Note 163 — CRIMINALITY.

It is very difficult, in examining the influence of marriage upon criminality, to separate the moral consequences from other factors. We are mistaken, for example, if we attribute to the moral influence of marriage the fact that married persons are less often guilty of the great majority of economic crimes than the unmarried. The fact that anyone marries is ordinarily an indication that he is in a material situation more or less good. The danger that he will commit an economic offense becomes, then, much less great than when he is in a less comfortable condition. The correctness of this position is clearly shown by the statistics given, according to which married men still young give a higher figure than that furnished by the bachelors. The reason is that proletarians marry while still young. The material cares of these husbands are then much greater than later on when their children have already left home, or are at least earning their own living.163 If we examine the figures for insults we shall see that married men and women both are more guilty than the unmarried. It would be very erroneous to conclude that marriage increases the tendency to this offense. The explanation is to be found in the fact that when a single dwelling (or barrack rather) is the common habitation of several workmen’s families, living conditions easily become a permanent source of disputes. In this case it is not marriage but bad housing conditions which appear as a factor in the etiology of crime. If it were possible to separate these conditions or these material consequences of marriage from its moral consequences, the difference between the criminality of the married and the unmarried would not appear very great. Especially is this true if we keep sight of the fact that the bourgeoisie generally marry at a more advanced age than the proletariat. This brings it about that there are more of the bourgeois among the older married people than among the younger; and since, from other causes, the bourgeoisie commit fewer crimes than the proletariat, the influence of marriage seems greater here than it really is.