THE SEASONS AND CRIME.
Let us now approach the question of temperature and crime from another
point of view. International statistics indicate pretty clearly that
warm regions exercise an injurious effect on the conduct of European
peoples. Does the information furnished by these statistics stand
alone, or is it supported by the result of investigations conducted in
a different field? To this vital question it will be our endeavour to
supply an answer. In the annual reports of the Prison Commissioners
there is an instructive diagram showing the mean number of prisoners
in the local prisons of England and Wales on the first Tuesday of each
month. This diagram has been published for a considerable number of
years, and if we take any period of six years it is remarkable to
observe the unfailing regularity with which crime begins to decrease
as soon as the summer is over and the temperature begins to fall. From
the month of October till the month of February in the following year,
the prison population continues almost steadily to diminish; from the
month of February till the month of October, the same population,
allowing for pauses in its progress and occasional deflections in its
course, mounts upwards with the rising temperature. According to the
last sextennial diagram of the Prison Commissioners, which embraces
the six years ended March, 1884, the mean number of prisoners in the
local prisons of England and Wales was, on the first Tuesday in
February, 17,600; on the first Tuesday in April it had risen to
18,400; on the first Tuesday in July it had reached nearly 19,000; on
the first Tuesday in October it culminated in 19,200. From this date
onwards the numbers decreased just as steadily as they had previously
risen, reaching their lowest point in February, when the upward
movement again commenced. The steadiness and regularity of this rise
and fall of the prison population, according to the season of the
year, goes on with such wonderful precision that it must proceed from
the operation of some permanent cause. What is this permanent cause?
Is it economic, social, or climatic?
Is it economic? It is sometimes asserted that the increase of crime in
the summer months is due to the large number of tramps who leave the
workhouses after the winter is over and roam the country in search of
employment. Many of these wanderers, it is said, are arrested for
vagrancy; in summer they swell the prison population just as they
swell the workhouse population in winter. This explanation of the
increase of crime in summer contains so many elements of probability,
that it has come to be rather widely accepted by students of criminal
phenomena. It has not, however, been my good fortune to meet with any
facts or statistics of sufficient weight to establish the validity of
this explanation. As far as I can ascertain it is an explanation which
has obtained currency almost entirely through its own intrinsic
probability; it is believed, but it has not been proved. Let us
proceed to put it to the test. For this purpose we shall select the
county of Surrey--a fairly typical English county, composed partly of
town and partly of country. In the county of Surrey during the month
of July, 1888, sixty per cent. fewer persons were imprisoned for
vagrancy than in the following month of January, 1889. As far as
Surrey is concerned, these figures effectually dispose of the idea
that vagrancy is more common in summer than in winter; as a matter of
fact they demonstrate that the very opposite is the case. Surrey is
the only county for which I have been able to obtain trustworthy
statistics, but there is every reason to believe that the statistics
of Surrey reveal on a limited scale what the whole of England, if
figures were procurable, would reveal on a large scale. Assuming,
then, that what holds good for Surrey is equally valid for the rest of
England, the conclusion is forced upon us that the augmentation of
crime in summer does not arise from an increase of vagrants and others
arrested and convicted under the Vagrancy Acts while in search of work
or pretending to be in search of it. The assumption that such is the
case is quite unwarranted by the facts so far as they are obtainable,
and another explanation must be sought of the greater prevalence of
crime in summer as compared with winter.
An economic cause of an opposite character to vagrancy has by some
been considered as accounting for the facts now under consideration.
In the summer months, work as a rule is more easily procured; people
in consequence have more money to spend; drunkenness becomes more
common, and the high prison population of summer is to be attributed
to drink. That there is a greater consumption of drink when work
becomes more plentiful is a perfectly correct statement which has been
verified over and over again, and it is also equally correct to say
that drinking leads its victims to the police court. But it has to be
remembered that in almost all cases of drunkenness the magistrate
allows the alternative of a fine. A much larger percentage of fines
is paid in summer than in winter, the result being that the increase
of drunkenness in summer does not disproportionally increase the size
of the prison population. In July, 1888, as compared with January,
1889, cases of felony and assault, followed by imprisonment, increased
in the county of Surrey 20 and 28 per cent. respectively, while
drunkenness on the other hand only increased 18 per cent. The reason
of this relatively small increase of imprisonment for drunkenness does
not arise from the fact that there is less drunkenness in proportion
to the other forms of crime; it is owing to the greater facility with
which this offence can be purged by the payment of a fine. It is
more easily purged in this fashion in summer than in winter, because
people have more money in their pockets. Money, in short, acts in two
capacities which neutralise each other; on the one hand it brings more
persons before the magistrates on charges of drunkenness; on the other
hand, it enables more persons to escape with the simple penalty of a
fine. The prison population is, therefore, not unduly swollen in
summer by the undoubted increase in drinking during that season of the
year; drinking has, in fact, less to do with that increase than any
other cause.
The preceding observations on vagrancy and drinking will suffice to
show that as far as these two factors are concerned, the rise of the
prison population in the warm weather cannot be explained on economic
grounds. Are there any social habits which will account for it? Change
of seasons has a notable effect on social habits. In the cold days of
winter, the great mass of the population live as much as possible
within the shelter of their own home; as long as the short days and
the cheerless and dismal weather continue, there is little to tempt
them out of doors and to bring them into contact with each other. But
with the advance of spring this condition of things is changed; the
lengthening days, the milder atmosphere, the more abundant sunshine
offer increased facilities for social intercourse. Crowds of people
are thrown together, quarrelling and disorders arise, which call for
the interference of the police to be followed shortly after by a
sentence of imprisonment. The growth of international intercourse is
said to make for peace; the growth of social intercourse, admirable as
it is in many respects, has the unfortunate drawback of mating for
black eyes and broken heads. Admitting the truth of this serious
indictment against our social instincts, and no one can deny that it
does contain a considerable amount of truth, the fact still remains
that weather is indirectly if not directly the source from which the
increase of crime in summer proceeds. It is the good weather that
multiplies occasions for human intercourse; the multiplication of
these facilities augments the volume of crime; and thus it comes to
pass, that the conduct of society is, at least, indirectly affected by
changes of season and the oscillations of temperature.
But it is also directly affected by these causes, as I shall now
proceed to show. In one of the principal London prisons the average
prison population during the months of June, July and August for the
five years ended August, 1889 was 1,061, and the daily average number
of punishments amounted to 9 and a fraction per thousand. The average
population during the winter months of December, January, February,
for the five years ended February, 1890, was 1009, and the daily
average number of punishments amounted to 7 and a fraction per
thousand. According to these statistics, we have an increase of 2
punishments per day, or 12 per week (omitting Sundays) to every
thousand prisoners in the three summer months as compared with the
three winter months. In other words, there is a greater tendency among
the inmates of prisons to commit offences against prison regulations
in summer than in winter. In what way is this manifest tendency to be
accounted for? If prisoners were free men living under a variety of
conditions, and subject to a host of complex influences, it would be
possible to adduce all sorts of causes for the existence of such a
phenomenon, and it would be by no means a difficult matter to find
plausible arguments in support of each and all of them. But the almost
absolute similarity of conditions under which imprisoned men live
excludes at one stroke an enormous mass of complicating factors, and
reduces the question to its simplest elements. Here are a thousand men
living in the same place under the same rules of discipline, occupied
in the same way, fed on the same materials, with the same amount of
exercise, the same hours of sleep; in fact, with similarity of life
brought almost to the point of absolute identity; no alteration takes
place in these conditions in summer as compared with winter, yet we
find that there are more offences committed by them in the hotter
season than in the colder. In what way, except on the ground of
temperature, is this difference to be explained. The economic and
social factors discussed by us in connection with the increase of
crime do not here come into play. All persons in prison are living
under the same social and economic conditions in hot weather as well
as in cold. The only changes to which they are subjected are cosmical;
cosmical causes are accordingly the only ones which will account
adequately for the facts. Of these cosmical causes, temperature is by
far the most conspicuous, and it may therefore be concluded that the
increase of prison offences in summer is attributable to the greater
heat.
Seeing, then, that temperature produces these effects inside prison
walls, it is only reasonable to infer that it produces similar effects
on the outside world. The larger number of offences against prison
discipline which take place in the hot weather have their counterpart
in the larger number of offences committed against the criminal law
during the same season of the year. The conclusions arrived at with
respect to the action of season are supported by the conclusions
already reached with respect to the action of climate. In fact, both
sets of conclusions support each other; both of them point to the
operation of the same cause.
To any one who may still feel reluctant to admit the intimate relation
between cosmical conditions and crime I would point out that
suicide--a somewhat similar disorder in the social organism--likewise
increases and diminishes under the influences of temperature. "We
cannot help acknowledging," says Dr. Morselli, in his work on
"Suicide," "that through the whole of Europe the greater number of
suicides happen in the two warm seasons. This regularity in the annual
distribution of suicide is too great to be attributed to chance or to
the human will. As the number of violent deaths can be predicted from
year to year with extreme probability in any particular country, so
can the average of every season also be foreseen; in fact, these
averages are so constant from one period to another as to have almost
the specific character of a given statistical series." Professor von
Oettingen in his valuable work, "Die Moralstatistik," comes to the
very same conclusions as Morselli, although his point of view is
entirely different. After mentioning several of the principal States
of Europe, the statistics of which he had examined, Von Oettingen goes
on to say that it may be accepted as a general law that the prevalence
of suicide in the different months of the year rises and falls with
the sun--in June and July it is most rampant; in November, December
and January it descends to a minimum. In London there are many more
suicides in the sunny month of June than in the gloomy month of
November, and throughout the whole of England the cold months do not
demand nearly so many victims as the hot. In the face of these
indisputable facts Von Oettingen, while rejecting the idea that there
is any inexorable fatality, as Buckle believed, connected with their
recurrence, is obliged to admit that the hot weather exercises a
propelling influence on suicidal tendencies, and that the cold weather
on the other hand acts in an opposite direction[18].
[18] DISTRIBUTION OF SUICIDES IN LONDON BY MONTHS OF EQUAL
LENGTH PER 10,000, 1865-84:--
January, 732. July, 905.
February, 714. August, 891.
March, 840. September, 705.
April, 933. October, 772.
May, 1003. November, 726.
June, 1022. December, 697.
Dr. Ogle, vol. xlix., 117. _Statistical Society's Journal_.
The influence of temperature is, however, much less powerful on crime
than it is on suicide. It has the effect of raising by one third the
number of persons to whom life becomes an intolerable burden, but
according to the diagram in the Prison Commissioners' Reports the
highest increase in crime between summer and winter does not amount to
more than one twelfth. In other words, between six and eight per cent.
of the crime committed in this country in summer may with reasonable
certainty be attributed to the direct action of temperature. This is
a most important result and I should almost hesitate to state it if
it were supported by my investigations only. But this is far from
being the case. In an important paper contributed to the Revista di
Discipline Carcerarie for 1886, Dr. Marro, one of the most
distinguished students of crime in Italy, has arrived at similar
conclusions. He has shown that in the Italian prisons in the four
hottest months of the Italian summer--May, June, July and
August--there are also the greatest number of offences against prison
discipline. This is a result which coincides in every particular with
what has already been pointed out as holding good in English prisons,
and the attempts of Dr. Colajanni in the second volume of his work,
"La Sociologia Criminale," to explain it away are not by any means
successful. It is hardly possible to conceive a more suitable form of
test for estimating the effect of temperature on human action than the
one afforded by a comparison of the offences committed against prison
regulations at the different seasons of the year. Such a comparison
amply bears out the contention that the seasons are a factor which
must not be overlooked in all enquiries respecting the origin of
crime, and the best methods of dealing with it.
In what way does a rise in temperature act on the individual so as
to make him less capable of resisting the criminal impulse? This is
a question of some difficulty, deserving more attention from
physiologists than it has yet received. It is a satisfactorily
established conclusion that the higher temperature of the summer
months has a debilitating effect on the digestive functions; it is
also believed that these months have an enervating effect on the
system generally. In so far as the heat of summer produces disease, it
at the same time tends to produce crime. Persons suffering from any
kind of ailment or infirmity are far more liable to become criminals
than are healthy members of the community. The intimate connection
between disease and crime is a matter which must never be forgotten.
In the present instance, however, the closeness of this connection is
not sufficient to account for the growth of crime in summer. According
to the Registrar General's report for 1889 the death rate in the
twenty-eight large towns is less in the six months from June to
November than in the six months which follow. There is, therefore,
less disease at the very time when there is most crime. In the face of
this fact it cannot be contended that disease, generally, pushes the
population into criminal courses in summer.
But while this is so, it may yet be true that some special enfeeblement
(generated by the rise of temperature) which does not assume the acute
form usually implied in the name, disease has the effect of
stimulating impulses of a criminal character, or of weakening the
barrier which prevents these impulses from breaking out and carrying
all before them. It is a perfectly well-established fact that a high
temperature not only produces physical enfeeblement, but that it also
impairs the usual activity and energy of the brain. In other words,
a high temperature is invariably accompanied by a certain loss of
mental power. In most persons this loss is comparatively trifling, and
has hardly any perceptible effect on their mode of life and conduct;
in others, it assumes more serious proportions. In some who are
susceptible to cosmical influences, and for one reason or another are
already on the borderland of crime, the decrease of mental function
involved in a rise of temperature becomes a determining factor, and a
criminal act is the result. Through the agency of climate the mental
forces which are normally capable of holding the criminal instincts in
check, lose for a time their accustomed power, and it is whilst this
temporary loss endures that the person subject to it becomes most
liable to be plunged into disaster. It is in this manner, in my
belief, that temperature deleteriously operates upon human conduct.
The results of my investigations do not, however, bear out the
commonly accepted view that crimes against property increase in the
depth of winter. As far as this law relates to crime in France it may
be correct; the statistical inquiries of Guerry, Ferri, and Corre
point to that conclusion. On the other hand, as far as the law relates
to England, I have serious doubts as to its validity. In the county of
Surrey, in the year 1888-89, not only more crimes against the person,
but also more crimes against property were committed in July than in
January. In the former month, as compared with the latter, cases of
felony increased 20 per cent.; and if Surrey is to be taken as a fairly
typical English county--which there is every reason to believe it
is--we have before us the remarkable fact that there are more offences
against property in summer than in winter. The current opinion that
winter is the most criminal period of the year is entirely fallacious,
and it is extremely probable that it is equally fallacious to imagine
that property is less sate when the days are short and the nights
long.
But while property, on the whole, in more safe in winter than in
summer, the offences committed against it in winter are, as a rule, of
a more serious character. This, at least, is the conclusion which I
should be inclined to draw, from the fact that there are more
indictable offences--that is to say, offences not tried by a
magistrate, but by a judge and jury--in the six months between October
and March than in the summer six months. For the year ended September,
1888, which is an average year, there were fully 2000 more indictable
offences in the winter six months than in the summer six months. As a
considerable proportion of indictable offences consist in crimes
against property of the nature of housebreaking and burglary, it is
very probable that these crimes are most prevalent in winter. But if
all kinds of offences against property, petty as well as grave, are
thrown together, and calculated under one head, it comes out that
these offences are most numerous in summer.
The only kind of crime that increases in Surrey in winter is vagrancy;
the growth of this offence for the years I have mentioned in January,
as contrasted with July was 60 per cent. The development of vagrancy
in the cold months is partly owing to the fact that work is not so
easily procured in the cold weather; and a certain percentage of the
population, mainly dependent for subsistence on casual and irregular
out-door jobs, will rather resort to begging than the workhouse, when
this kind of occupation is temporarily at a standstill. This class,
however, is a comparatively small one, and constitutes a very feeble
proportion of the offenders against the Vagrancy Acts which swell the
prison statistics in winter. Most of the offenders against these acts
are people who seize the opportunity afforded by the bitter weather of
appealing to the sympathies of the public. In summer the occupation of
such persons is to some extent gone; in the hot sunshine their rags
and piteous looks do not so strongly affect our feelings of
commiseration; we know they are not suffering from cold; their
petitions and entreaties accordingly fall upon deaf ears; in short,
begging is not a paying trade in the hot months. In winter, all these
conditions are reversed; with the first fall of snow off go the
vagrant's boots, and out he runs looking the picture of misery and
destitution. In an hour or two, if he escapes the attentions of the
police, he has made as much as will keep him comfortably for a few
days; but like many better men his success often brings about his
fall; the alms of a generous public are consumed in the nearest
beer-shop; sallying forth in quest of fresh booty, and made bold and
insolent with drink, the beggar soon finds himself in the hands of the
authorities. Anyone who cares to verify this statement can easily do
so by following the reports of the police courts, and taking note of
the number of convictions for _drunkenness and begging_--a somewhat
significant combination of offences, and one which ought to make the
inconsiderate giver pause.
What are the practical conclusions to be deduced from this study of
the relations between temperature and crime? The first and most
obvious conclusion is, that any considerable rise of temperature has a
tendency, as far as Europeans and their descendants are concerned, to
diminish human responsibility. Whether there are any palliatives
against this tendency in the way of regimen, and what they are, is a
matter for the consideration of physiologists; and a most important
matter it is, for a high temperature does not merely lead to offences
against the law, it also injuriously affects the conduct of children
in schools, of soldiers in the army, of workmen in factories, and of
the public generally in their relations with one another. While it is
the task of physiologists to examine the physical aspects of the
anti-social tendencies developed by variations of temperature, it is
the duty of all persons placed in positions of authority to recognise
their existence; and to recognise their existence not merely in
others, but also in themselves. It is, unfortunately, not seldom true
that justice is not administered so wisely and patiently in the
burning summer heat as it is at other times. In adjudicating on
criminal cases in the sultry weather, magistrates and judges would do
well to remember that cosmical influences are not without their effect
on human judgments, and that precipitate decisions, or decisions based
upon momentary irritation, or decisions, the severity of which they
may afterwards regret, are to some extent the result of those
influences. The same caution is applicable to those who have to deal
with convicted men; it should be remembered by them that in summer
their tempers are more easily tried, while they have at the same time
more to try them; and the knowledge of these facts should keep them on
the alert against themselves.
While increased temperature undoubtedly decreases personal
responsibility, it is a most difficult matter to decide whether this
factor ought to be taken into consideration when passing sentence on
criminal offenders. It is much more truly an extenuating circumstance
than the majority of pleas which receive the name. In a variety of
cases, such, for instance, as threats, assaults, manslaughter, murder,
a high temperature unquestionably sometimes enters as a determining
factor into the complex set of influences which produce these crimes.
But the first difficulty confronting a judge, who endeavours to take
such a factor into account, will he the difficulty of discovering
whether it was present or not in the individual case he has before
him. In reply to this objection it may be urged, and urged too with
considerable truth, that this hindrance is not insuperable. It is
possible to overcome it by noting whether the case in question stands
alone, or whether it is only one among a group of others taking place
about the same period. Should it turn out to be a case that stands
alone, it would be fair to assume that temperature is not a cause
requiring to be taken into consideration in dealing with the offender.
Should it, on the contrary, turn out to be one in a group of cases, it
would be equally fair to assume that temperature was not without its
effect in determining the action of the offender.
Having got thus far, having isolated temperature from among the other
causes, and having fixed upon it as the most potent of them all, what
would immediately and imperatively follow? As a matter of course it
would ensue that a person whose deeds are powerfully influenced by
the action of temperature is to that extent irresponsible for them.
To arrive at such a conclusion is equivalent to saying that such a
person, if his offences are at all serious, constitutes a grave
peril to society. In a sense, he may be less criminal, but he is
certainty more dangerous; and as the supreme duty of society is
self-preservation, such a person must be dealt with solely from that
point of view. It would be ridiculous to let him off because he is
largely irresponsible; his irresponsibility is just what constitutes
his danger, and is the very reason he should be subjected to prolonged
restraint.
In all offences of a trivial character presumably springing to a large
extent from the action of temperature, it might be wise if the
offender were only punished in such a way as would keep alive in his
memory a vivid recollection of the offence. This method of punishment
is better effected by a short and sharp term of imprisonment than by
inflicting a longer sentence and making the prison treatment
comparatively mild. A short, sharp sentence of this character has also
another advantage which is well worth attention. In many cases the
offender is the bread-winner of the home. The misery which follows his
prolonged imprisonment is often heartrending; the home has to be sold
up bit by bit; the mother has to strip off most of her scanty garments
and becomes, a piteous spectacle of starvation and rags, the
childrens' things have to go to the pawnshop; and it is fortunate if
one or two of the family does not die before the husband is released.
The misery which crime brings upon the innocent is the saddest of its
features, and whatever society can do consistently with its own
welfare to shorten or mitigate that misery, ought, in the interests of
our common humanity, to be done.
One word with reference to offences which do not come within the
cognisance of the criminal law. I do not know if there are any
statistics to show that, in schools, in workshops, in the army, or,
indeed, in any industry or institution where bodies of people are
massed together under one common head--there are more cases of
insubordination and more offences against discipline when the
temperature is high than in ordinary circumstances. But, whether such
a statistical record exists or not, there can be little doubt that
cases of refractory conduct prevail most largely in the warm season.
It would therefore be well if this fact were borne in mind by all
persons whose duty it is to enforce discipline and require obedience.
Considering that there are certain cosmical influences at work, which
make it note difficult for the ordinary human being to submit to
discipline, it might not be inexpedient, in certain cases, to take
these unusual conditions into account and not to enforce in their full
rigour all the penalties involved in a breach of rules. It is a
universal experience that many things which can ordinarily be done
without fatigue or trouble, become, at times, a burden and a source of
irritation. Some physical disturbance is at the root of this change,
and a similar disturbance is also at the root of the defective
standard of conduct which a high temperature almost invariably
succeeds in producing among some sections of the community.