[The American Magazine recently offered prizes for the best replies.
Here is one of the winning answers.]
What is a criminal? To-night I pace the narrow confines of my
steel-barred cell and ask myself for the hundredth time--What is a
criminal? Is he, as Lombroso claims, a moral degenerate? Is he the
mental imbecile that metaphysicians in learned verbiage assert? Is
he the hardened, desperate malefactor, the sinking, murderous beast
that penologists would have us believe? Is he the victim of adverse
circumstances, unsavory environment, and changing social conditions? Or
does he wage war on organized society for adventure’s sake? Why is he a
criminal?
Garbed in the vestment of dishonor and disgrace, I myself am what
the world terms a criminal. Should I not know the meaning of the
appellation far better than the casual observer? For many years my
life has been the life of an habitue of the underworld. Criminals, so
called, have been my associates and my friends. I have known them in
the moments of their success, I have known them in the hours of their
failure. Failure that spells oblivion, the oblivion of cold gray walls
and heart-breaking, monotonous, man-killing routine. I have seen how
recklessly they can live, and I have also seen how gamely they can die.
I have known them intimately, and well, and never have I been able to
discover any difference between them and their more fortunate brethren.
They entertain in their hearts the same ideas, the same hopes, and the
same ambitions as do average men.
Those who commit crime as a matter of choice are few indeed. Many
follow it as a means of livelihood because it is the only vocation open
to them; and they must be men of stamina, courage, and brains, if they
would survive. Those who match their wits against the vast resources
of the Powers Who Rule must be clever rogues indeed. They are, in
short, just such men as those who attain success in other walks of
life--no different. The same ability to think and plan, the same nerve
and determination, the same unswerving loyalty, the same persistent
application that diverted into legitimate channels would have won for
them recognition in any sphere of endeavor. These are the men who have
chosen crime as a vocation, because their talent and training equipped
them for that career, just as you may have chosen the law or the field
of high finance for similar reasons. And these men in some degree
succeed as law breakers, but even they must pay the cost of their
success. And the toll is not light, my friend.
There are others, men who were born a hundred years too late. Men who
live as their kind has always lived--by the strength of their own right
arms. To them might is right, and they know no other code. They, too,
are criminals, are they not? These are the men who have never learned
to turn the other cheek. These are the men who strike back. Society
tramples them under its feet, and they arise from the dust with grim
murder in their hearts. They cannot forget; they cannot forgive; and so
they fight to the bitter end with the blind courage of their breed.
Some, the very machinery of the courts has converted into criminals.
I see them every day in the chrysalis stage. They commit some minor
infraction of the law, some petty offense, and for that they go to
jail. In jail they receive scant consideration and little courtesy from
either their fellow prisoners or from the police. They are neither fish
nor fowl. They note the fact that the “good thief” is respected and
feared by one, and extended the hand of good fellowship by the other.
Straightway they determine to become criminals--and some few succeed.
Many more fill our prisons.
Others are accidentally criminals. Under the influence of liquor,
drugs, sudden passion, and sometimes actual hunger, they commit crimes.
They are not really criminals, however; they are “accidents.” Sometimes
serious accidents no doubt, but still accidents. Surely you would not
call them criminals!
You ask what is a criminal? In the last analysis the question is
unanswerable. You could as readily ask, “What is a man?” and the
definition would be as undefinable as this. What is a criminal? Out of
the depths of my experience I would say that a criminal is a thousand
changing moods, a thousand inherited tendencies, a thousand mistakes,
a thousand injustices, wedded into a thousand different personalities;
and from the furnace of the melting pot you could perhaps find the
answer. What is a criminal?--A MAN IN PRISON.