Note 339 — Chapter II
Henry P. (Henry Pomeroy) Horton translation
It seems to me unnecessary to explain this division. It creates four fairly distinct groups, which contain all the economic crimes. However, I must point out why I treat vagrancy and mendicity in this way, while both are generally regarded not as misdemeanors but as contraventions.339 Properly speaking they ought not, therefore, to appear in a work on criminality, but the following are the reasons why they nevertheless find a place here; first, they are the most important and the most common contraventions; second, there is a very close relation between vagrancy on the one hand, and criminality properly speaking on the other. This relation has been shown by many authors. As Professor Prins says in his “Criminalité et répression”, vagrancy and mendicity are the novitiate of crime. I will only recall here the opinions of two writers, Josiah Flynt and E. Sichart. The former, the author of “Tramping with Tramps”, has given up a part of his life to tramping for some years in America, Germany, and in other countries, in order to familiarize himself with the vagrant and the criminal; his conclusions accordingly have great value. He is of the opinion that the vagrants endowed with great energy become professional criminals, to fall again into vagrancy as soon as their physical and mental forces decline so as no longer to permit them to carry on their criminal trade with success.340