Part 1 — CHAPTER V. THE BIO-SOCIOLOGISTS.

I.

Ad. Prins.

There is an environment favorable to moral health, where the tendency to crime is almost wholly lacking; there is a social environment where the atmosphere is corrupt, where unwholesome elements are heaped up, where the most vigorous perish, where criminality spreads like the mould in the dunghill; the tendency toward crime there is formidable, and we can say in this sense that it is a social fact with a social cause, and that it is in intimate connection with a given social organization.

Let us consider our own epoch for a moment. A century of progress and refinement is a century of vices; the increasing complexity of our mechanism creates, with new temptations, new occasions of falling. The car of civilization, like that of Juggernaut, destroys many of those who throw themselves under its wheels. The world has enormous appetites that it cannot satisfy: sensuality, greed of gain, a taste for and facility in speculation; the contrast between great wealth and extreme poverty; the brutal necessities of the struggle for existence in the face of the concentration of property and of capital; the defects of the industrial organization, which abandons the proletariat to chance, keeps no watch over apprenticeship, and leaves the child of the working-man to the excitations of the streets and the promiscuity of the workshop, and finally sharpens everywhere the obscure instincts of animalism; all this recoils upon criminality with deplorable certainty. How far wrong we should be in such an environment simply to contrast the delinquent with the honest man! It is two social states that are contrasted; the one is based upon comfortable means, sociability, mutual protection, useful work, and thrift; the other upon poverty, isolation, egoism, and unproductive labor. And in the great urban agglomerations, pauperism, mendicity and vagrancy, idleness, the spirit of adventure, prostitution, the dissipation of strength, everything, in short, naturally concurs in developing social anemia.

“Take any district whatsoever, however poor, uncivilized, and wild, and you will always find in the great cities, London or Paris, New York or San Francisco, a worse environment and greater depravity. It is here, in the lowest slums, where never a glimmer of physical or moral well-being penetrates, that the disinherited live. They get a glimpse of the splendor of luxury only to hate it; they respect neither property nor life, because neither property nor life has any real value for them; they are born, grow pale, struggle, and die, without suspecting that for certain persons existence is good fortune, property a right, virtue a habit, and calm a constant state. Such is the natural and fatal home of criminality.

“Such are the conditions of the development of the criminal classes, that is to say of the classes where we meet the tendency to crime. And it is of importance to remark that we can determine their legal character; they are the vagrants and delinquents by profession. They are clearly differentiated from the vagabonds and delinquents by accident. This distinction, which modern statistics has brought into relief, is now the basis of penal science, and the judge can no longer overlook it.

“The occasional delinquents constitute the minority, their life is regular, their instincts are right; a sudden passion, an unpremeditated outburst, a passing depression of the will, leads them into crime; a sort of fever dominates them and, the fit once past, their normal life takes up its course again.

“On the other hand, the professional delinquents, who make up the largest part of the population of the prisons, are really the criminal class. They are the hardened, the incorrigible, the recidivists. They form, by the side of regular society, the great rebel tribe, where gather and mingle poverty, ignorance, vice, idleness, and prostitution. The soldiers of this army obey, not a momentary desire, but a permanent tendency. They do not always commit crime for crime’s sake, but the most trivial incident drives them to it; they profit by every opportunity, and we can say that, as in certain circles virtue is a reflex act, so crime is a reflex act with them. Further, they have, quite like the civilized world, a public opinion which supports them, arouses them, gives them their own kind of popularity, and constitutes, in a word, an incentive for the heroes of vice, just as the other public opinion encourages the soldiers of duty.

“What is true of criminal society as a whole, is equally true of the individual as such. In each infraction of the law, besides the accidental factor, i.e. age, character, temperament, in a word, the personal disposition, there is the collective or social factor, i.e. the environment, the permanent conditions, the general laws. With the occasional delinquent the individual factor predominates, it is especially the man that appears. With the habitual delinquent, it is the social factor, the collectivity that comes upon the scene.

II.

W. D. Morrison.

The preface to “Crime and its Causes” contains an abridgment of the opinion of the author upon the influence of economic conditions. He says there:

The chapter “Climate and Crime” contains some observations that are of interest in connection with our subject. In speaking of the great number of crimes against persons in Italy, the author says:

According to Morrison there are two kinds of crime of which a destitute person may be guilty, namely theft and mendicity. Two questions must be answered, then, first, what percentage is there of these crimes? second, how far can one attribute theft and mendicity to destitution?

During the years 1887–1888 the number of cases tried in England and Wales was 726,698, of which 8% were crimes against property and 7% offenses against the “Vagrancy Acts.” Consequently 15% of all the crimes might have been committed because of destitution. From investigations made by himself, half the thieves had work and were earning something at the time they committed their crimes.

Now we still have to explain the other half of the cases of theft. Those who committed these thefts were without work, then; but there were among them habitual criminals, and these could probably have found work, but did not want to work. Therefore they were not “destitute persons.” This leaves still 25% of the thieves. Among these destitution is now truly the direct cause. However lack of work is not the sole cause, but the fact that children of proletarians are left to themselves when their parents are sick or dead, enters in. And then many aged working-men become criminals because they are too old to work and no one supports them. Drunkards also at times come to commit crimes because of poverty, since they find it difficult to work. The estimate is, then, as follows:

Proportion of criminals earning at the time of arrest 4%

Proportion,, of,, criminals,, habitual thieves 2%

Proportion,, of,, criminals,, adults without shelter and old men 1%

Proportion,, of,, drunkards, vagrants 1%

Proportion,, of,, crimes against property compared with total number of crimes 8%

Then come the infractions of the “Vagrancy Acts.” The offenses that are punished under these laws are chiefly prostitution, presence in public places with criminal intentions, presence in a particular house with criminal intentions, and carrying burglars’ implements. Prostitution aside, destitution ought not to be considered as the cause of these infractions, according to the author, because the guilty persons are those who ordinarily will not work and would not change their lot for anyone else’s. The class of vagrants is no more unhappy than any other; it has even its own philosophy. (—Who could be unhappy, then? This statement of the case gives one a great desire to ask the author how it happens that no people of means have adopted this enviable career.—) The same reasoning applies to most of the mendicants (45% of those who break the vagrancy laws), they do not want to work. Another fraction is made up of those who cannot find work; their number is difficult to determine; according to Morrison’s opinion it is not very high (he estimates it at 2% for mendicants). It is especially aged persons who belong to this class. There are two principal reasons for this.

First, the increasing use of machines, which throw workmen out of employment, while increasing the possibility of utilizing the labor of women and children.

—However true this observation, it is nevertheless very incomplete. It is not the machine that is the cause, but the system of free labor, which throws everyone on his own resources when he can work no longer, whether this is from lack of work or from the disability of the worker.—

A second cause of vagrancy and mendicity is to be found in the Trades Unions. For these Unions have been able to obtain a uniform wage, and aged workmen must, in accordance with their rules, earn as much as the young ones although not able to do as much work. The employers, not being able to afford to give them the whole amount, discharge them.

The circumstance that there are more male than female beggars is a proof to the author that economic conditions are not the cause of mendicity, etc., for women ordinarily live under worse conditions than men.

—I shall not insist upon proving that these calculations have little value. In the first place all the figures are only estimates, without any indication of what they are based on. In the second place Morrison has only proved, supposing his estimates are correct, that 5% of the criminals belong to a category defined by the author himself. All this gives him absolutely no right to conclude that economic conditions are not a powerful factor in crime. Just where the writer believes that the question has been solved the difficulties properly commence. If we wish to treat the question of vagrancy in a scientific manner we must ask: how does it happen that with the present mode of production there are found persons who prefer vagrancy to work? This is one of the questions that must be answered, yet for Morrison it does not exist. The causes of professional theft, alcoholism, etc. seem, according to the author, to have nothing to do with economic conditions. I shall show in the second part of this work how far wrong he is.—

The following chapter treats of “poverty and crime.” To prove the slightness of the causal connection between the two, Morrison gives the following table:

Italy 1880–84 New cases of theft per an. to 100,000 inh. 221

France 1879–83 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 121

Belgium 1876–80 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 143

Germany 1882–83 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 262

England 1880–84 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 228

Scotland 1880–84 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 289

Ireland 1880–84 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 101

Hungary 1876–80 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 82

Spain 1883–84 New,, cases,, of,, theft,, per,, an.,, to,, 100,000,, inh.,, 74

—It has been some years since Quetelet pointed out (see Chap. II, Sec. II, of this work) that absolute wealth throws no light on the criminal question, because the total wealth of a country gives no idea of its distribution. Yet Morrison thinks that the preceding table proves the correctness of his statement!—

The author sees a second proof in support of his reasoning in the fact that during the prosperous period of 1870–74 criminality in England was greater than during the period of economic depression from 1884 to 1888. (—See our summaries of the works of Tugan-Baranowsky and of Müller, where it is shown that the economic conditions of that period do have a relation to criminality. There is perhaps no country where the connection between crime and the course of economic events is so close as in England; and it is surprising that there are authors like Morrison who are so little in touch with the situation, and who yet express themselves so decidedly.—)

In America the immigrants commit fewer crimes on the average than those who are born in the country; the position of these last being better, economic conditions are not causes of crime. (—As if assertions as vague as this: “the American has a better position than the immigrant”, could have any value!—)

Morrison sees another proof in the fact that the criminality in the English colony of Victoria, where prosperity is fairly general, differs little from that of other countries where the prosperity is less. (—See A. Sutherland, “Résultats de la déportation en Australie”, Compte Rendu du Ve Congr. d’Anthr. Crim., p. 270, where it is shown that criminality in Australia on account of the deportation of English criminals is great, but has fallen continually since 1850, and now is not so high as in Italy, Sweden, Saxony, and Prussia. So this proof given by the author is not convincing.—)

Then the author draws attention to the fact that, according to him, the number of criminals in the different classes of society in England is proportional to the respective numbers of individuals in each of these classes. Finally he also thinks that his thesis is supported by the fact that during the summer months the prisons in England are more populated than in winter.

—The author deceives himself, for to find out that more crimes are committed in winter than in summer one has only to consult, not the statistics of the prisons, but those of the courts; the former give no information as to the time when the offense was committed; it is even probable that a part of the prisoners incarcerated in summer committed their offenses in winter. Many writers who have not fallen into this error have come to the conclusion that crimes and misdemeanors against property, which are those chiefly in question, increase in winter and decrease in summer.

If one wished to make a complete criticism of Morrison’s work it would be necessary to write a whole book, so great is the number of his errors and omissions, which is why I refer to the second part of my work.

The fundamental error of the author is that he believes that the question of how far economic conditions lead to crime is exhausted when the effect of poverty has been investigated. This is only a part (though an important one) of the question, which though apparently simple is in reality very complicated.

III.

F. Von Liszt.

“It is obvious that a diminution in the number of certain crimes may be brought about by an improvement in the social order. The impulse toward crime is undoubtedly quickly strengthened by social conditions, and also quickly made weaker. Political and religious offenses become so much the more numerous, the more definitely and relentlessly the dominant opinion takes its stand against diverse persuasions. If today a certain tendency in art were to attain state recognition and the protection of the criminal law, tomorrow the aesthetic heretic would be persecuted as the religious heretics were persecuted in earlier centuries. The sexual instinct will constantly long for satisfaction and take it where it finds it. If you prohibit the possibility of such satisfaction within the bounds of legality, the instinct will break the bonds and lead to crime. And whoever finds neither bread nor work will, in the great majority of cases, be able to discover ways and means of securing the one without the other at the expense of society.… ‘The beast in man’ is in all circles, in all strata of our society.… But the beast, with all its wild passions, with rage and hate, with covetousness and envy, with thirst for blood and insatiable vanity, is it not derived from father or mother, who have drained the pleasures of life or the woes of life to the dregs, who were corrupted in blood through their own fault, or without their own fault, before they gave life to the germ to which they imparted the curse of their forefathers as a heritage?

“A reorganization of our social order will materially lessen the impulsion to crime in the men who are living today, but infinitely more important and infinitely more permanent will be its effect upon coming generations. While diminishing the number of those tainted by heredity it will tame the beast in man. This is no Utopia. It will be easier, perhaps, to underestimate the effect of such a transformation, than to appreciate its full value.

“But which transformation? That is the question that we must answer, if we are not to be pushed aside as harmless visionaries.

“Our entire education, in school as in life, rests upon suggestion. What keeps us from crime is the inhibitory ideas, which are instilled into us until they permeate our flesh and blood and control our actions, without our being conscious of it. ‘Thou shalt’, ‘thou shalt not’, these general prescriptions of right and morality, of religion and philanthropy, or whatever you choose to call it, must determine our conduct, unless we stop to consider, hesitate, and delay.…

“The inhibitory ideas, however, retain their force only if we live in the community of our fellows, the enclosed circle held together by like views and a community of interests. Put upon his own resources, the true man makes himself known. But the men who can do this are rare. The great majority of us need outside support. Who has not seen in his own experience how the judgment and prejudice, the beliefs and superstitions of his associates have a determining effect upon him; how he supports others and is supported by them? Break up the enclosed circle and you weaken or annihilate the inhibitory ideas; shatter society to atoms, so that each stands by himself in the war of all against all, and you set loose whatever evil instincts have their roots in us; ‘declass’ man and you have driven him into the arms of crime.

—The opinion of Professor von Liszt and of other bio-sociologists with regard to crime is a union of the doctrine of the Italian and French schools. Having already given a criticism of these schools I will limit myself to a few remarks.

The formula, “every crime is the product of an individual factor on the one side, and of social factors on the other”, is of little value for the question, being applicable to every act, even the most laudable, and explains very little of what is peculiar to crime. A more special examination of the so-called individual factor of crime shows that it is formed, for example, of great needs, of highly developed muscular strength—in short, of things which do not belong to crime alone; or it may be a lack of moral conceptions (the result of an unfavorable environment, of bad education, etc.). A veritable individual factor is to be found only in some special cases, where crime is the result of a predisposition, resulting from a morbid mental condition, combined with unfavorable circumstances. At times, then, crime is the resultant of an individual factor with a social factor; in most cases this is not so. In maintaining that it is always these two together which give birth to crime, one makes use of a commonplace, since by individual factors are understood conditions necessary to every act; or else the statement is quite inaccurate.

In his work, “Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe”, Dr. Näcke treats the criminal question from the medico-anthropological point of view. However, his remarks upon the connection which exists between economic conditions and crime are very important. In the fifth chapter, entitled, “Die anthropologisch-biologischen Beziehungen zum Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe”, he puts the question: can one fix the idea of “crime” anatomically?

According to him the answer must be an absolute negative. “Semal is right when he says: ‘The moral sense is a slow and gradual acquisition of the ages.… The conscience of peoples like that of the individual, calls every act moral that is useful to the agent himself or to others.…’ Every people, then, fixes the concept ‘crime’ according to the moral code prevailing among them at the time; it is consequently not rooted in man physiologically, but is as Manouvrier brilliantly demonstrates, purely sociological. It is therefore really nonsense to seek for anthropological stigmata for a sociological concept.

“But another consideration also leads us to the same result. The stability of a people demands the establishing of certain boundaries, called ‘laws’, the transgression of which might disturb the social order, and therefore must be punished. But the laws form only single boundary marks, not a tight enclosure, so that between them many, consciously or not, pass through without being caught or punished. Besides, the laws of a higher morality do not always correspond with the prevailing legal system, so that many things are offenses in the eyes of the moral code that are not such in the eyes of the law, a fact which, as is well known, the conscienceless take advantage of. It is plain, therefore, that there are innumerable transgressions that are not punished, innumerable criminals who pass as honest men, so that we cannot really speak of criminals and honest men, but simply of the punished and the unpunished.

In chapter VI, “Zusammenhang von Verbrechen und Wahnsinn”, the author explains that in case an individual factor exists, it is not ordinarily this alone that leads to crime, but it must be coupled with a social factor.

Further along he makes this idea more specific, when he is examining the different causes of crime. Among these causes the author cites the following:

1. Lesion of the germ (favored especially by the marriage of degenerates).

2. Alcoholism.

3. Syphilis.

4. Malnutrition and unhealthy mode of life.

5. Excessive labor of women and children.

6. Bad domestic life.

7. Desertion in which children under age are left.

The author sums up in the following terms: “In what has gone before we have attempted to pick out and follow up some threads of the complex social fabric, in the firm persuasion that only an improvement of the environment in its thousand-fold ramifications will be able effectively to combat crime, and gradually to exert a favorable influence upon the individual factors, which are certainly not to be undervalued.

The work of Dr. Havelock Ellis, entitled “The Criminal”, contains only one passage which is of importance for the question of criminality considered from the economic point of view. Like most bio-sociologists he considers the social factors as the most important. This is the passage in question:

“The problem of criminality is not an isolated one that can be dealt with by fixing our attention on that and that alone. It is a problem that on closer view is found to merge itself very largely into all those problems of our social life that are now pressing for solution, and in settling them we shall to a great extent settle it. The rising flood of criminality is not an argument for pessimism or despair. It is merely an additional spur to that great task of social organization to which during the coming century we are called.

VI.

Carroll D. Wright.

The author of the brochure, “The Relation of Economic Conditions to the Causes of Crime”, begins by declaring that there are two kinds of criminals; persons who have become such from their psycho-physical constitution, and others who have become such from circumstances.

The author then continues by saying that since there is a relation more or less close between all the important social questions and the labor question, it is necessary to take that up also in studying the criminal question.

In the end the feudal system was overthrown and that of free labor, the present system, became general. Since then the differences between poverty and wealth have appeared more distinctly.

After having tried to show, by the aid of some historical examples, that the conditions in the system which preceded ours were of a nature much more serious than those of our own day, he continues as follows:

“In the study of economic conditions, and whatever bearing they may have upon crime, I can do no better than to repeat, as a general idea, a statement made some years ago by Mr. Ira Steward, of Massachusetts, one of the leading labor reformers in that state in his day. He said: ‘Starting in the labor problem from whatever point we may, we reach, as the ultimate cause of our industrial, social, moral, and material difficulties, the terrible fact of poverty. By poverty we mean something more than pauperism. The latter is a condition of entire dependence upon charity, while the former is a condition of want, of lack, of being without, though not necessarily a condition of complete dependence.’

Let the circumstances be favorable or unfavorable, let the governments be liberal or despotic, let the religion and commercial systems be what they may, crime has always existed. This is why it would exist even if there were no longer any unemployment, if everyone had received an education, if the efforts of temperance societies and social reformers had been realized, and Christianity were universal. But all these good influences together would certainly reduce crime to the minimum.

Criminality will decrease but little if the improvements have to do simply with the physical condition and not at the same time with moral and intellectual conditions. It is, on the other hand, not to be disputed, according to the author, that a development of these last qualities will have a favorable influence upon criminality. For the man who has received an education will betake himself to crime less quickly than the ignorant man, while on account of his education he will generally be able to find work to protect him against poverty and crime. The lack of work is an important cause of crime; for example, among the convicts of Massachusetts there were 68% who had been without work, and in the whole United States in 1890, 74% of the murderers had been without work. This lack of employment may have been because of an antipathy to work or of a lack of opportunity. And it is this last case especially that occurs only too often in the present social organization.

Great improvements are urgently demanded; living conditions must become better and more sanitary, and work must be better paid. The fundamental complaint of the writer against political economy is that it has not considered moral forces as one of its elements. As soon as it shall have considered them as such it will have entered upon the way that leads to real improvements.

After having indicated what these improvements ought to be, the author goes on in these terms: “In a state in which labor had all its rights there would be, of course, little pauperism and little crime. On the other hand, the undue subjection of the laboring man must tend to make paupers and criminals, and entail a financial burden upon wealth which it would have been easier to prevent than to endure; and this prevention must come in a large degree through educated labor.

It might still be asked whether civilization favors crime. The answer would have to be at once affirmative and negative. Affirmative in exceptional times, otherwise negative. The more civilization advances, the better the condition of the working people will become, the more equitable will be the division of profits, and the more crime will diminish. The attempts of Robert Owen and many others prove the truth of this.

—The study of Carroll D. Wright contains some very true observations upon the relation between crime and economic conditions (for example, upon the difference between the slave and the free laborer, whose liberty consists chiefly in this, that he can die of hunger if he cannot find work or is no longer able to work). But in general the work gives the impression of vagueness and hesitation proper to the school of economists and sociologists to which the writer belongs. They condemn certain manifestations of capitalism, but wish to maintain the “causa causarum”, the system itself. This is not the place to speak of this more fully and I will confine myself to pointing out some historical errors of the author.

In the first place, a classification of economic systems into only three is incomplete. It is very surprising that this error should have been made by an American. For the North American Indians neither lived under the feudal system nor under that of free labor, and for the most part never knew slavery; the author has forgotten to mention the primitive-communistic mode of production.

In the second place, it is incorrect to call all those who lived under the feudal system “poor.”

In the third place it was not to the feudal system that the famous executions under Henry VIII belong, but rather to incipient capitalism which, by dispossessing a great number of peasants, made them poor. (Compare More, “Utopia”, and Marx, “Capital.”)—

Among the partisans of the bio-sociological doctrine, I think that certain other authors should also be classed, for example: L. Gordon Rylands, “Crime, Its Causes and Remedy”; Dallemagne (see p. 224 of the “Actes du IIIme Congrès d’Anthrop. Crimin.”); Drill (see “Des principes fondamentaux de l’école d’anthropologie criminelle” and “Les fondements et le but de la responsabilité pénale”); Kovalewsky, “La psychologie criminelle”; Orchanski, “Les criminels russes.” With regard to Russian criminologists see Frassati, “Die neue positive Schule des Strafrechts in Russland.”

The Dutch criminologists must be reckoned as among the bio-sociologists.

G. A. v. Hamel, “De tegenwoordige beweging op het gebied van het strafrecht”, and “L’anarchisme et le combat contre l’anarchisme au point de vue de l’anthropologie criminelle”; G. Jelgersma, “De geboren misdadiger”; A. Aletrino, “Twee opstellen over crimineele anthropologie”, and “Handleiding bij de studie der crimineele anthropologie”; S. R. Steinmetz, “De ziekten der maatschappij.” Dr. C. Winkler inclines, as it seems to me, rather toward the opinion of the Italian criminologists. See: “Iets over crimineele anthropologie.”

[Note to the American Edition: Of the recent literature there should be mentioned: in Germany, especially Aschaffenburg, “Das Verbrechen und seine Bekämpfung”, and Wulffen, “Psychologie des Verbrechens.” In Holland the authors already named, van Kan, and de Roos are to be classed among the bio-sociologists. For Russia there should be added von Bechterew, “Das Verbrechertum im Lichte der objektiven Psychologie.” In America it seems to me more reliance is placed upon the Italian theory than in Europe; see, for example, Henderson, “Introduction into the Study of the Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes.” Upon the recent development of criminology in Holland, England, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Greece, and Servia see the study already cited of von Thót, “Die positive Strafrechtsschule in einigen europäischen Ländern.”]