CRIME IN RELATION TO SEX AND AGE.
In the present chapter we shall proceed to discuss the effect exercised
by two characteristics of a distinctly personal nature in the production
of crime, namely, age and sex.
As sex is the most fundamental of all human distinctions we shall
begin by considering the part it plays among criminal phenomena.
According to the judicial statistics of all civilised peoples, women
are less addicted to crime than men, and boys are more addicted to
crime than girls. Among most European peoples between five and six
males are tried for offences against the law to every one female. In
the southern countries of Europe, females form a smaller proportion of
the criminal population than in the northern. This circumstance may be
accounted for in several ways. In the first place, it may be the case
that women in the south of Europe are better morally than in the
north; it may be that the social conditions of their existence shield
them from crime; or it may be that the crimes men are most prone to
commit in the south are of such a nature that women are more or less
incapable of perpetrating them. It is perfectly well known that in the
south of Europe women lead more secluded lives than is the case in the
north; they are much less immersed in the whirl and movement of life;
it is not surprising, therefore, to find that they are less addicted
to crime. Nor is this all. The crimes committed in the South consist
to a large extent of offences against the person; physical weakness in
a multitude of cases prevents women from committing such crimes. In
the North, on the other hand, a large proportion of crimes are in the
nature of thefts and offences against property. Most of these crimes
women can commit with comparative ease; the result is that they form a
larger proportion of the criminal population. Assaults are offences
women are less capable of committing than men; hence, if we find that
the crime of a country consists largely of personal violence, we shall
also find that the percentage of female criminals will be relatively
small. In Italy, where offences against the person are so prevalent,
females only form about nine per cent. of the criminal population; in
England, where personal violence is seldom resorted to, females form
between 17 and 18 per cent. of the persons proceeded against, and
about 15 per cent. of the numbers convicted.
A consideration of these circumstances tends to show that although
southern women commit fewer crimes in proportion to men than northern
women, this fact is partly owing to the character of the crime. But it
is also owing to more secluded habits of life, and to the freedom from
moral contamination of a criminal nature which these habits secure.
Proceeding from quantity to quality we find that although females
commit much fewer crimes in proportion than males, the offences they
do commit are frequently of a more serious nature than the crimes to
which men are addicted. According to the investigations of Guerry and
Quetelet, women in France commit more crimes of infanticide, abortion,
poisoning, and domestic theft than men. They are addicted equally with
men to the perpetration of parricide, and are more frequently
convicted than men for the ill-treatment of children. English criminal
statistics also show that the proportion of women to men rises with
the seriousness of the offence. The proportion of women to men
summarily proceeded against is 17 per cent., the proportion proceeded
against for murder and attempts to murder is as high as 36 per cent.
Women are also more hardened criminals than men. According to the
statistics of English prisons, women who have been once convicted are
much more likely to be reconvicted than men,[26] and the prison
returns of Continental countries tell the same tale.
[26] In 1889-90 the recommitted males were 44.3 per cent. of the
total number of males committed (exclusive of debtors and naval
and military offenders); the recommitted females 65.8 per cent.
of the total number of females committed exclusive of debtors.
The facts relating to female crime having been stated, it will now be
our business to inquire why women, on the whole, commit fewer crimes
than men. The most obvious answer is that they are better morally. The
care and nurture of children has been their lot in life for untold
centuries; the duties of maternity have perpetually kept alive a
certain number of unselfish instincts; those instincts have become
part and parcel of woman's natural inheritance, and, as a result of
possessing them to a larger extent than man, she is less disposed to
crime. It is very probable that there is an element of truth in the
idea that the care of offspring has had a moralising effect upon
women, and that this effect has acquired the power of a hereditary
characteristic; at the same time, it must be remembered that other
causes are also in operation which prevent women figuring as largely
in criminal returns as men.
Among the most prominent of these causes is the want of physical
power. In all crimes requiring a certain amount of brute strength,
such as burglary, robbery with violence, and so on, the proportion of
women to men is small. A woman very rarely possesses the animal force
requisite for the perpetration of crimes accompanied with much
personal violence. But where the element of personal violence does not
come conspicuously to the front the proportion of female criminals to
male immediately rises, and in such crimes as poisoning, child murder,
abortion, domestic theft, women are more criminally disposed than men.
Undoubtedly the lack of power has as much to do with keeping down
female crime as the want of will. This is especially manifest in the
crime of infanticide. For the perpetration of this crime women possess
the power, and the vast number of women convicted of this offence in
proportion to men is ample proof that they often possess the will. Of
course the temptation to women to commit this kind of crime is often
extreme; it is the product, in many instances, of an overwhelming
sense of shame; and the perpetrators of infanticide are often far from
being the most debased of their sex. Still, the prevalence of
infanticide among women is an evidence that, where the temptation is
strong and the power sufficient, women are just as criminally inclined
as men.
It has also to be borne in mind that women are very frequently the
instigators of crime and escape punishment because they are not
actually engaged in its commission. In almost all cases where
robberies are committed by a pack of thieves, a part of the
preparatory arrangements is entrusted to women, and women lend a
helping hand in disposing of the spoil. It is the men, as a rule, who
receive all the punishment, but the guilt of both sexes is very much
the same. In many cases of forgery and fraudulent bankruptcy among the
well-to-do classes, for which men only are punished, the guilt of
women is equally great. Household extravagance, extravagance in dress,
the mad ambition of many English women to live in what they call
"better style" than their neighbours sends not a few men to penal
servitude. The proportion of female crime in a community is also to a
very considerable extent determined by the social condition of women.
In all countries where social habits and customs constrain women to
lead retiring and secluded lives the number of female criminals
descends to a minimum. The small amount of female crime in Greece[27]
is an instance of this law. On the other hand, in all countries where
women are accustomed to share largely the active work of life with
men, female crime has a distinct tendency to reach its maximum. An
instance of this is the high percentage of female crime in Scotland.
According to the Judicial Statistics for the year 1888 no less than 37
per cent. of the cases tried before the Scotch courts consisted of
offences committed by women. It is true only 11 per cent. of these
offences were of a serious nature--the remainder being more or less
trivial, but, even after taking this circumstance into consideration,
the unwelcome fact remains that Scotch women commit a higher
percentage of crimes in proportion to men than the female population
of any other country in Europe. The proportion of English female
offenders to male is not half so high; it was only 17 per cent. in
1888, and is showing a tendency to decrease, being as high as 20 per
cent. for the twenty years ended 1876. The proportion of female
offenders in Scotland to the total criminal population is moving in an
opposite direction. The late Professor Leone Levi, in a paper read
before the Statistical Society in 1880, stated that Scotch women
formed 27 per cent. of the persons tried before the criminal courts;
they now form 37 per cent., a most alarming rate of increase.
[27] According to prison statistics of the Greek Government for
1889, out of a total prison population of 5,023 only 50 were
women. See _Revista de Discipline Carcerarie_, Nov. 30th, 1890,
page 667.
It hardly admits of doubt that the high ratio of female crime in
Scotland is to be attributed to the social status of women. In no
other country of Europe do women perform so much heavy manual work;
working in the fields and factories along with men; depending little
upon men for their subsistence; in all economic matters leading what
is called a more emancipated life than women do elsewhere; in short,
resembling man in their social activities, they also resemble him in
criminal proclivities. Scotch criminal statistics are thus a striking
confirmation of the general law revealed by the study of criminal
statistics as a whole; namely, that the more women are driven to enter
upon the economic struggle for life the more criminal they will
become. This is not a very consoling outlook for the future of
society. It is not consoling, for the simple reason that the whole
drift of opinion at the present time is in the direction of opening
out industrial and public life to women to the utmost extent possible.
In so far as public opinion is favouring the growth of female
political leagues and other female organisations of a distinctly
militant character, it is undoubtedly tending on the whole to lower
the moral nature of women. The combative attitude required to be
maintained by all members of such organisations is injurious to the
higher instincts of women, and in numbers of cases must affect their
moral tone. The amount of mischief done by these public organisations
for purposes of political combat is not confined to women alone. The
overwhelming influence exercised by mothers on the minds of children
is notorious; and that influence is not so likely to be for good where
the mother's mind is contaminated by a knowledge of, and sometimes by
practising, the shady tricks of electioneering.
The present tendency to create a greater number of openings in trade
and industry for women is not to be dismissed as pernicious because of
its evil effect in multiplying female crime. After all, an enlarged
industrial career for women may be the lesser of two evils. According
to the present industrial constitution of society a very large number
of females must earn a living in the sweat of their brow, and until
some higher social development supersedes the existing order of things
it is only right that as wide a career as possible should be opened
out for the activities of women who must work to live. At the same
time it would be an infinitely superior state of things if society did
not require women's work beyond the confines of the home and the
primary school. In these two spheres there is ample occupation of the
very highest character for the energies of women; in them their work
is immeasurably superior to men's; and it is because the work required
in the home and the school is at the present moment so improperly
performed that our existing civilisation is such a hot-bed of physical
degeneracy, pauperism, and crime. One thing at least is certain, that
crime will never permanently decrease till the material conditions of
existence are such that women will not be called upon to fight the
battle of life as men are, but will be able to concentrate their
influence on the nurture and education of the young, after having
themselves been educated mainly with a view to that great end.
European society at the present moment is moving away from this ideal
of woman's functions in the world; she is getting to be regarded in
the light of a mere intellectual or industrial unit; and the flower of
womankind is being more and more drafted into commercial and other
enterprises. Some affect to look upon this condition, of things as
being in the line of progress; it may be, and to all appearance is, in
the line of material necessity, but it is unquestionably opposed to
the moral interests of the community. These interests demand that
women should not be debased, as criminal statistics prove that they
are by active participation in modern industrialism; they demand that
the all-important duties of motherhood should be in the hands of
persons capable of fulfilling them worthily, and not in the hands of
persons whose previous occupations have often rendered them unfit for
being a centre of grace and purity in the home. It cannot be too
emphatically insisted on that the home is the great school for the
formation of character among the young, and it is on character that
conduct depends. In proportion as this school of character is
improved, in the same proportion will crime decrease. But how is it to
be improved when the tendencies of industrialism are to degrade the
women who stand by nature at the head of it? Indifferent mothers
cannot make children good citizens; and the present course of things
industrial is slowly but surely tending to debase the fountain head of
the race. At the International Conference concerning the regulation of
labour held recently at Berlin, M. Jules Simon, at the close of an
excellent speech to the delegates, pointed out the remedy for the
present condition of things. "You will pardon me," he said, "for
concluding my observations with a personal remark, which is perhaps
authorised by a past entirely consecrated to a defence of the cause
which brings us here. The object we are aiming at is moral as well as
material; it is not only in the physical interests of the human race
that we are endeavouring to rescue children, youths, and women from
excessive toil; we are also labouring to restore woman to the home,
the child to its mother, for it is from her only that those lessons of
affection and respect which make the good citizen can be learned. We
wish to call a halt in the path of demoralisation down which the
loosening of the family tie is leading the human mind."
Passing from the question of sex and crime we shall now consider the
proportions which crime bears to age. According to the calculations of
the late Mr. Clay, chaplain of Preston prison, the practice of
dishonesty among persons, who afterwards find their way into prisons,
begins at a very early age. In a communication addressed to Lord
Shaftesbury, in 1853, he said that 58 per cent. of criminals were
dishonest under 15 years of age; 14 per cent. became dishonest between
15 and 16; 8 per cent. became dishonest between 17 and 19; 20 per
cent. became dishonest under 20.
I have little doubt that these proportions are still in the main
correct, and that the criminal instinct begins to show itself at a
very early period in life. In Staffordshire "it is an ascertained
fact, that there is scarcely an habitual criminal in the county who
has not been imprisoned as a child."[28] But it is after the age of
twenty has been reached that the criminality of a people attains its
highest point. A glance at the subjoined table will make this clear:--
Population of England and | Prisoners in Local Gaols
Wales in 1871-- | in 1888--
Under 5 13.52 | Under 12 0.1
5 and under 15 22.58 | 12 and under 16 2.8
15 " 20 9.59 | 16 " 21 16.1
20 " 30 16.66 | 21 " 30 30.2
30 " 40 12.80 | 30 " 40 24.3
40 " 50 10.05 | 40 " 50 14.7
50 " 60 7.32 | 50 " 60 6.4
60 and upwards 7.48 | 60 and upwards 5.4
[28] _Reformatory and Refuge Journal_, July, 1890.
These figures show that in proportion to the population, crime is, as
we should expect, at its lowest level from infancy till the age of
sixteen. From that age it goes on steadily increasing in volume till
it reaches a maximum between thirty and forty. After forty has been
passed the criminal population begins rapidly to descend, but never
touches the same low point in old age as in early youth.
Females do not enter upon a criminal career so early in life as
males;[29] in the year 1888, while 20 per cent. of the _male_
population of our local prisons in England and Wales were under 21,
only 12 per cent. of the _female_ prison population were under that
age. On the other hand, women between 21 and 50, form a larger
proportion of the female prison population, than men between the same
ages do of the male prison population. The criminal age among women is
later in its commencement, and earlier in coming to a close than in
the case of men. It is later in commencing because of the greater care
and watchfulness exercised over girls than boys; but it is more
persistent while it lasts, because a plunge into crime is a more
irreparable thing in a woman than in a man. A woman's past has a far
worse effect on her future than a man's. She incurs a far graver
degree of odium from her own sex; it is much more difficult for her to
get into the way of earning an honest livelihood, and a woman who has
once been shut up within bolts and bars is much more likely to be
irretrievably lost than a man. If it is important to keep men as much
as possible out of prison, it is doubly necessary to keep out women;
but it is, at the same time, a much harder thing to accomplish. This
arises from the fact that the great bulk of female offenders enter the
criminal arena after the age of twenty-one, and can only be dealt with
by a sentence of imprisonment. If females began crime at an earlier
period of life, it would be possible to send them to Reformatories or
Industrial Schools, and a fair hope of ultimately saving them would
still remain; but as this is impossible with grown-up persons, prison
is the only alternative, and it is after imprisonment is over that a
woman begins to recognise the terrible social penalties it has
involved.
[29] Ages and proportion per cent. of males and females committed
in 1889-90.
Ages Males Females
Under 12 years 0.2 0.0
12 years and under 16 3.1 1.1
16 years and under 21 17.5 10.7
21 years and under 30 28.4 31.4
30 years and under 40 23.9 28.6
40 years and under 50 14.2 17.5
50 years and under 60 6.4 6.8
60 years and above 6.2 3.8
Age not ascertained 0.1 0.1
The proportion of offenders under sixteen years of age to the total
local prison population of England and Wales, has decreased in a
remarkable way within the last twenty or thirty years. The proportion
of offenders under sixteen committed to prison between 1857-66,
amounted to six and three-quarters per cent. of the prison population,
and if we go back behind that period it was higher still. In fact,
during the first quarter of the present century, the extent and
ramifications of juvenile crime had almost reduced statesmen to
despair. But the spread of the Reformatory system and the introduction
more recently of Industrial and Truant Schools for children who have
just drifted, or are fast drifting, into criminal courses, has had a
remarkable effect in diminishing the juvenile population of our
prisons. At the present time the proportion of juveniles under sixteen
to the rest of the local prison population is only a little over two
per cent. and it is not likely that it will ever reach a higher
figure. It might easily be reduced almost to zero if children destined
for Reformatories were sent off to these institutions at once, instead
of being detained for a month or so in prison till a suitable school
is found for them. Some persons object to the idea of sending children
to Reformatories at once, on the ground that to abolish the terror of
imprisonment from the youthful mind would embolden the juvenile
inclined to crime and lead him more readily to commit it. Others
object on the ground that it is only right the child should be
punished for his offence. In answer to the last objection, it may
pertinently be said that a sentence of three or four years to a
Reformatory is surely sufficient punishment for offences usually
committed by small boys. With regard to the first objection, our own
experience is that the ordinary juvenile is much more afraid of the
policeman than of the prison, and that the fear of being caught would
operate just as strongly upon him if he were sent straight to the
Reformatory as it does now. The evils connected with the present
system of sending children destined for Reformatories to prison are of
two kinds. At the present time many magistrates will not send children
to Reformatories who sorely need the restraints of such an
institution, because they know it involves a period of preliminary
imprisonment before they can get there. Secondly, it enables a lad to
know what the inside of a prison really is. On these two points let me
quote the words of an experienced magistrate. "I have many times,"
said Mr. Whitwell, at the fourth Reformatory Conference, "when having
to deal with young people, felt it very desirable to send them to a
Reformatory, but have shrunk from it because we are obliged to send
them to prison first. I think it should be left to the discretion of
the magistrates and not made compulsory. I feel very strongly indeed
that it is most desirable to keep the child from knowing what the
inside of a prison is. Let them think it something awful to look
forward to. _When they have been in the prison they are of opinion
that it is not such a very bad place after all, and they are not
afraid of going there again_; but if they are sent to a Reformatory
and told that they will be sent to a prison if they do not reform,
they will think it an awful place." These are wise words. It is
impossible to make imprisonment such a severe discipline for children
as it is for grown-up men and women, and as it is not so severe,
children leave our gaols with a false impression on their minds. The
terror of being imprisoned has, to a large extent, departed; they
think they know the worst and cease to be much afraid of what the law
can do. Hence the fact that society has less chance of reclaiming a
child who has been imprisoned than it has of reclaiming one who has
not undergone that form of punishment although he has committed
precisely the same offence. In England, many authorities on
Reformatory Schools are strongly in favour of retaining preliminary
imprisonment for Reformatory children; in Scotland, experienced
opinion is decisively on the other side. On this point, the Scotch are
undoubtedly in the right. The working of prison systems, whether at
home or abroad, teaches us that any person, be he child or man, who
has once been in prison, is much more likely to come back than a
person who, for a similar offence, has received punishment in a
different form. The application of this principle to the case of
Reformatory children decisively settles the matter in favour of
sending such children to Reformatories at once. If this simple reform
were effected, the child population of our prisons would almost cease
to exist. In the year 1888, this population amounted to 239 for
England and Wales under the age of twelve, and 4,826 under the age of
sixteen, thus making a total of 5,065 or 2.9 per cent. of the whole
local prison population.
In the preceding remarks on juvenile offenders under 16, it has been
pointed out that the great decrease in the numbers of such offenders
among the prison population is mainly owing to the development of
Industrial and Reformatory Schools. In order, therefore, to form an
accurate estimate of juvenile delinquency, we must look not merely at
the number of juveniles in prison; attention must also be directed to
the number of juveniles in Reformatory and Industrial Institutions.
Although these institutions are not places of imprisonment, yet they
are places of compulsory detention, and contain a very considerable
proportion of juvenile delinquents. All juveniles sent to
Reformatories have, indeed, been actually convicted of criminal
offences, and in 1888 the number of young people in the Reformatory
Schools of Great Britain (excluding Ireland) was in round numbers six
thousand (5,984). These must be added to the total juvenile prison
population in order to form a true conception of the extent of
juvenile crime. It is almost certain that if these young people were
not in Reformatories they would be in prisons, for, in almost the same
proportion as the Reformatory and Industrial School inmates have
increased, the juvenile prison population has decreased.
To the population of the Reformatory Schools must also be added a
large percentage of the Industrial School population. Since the year
1864, the number of boys and girls in Industrial and Truant Schools
has gone on steadily increasing. In that year the inmates amounted to
1,608; twenty-four years afterwards, that is to say, in 1888, the
number of children in Great Britain in Industrial and Truant Schools
amounted to 21,426.[30] It is true that a considerable proportion of
these children were not sent to the schools on account of having
committed crime; at the same time it has to be remembered that nearly
all of them were on the way to it, and would in all probability have
become criminals had the State left them alone for a year or two
longer. At the time of their committal the children we are now dealing
with were either children who had been found begging, or who were
wandering about without a settled home, or who were found destitute,
or who had a parent in gaol, or who lived in the company of female
criminals, prostitutes, and thieves. Such children may not actually
have come within the clutches of the criminal law, but it is
sufficient to look for a moment at the surroundings they had lived in
to see that this was only a question of time. We must, therefore, add
those children, along with the Reformatory population, to the number
of juveniles in gaol if we wish to form a proper estimate of the
extent of juvenile delinquency. If this is done we arrive at the
conclusion that the criminal and semi-criminal juvenile population is
at the present time more than 25,000 strong in England and Wales
alone; if Scotland be included it is more than 30,000 strong. These
figures are enough to show that it is only compulsory detention in
State establishments which keeps down the numbers of juvenile
offenders; and there can be little doubt, if the inmates of these
institutions were let loose upon the country, juveniles would very
soon constitute seven, eight, or, perhaps, ten per cent. of the prison
population.
[30] In 1889 there is a slight decrease.
Let us now consider the case of young offenders between the ages of 16
and 21. This is the most momentous for weal or woe of all periods of
life. During this stage, the transition from youth to manhood is
taking place; the habits then formed acquire a more enduring
character, and, in the majority of cases, determine the whole future
of the individual. If youths between the ages just mentioned could by
any possibility be prevented from embarking on a criminal career, the
drop in the criminal population would be far-reaching in its effects.
It is from the ranks of young people just entering early manhood that
a large proportion of the habitual criminal population is recruited;
and if this critical period of life can be tided over without repeated
acts of crime, there is much less likelihood of a young man
degenerating afterwards into a criminal of the professional class. It
is most important that the professional criminal class should be
diminished at a quicker rate than is the case at present; and, in
spite of police statistics to the contrary, it is a class which has
not become perceptibly smaller within the last twenty or five and
twenty years. A proof of this statement is to be seen in the fact that
offences against property with violence display a tendency to
increase, and it is offences of this nature which are pre-eminently
the work of the habitual criminal. It is a comparatively rare thing to
find a habitual criminal stop mid-way in his sinister career; the
accumulated impressions resulting from a life of crime have too
effectively succeeded in shaping his character and conduct, and he
persists, as a rule, in leading an anti-social life so long as he has
physical strength to do it.
The only hope, therefore, of diminishing the habitual criminal
population, is to lessen the number of recruits; and as most of these
recruits are to be found among lads of between sixteen and twenty-one,
it is to these lads that serious attention must be directed. Every year
a certain proportion of youths ranging between these two ages shows a
pronounced disposition to enter permanently upon a criminal life by
repeatedly returning to prison. The deterrent effect of short sentences
has ceased to operate upon them, and all the symptoms are present that
a downright career of crime has begun. In such circumstances what is to
be done? A plan has been proposed by Mr. Lloyd Baker for dealing with
refractory and unmanageable Reformatory children, the substance of
which is to send them to another institution of a stricter character
than the ordinary Reformatory School, and which for want of a better
name he calls a Penal Reformatory. It is very probable that something
in the nature of a Penal Reformatory is just what is wanted to prevent
a youth on the downward road from finally swelling the proportions of
the professional criminal population. If Great Britain ever established
such institutions, she would then possess a graded set of organisations
for dealing with the young, which would cover the whole period of
youthful life. The Truant School would catch the child on the first
symptoms of waywardness, the Industrial School would arrest him
standing on the verge of crime, the Reformatory School would dual with
actual offenders against the law, and the Penal Reformatory would
grapple with habitual offenders under the age of manhood.[31]
[31] Ages at which 507 offenders first began to commit crime--
Under 10 1.5 41 to 45 2.1
11 to 15 17.0 46 to 50 2.3
16 to 20 36.1 51 to 55 2.1
21 to 25 20.1 56 to 60 .8
26 to 30 7.1 61 to 65 .8
31 to 35 5.1 66 to 70 .2
36 to 40 3.6
Marro. _I Caratteri dei delinquente. Studio antropologico-sociologico_,
p. 356.
After the age of manhood has been reached, and the main lines of
character are formed, punitive methods of dealing with criminal
offenders must assume a more prominent position, and the prison should
then take the place of the Reformatory. In youth the deterrent effects
of punishment are small, and the beneficial effects of reformative
measures are at their maximum. In manhood, on the other hand, this
condition of things is reversed, and the deterrent effects of
punishment exceed the beneficial effects of reformative influences. An
interesting example of the value of punishment for adults, as compared
with other methods, is given by Sir John Strachey in his account of
infanticide in certain parts of India. "For many years past," he says,
"measures have been taken in the North-West Provinces for the
prevention of this crime. For a long time, when our civilisation was
less belligerent than it has since become, it was thought that the best
hope of success lay in the removal of the causes which appeared to lead
to its commission, and especially in the prevention of extravagant
expenditure on marriages; but although these benevolent efforts were
undoubtedly useful, their practical results were not great, and it
gradually became clear that it was only by a stringent and organised
system of coercion that these practices would ever be eradicated. In
1870 an act of the legislature was passed which enabled the Government
to deal with the subject. A system of registration of births and deaths
among the suspected classes was established, with constant inspection
and enumeration of children; special police-officers were entertained
at the cost of the guilty communities, and no efforts were spared to
convince them that the Government had firmly resolved that it would put
down these practices, and would treat the people who followed them as
murderers. Although the time is, I fear, distant when preventive
measures will cease to be necessary, much progress has been made, and
there are now thousands of girls where formerly there were none. In the
Mainpuri district, where, as I have said, there was not many years ago
hardly a single Chauhán girl, nearly half of the Chauhán children at
the present time are girls; and it is hoped that three-fourths of the
villages have abandoned the practice."[32]
[32] _India_ by Sir John Strachey, pp. 292-3.
These facts speak for themselves and afford an incontestable proof of
the value of punishment as a remedial measure when other remedies have
failed.[33] In the re-action which is now in full force, and rightly
so, against the excessive punishments of past times, there is a marked
tendency among some minds to go to the opposite extreme, and an
attempt is being made to show that imprisonment has hardly any
curative effect at all. Its evils, and from the very nature of things
they are not a few, are almost exclusively elaborated and dwelt upon,
little attention being paid to the vast amount of good which
imprisonment alone is able to effect. It is possible that imprisonment
sends a few to utter perdition at a quicker pace than they would have
gone of their own accord, but on the other hand, it rescues many a man
before he has irrevocably committed himself to a life of crime. If it
fails the first time, it very often succeeds after the second or the
third, and no one is justified in saying imprisonment is worthless as
a reformative agency till it has failed at least three times. According
to the judicial statistics for England and Wales, imprisonment is
successful after the third time in about 80 per cent. of the cases
annually submitted to the criminal courts, and although it is a pity
that the percentage is not higher, yet it cannot fairly be said that
such results are an evidence of failure. The prison is unquestionably
a much less effective weapon for dealing with crime among Continental
peoples, and in the United States, than it has shown itself to be in
Great Britain; but this failure arises in the main from the laxity and
indulgence with which criminals are treated in foreign prisons. A
prison to possess any reformative value must always be made an
uncomfortable place to live in; Continental peoples and the people of
America have to a large extent lost sight of this fact; hence the
failure of their penal systems to stop the growth of the delinquent
population. If, however, imprisonment is not allowed to degenerate
into mere detention, it is bound to act as a powerful deterrent upon
grown-up offenders, and it is the only menace which will effectually
keep many of them within the law. The hope of reward and the fear of
punishment, or, in other words, love of pleasure, and dread of pain,
are the two most deeply seated instincts in the human breast; if Mr.
Darwin's theory be correct, it is through the operation of these
fundamental instincts that such a being as man has come into existence
at all. In any case these instincts have hitherto been the chief
ingredients of all human progress, the most effective spur to energy
of all kinds, and when properly utilised they are the most potent of
all deterrents to crime. Were it possible for the hand of social
justice to descend on every criminal with infallible certainty; were
it universally true that no crime could possibly escape punishment,
that every offence against society would inevitably and immediately be
visited on the offender, the tendency to commit crime would probably
become as rare as the tendency of an ordinary human being to thrust
his hand into the fire. The uncertainty of punishment is the great
bulwark of crime, and crime has a marvellous knack of diminishing in
proportion as this uncertainty decreases. No amelioration of the
material circumstances of the community can destroy all the causes of
crime, and till moral progress has reached a height hitherto attained
only by the elect of the race, one of the most efficient curbs upon
the criminally disposed will consist in increasing the probability of
punishment.
[33] Cf. _Tarde Philosophie Penale_, p. 467.
In proportion as the probability of being punished is augmented, the
severity of punishment can be safely diminished. This is one of the
paramount advantages to be derived from a highly efficient police
system. The barbarity of punishments in the Middle Ages is always
attributed by historians to the barbarous ideas of those rude times.
But this is only partially true; one important consideration is
overlooked. In the Middle Ages it was extremely difficult to catch the
criminal; in fact, it is only within the present century that an
organised system for effecting the capture of criminals has come into
existence. The result of the nebulous police system of past times was
that very few offenders were brought to justice at all, and society,
in order to prevent lawlessness from completely getting the upper
hand, was obliged to make a terrible example of all offenders coming
within its grasp. As soon, however, as it became less difficult to
arrest and convict lawless persons, the old severities of the criminal
code immediately began to fall into abeyance. Sentences were
shortened, punishments were mitigated, the death penalty was abolished
for almost all crimes except murder. But even now, the moment society
sees any form of crime showing a tendency to evade the vigilance of
the law, a cry is immediately raised for sterner measures of
repression against the perpetrators of that particular form of crime.
The Flogging Bill recently passed by Parliament is a case in point.
These instances afford a fairly accurate insight into the action of
society with regard to the punishment of crime. It punishes severely
when the criminal is seldom caught; it punishes more lightly when he
is often caught; and its punishments will become more mitigated still,
as soon as the probability of capture is made more complete. A
comparatively light sentence is in most cases a very effective
deterrent, when it is made almost a certainty, and all alterations in
the future in criminal administration should be in the direction of
making punishment more certain rather than more severe. Such efforts
are sure to be rewarded by a decrease in the amount of crime.