, and
has passed into the domain of prejudice for or against, and this
prejudice is concerned rather with the more or less repugnant
method of execution than with the penalty itself. In its favour
there is the absolute, irrevocable, and instantaneous elimination
from society of an individual who has shown himself absolutely
unadaptable, and dangerous to society. But I hold that, if we
would draw from the death penalty the only positive utility
which it possesses, namely, artificial selection, then we must
have courage enough to apply it resolutely in all cases where it
is necessary from this point of view, that is to say, to all born
criminals, who are the authors of the most serious crimes of
violence. In Italy, for example, it would be necessary to execute
at least one thousand persons every year, and in France nearly two
hundred and fifty, in place of the annual seven or eight.

Otherwise the death penalty must be considered as an unserviceable
and neglected means of terror, merely to be printed in the codes;
and in that case it would be acting more seriously to abolish it.

So regarded it is too much like those motionless scarecrows which
husbandmen set up in their fields, dotted about with the foolish
notion that the birds will be frightened away from the corn. They
may cause a little alarm at first sight; but by and by the birds,
seeing that the scarecrow never moves and cannot hurt them, lose
their fear, and even perch on the top of it. So it is with
criminals when they see that the death penalty is never or very
rarely applied; and one cannot doubt that criminals judge of the
law, not by its formulation in the codes, but by its practical and
daily application.

Since the deterrent efficacy of punishments in general, including
the death penalty, is quite insignificant for the born criminals,
who are insensible and improvident, the rare cases of execution
will certainly not cure the disease of society. Only the
slaughter of several hundred murderers every year would have
a sensible result in the way of artificial selection; but
that is more easily said than done. And I imagine that, at normal
periods, in no modern and civilised State would a series of daily
executions of the capital sentence be possible. Public opinion
would not endure it, and a reaction would soon set in. [22]



[22] In every case I think that executions should take place in
prison, and by means of a poison administered as soon as the
sentence takes effect.
In North America electricity has been
tried, but executions by this process appear to be as horrible and
repulsive as those by the guillotine, the garotte, the scaffold,
or the rifle. (See the Medico-Legal Journal of New York, March
and September, 1889. ) From the ``Summarised Information on Capital
Punishment,'' published by the Howard Association in 1881, I take
the following figures on capital punishment in Europe and
America:--


Death
State. Sentences. Executions.
Austria (1870-9) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806 . . . 16
France (1870-9) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 . . . 93
Spain (1868-77) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 . . . 26
Sweden (1869-78) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 . . . 3
Denmark (1868-77) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 . . . 1
Bavaria (1870-9) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 . . . 7
Italy (1867-76) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 . . . 34
Germany, North (1869-78) . . . . . . . . . 484 . . . 1
England (1860 79). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 665 . . . 372
Ireland (1860-79) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 . . . 36
Scotland (1860-79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 . . . 15
Australia and New Zealand (1870-9. . . 453 .