Note 403 — Chapter II

This does not apply to another category of thieves; those who do not proceed from an absolutely corrupt environment—yet whose surroundings are not good and wholesome. Ferriani403 and Aschaffenburg404 go so far as to say that almost every child has once stolen something. This may be a little exaggerated but it certainly has truth at the bottom of it. If the child has no one to take the trouble to teach him that he ought not to steal, it is more than likely that he will have to answer for theft later (occasional theft is committed by children and minors especially). It is true that all the children whose education has been defective do not become thieves, nor even the majority of them; there are those for whom a single prohibition will be enough to make them respect the property of others for the rest of their lives. There are others of them, weak characters who, notwithstanding such prohibition, cannot resist when the temptation is strong. If their education had been good, the environment in which they were brought up more favorable, they would not have had to be turned over to justice. Hear the opinion of one of those most competent to judge of the matter, Raux, who, having put to himself the question whether the young people detained in the “Quartier correctionnel” of Lyons have a real tendency to steal, answers as follows. “Evidently not. Without entering into the analysis of the circumstances which provoke crime, we shall give, in support of our assertion, an observation as simple as conclusive. Young prisoners condemned for theft have shown us upon different occasions a probity, a most praiseworthy disinterestedness, in the presence of things that they might have appropriated without exposing themselves to any reproof.”405