CAUSE OF CRIME
If the punishment of so-called crimes tended in any way to prevent
violent acts, this tendency would be manifest in some conclusive way.
Whether brotherhood love and non-resistance would lessen crime may be
a matter of debate, but that punishment does not lessen it, seems to
be as well established as any fact that cannot be absolutely proved.
The death penalty was for years drastically enforced for the crime of
smuggling, but its enforcement in no way tended to prevent the practice
which flourished in spite of executions without number,—the common
consciousness would not accept this punishment as just and finally rulers
were forced to modify the punishment in self-defence. The punishment of
death for larceny did not prevent the crime. Nearly every religion has
made its way in the face of the severest penal statutes. Its converts
have all been criminals and they have accepted and taught their faith
at the risk of life. Every organization of working men has grown up in
violation of human laws, and the jails, prisons and scaffolds have been
busily engaged in suppressing this species of crime; but in spite of
the fact that judges still imprison and execute for this crime, these
associations are now almost as firmly established as any institution of
the world. All new political ideas, democracy, socialism, nihilism have
met the same fact and have made their way regardless of scaffolds and
jails. Even in the common crimes, like burglary and larceny, prisons have
had no effect. From the dawn of civilization an endless procession of
weak and helpless victims, handcuffed, despised and outlawed, have been
marching up to prison doors and still the procession comes and goes.
Time does not stay nor punishment make it less. In fact the older the
community and the better settled and undisturbed its life, the greater
the number of these unfortunates whom, for some mysterious reason,
the Infinite has decreed a life of shame and a death of ignominy and
dishonor. If scaffolds and prisons and judges and jailers have no effect
to prevent and lessen crime, common wisdom, to say nothing of humane
instincts, ought to seek some other plan.
Intelligent men have long since ceased to believe in miracle or chance.
Whatever they may think of ancient miracles and the original chance that
brought the universe into being, still most people now believe that the
world’s affairs, be they small or great, physical, intellectual, or
moral, come within the realm of law.
In the ordinary affairs of life, men everywhere seek the causes that
produce effects. Men are called into being, live their lives and pass
away in obedience to natural laws which are as immutable as the movement
of the tides. In our half civilized condition we partially comprehend
this fact. The defect of the born cripple, the idiot, the insane is no
longer charged to the poor victim who, unhampered by the world, still has
a burden as heavy as should be given to mortal man to bear. The physician
who would treat fever or measles or diphtheria without considering
the cause would be considered the veriest bungler and responsible for
his patient’s death. It is not so very long ago that a world about as
intelligent as our own believed that disease, deformity, and sin came
from the same cause,—some sort of an evil spirit that found its abode
in man. The way to destroy the evil spirit was generally to destroy the
man. The world will perhaps grow wise enough to not only believe that
disease, deformity, and sin have a common cause, but perhaps so wise as
to find their common cause. No skilful physician called to the bedside of
a child suffering with scarlet fever would upbraid the child for the evil
spirit that caused its pain; no more would he punish the consumptive for
his hacking cough; he would understand perfectly well that the physical
condition of each was due to some natural cause, and that the disease
could be cured in these patients and avoided with others only when the
cause was destroyed, or so well known that no one need fall a victim
to the malady. Even in diseases of the most contagious sort, where the
isolation of the patient is necessary to protect the lives and health of
others, this isolation would be accomplished not in hatred or malice but
in the greatest tenderness and love, and the isolation would last only
for the purpose of a cure and a sufficient time for cure; and every pains
would be taken to destroy and stamp out the cause which produced the
disease.
The theory of disease is so well understood to-day that our physicians
clearly recognize mental disease as well as physical. Insanity is no
longer punished as a crime as in the days gone by, and even kleptomania
is now a well classified and recognized disease. No intelligent person
doubts the disease of kleptomania; its symptoms are too well established.
When a person steals a thing he does not need, it is an evidence of
kleptomania, an ungovernable will. When a poor person takes a thing he
needs and cannot live without, there is no evidence of an ungovernable
will.
Many facts have been classified concerning physical disease and our
knowledge of its nature, cause, and cure grows year by year. Malignant
spirits and accident are no longer considered in reference to disease;
while the origin of all bodily ailments is not yet known, so many have
been ascertained as to make it sure that with sufficient knowledge, all
could be traced to their natural cause. And while the means have not yet
been found to cure each disease, still so much is known as to warrant
the belief that there is no physical ailment that will necessarily cause
death.
And intelligent research is constantly adding to the known and ever
narrowing the realm of the mysterious and unexplained. In physical
disease long observation has shown that certain climates and certain
localities are favorable to this disease or that; some places naturally
breed malaria, and the mind of man is turned to discovering methods to
overcome the conditions which produce the disease. If fevers abound, the
conditions are carefully observed to find what breeds the infectious
germ. It is not difficult to imagine that if the medical profession
should ever labor purely to cure disease, instead of to make money for
itself, and should continue its research and investigation, that few
would die until old age should terminate life as simply and naturally as
birth ushers it in.
But in the realm of the mental and the moral, the law has been content
for centuries to rest at ease. Our practical dealings with crime are
based on the same theories of evil and evil spirits that made wise
physicians drive the devils into swine and swine into the sea. If any
progress has been made it has been in believing that, instead of one
being possessed of a devil, he really is a devil. When the physical
condition of a man is sufficiently far removed from the physical
condition of the average which is supposed to represent the normal man,
he is treated for the disease. When the mental condition sufficiently
varies from that of the ordinary man, the normal man, he is promptly
imprisoned or put to death. Judges and juries debate and ponder over the
question of whether a man has done some act that is not commonly done by
his fellows, and if they determine that he is guilty of doing the act,
the judgment follows that he must have wilfully and perversely chosen to
do wrong. No one then inquires why he did the act and whether there are
conditions of disease present in the community that will lead others to
do like acts. There is but one thing to do. The man is evil. The state
must lay violent hands upon him—must meet evil with evil, violence with
violence. There is but one cure for malice and that is malice.
But however ignorant the law and its administrators, some of the rules of
conduct have been brought to light; while judges have been sentencing,
and hangmen and jailers plying their grewsome trades, there have been
thinkers and students and historians, who did not believe in the old
theory of witchcraft and evil spirits on which human punishment really
rests. These students and scholars have labeled and classified facts and
have at least learned something as to the cause and origin of what men
call crime. Enough at least has been discovered to prove that punishment
has absolutely no effect to lessen crime.
The ancients believed in the existence of the body and the soul as
independent entities. Each had its own sphere of action and neither one
had any relation to the other. This idea has come down to us and is
present in all our dealings with our fellow man. Particularly is this
the view of government in its tender care of those who are the subjects
of its laws. The care and treatment of the body come within the province
of the physician. The care and treatment of the soul belong to the priest
and the hangman. Whether man has a soul that ever existed or can exist
independent of the body may be a question that will remain forever open
to occupy our thoughts. But this at least is true: that the condition of
the body has the greatest influence over the mental and so-called moral
nature of man. The body and mind grow together and decay together. Health
in one generally indicates health in the other. The overfeeding or the
starvation of the one means the disease of the other. It is doubtful if
any mental characteristic or abnormal condition could not be traced to
its physical cause either in the individual or his ancestors, if science
were far enough advanced.
Everyone who is familiar with the inmates of jails and penal institutions
has learned to know the type of man that is confined as a criminal. In
nearly every case these are inferior physically to the average man. In
nearly every case they are also inferior mentally to the average man.
One needs but visit our criminal courts day after day to find that the
average criminal is a stunted, starved, deficient man. More than this,
almost universally they come from the poorer class—men and women reared
in squalor and misery and want, surrounded from youth by those who have
been compelled to resort to almost any means for life; people who,
whatever their own code of ethics, have not been able in their growth
to maintain those distinctions in conduct which to the common mind
constitutes the difference between lawful and unlawful acts. Here and
there, of course, one finds some one in jail who has been differently
reared; but these are the exceptions which in no way disprove the rule.
These cases too can be traced to their cause like all the rest. There are
certain moral diseases like speculation, for instance, that seize on men
exactly as the measles or the mumps. These diseases generally flourish in
great cities and are not indigenous to country life. Not only are these
prisoners deficient in stature and intellect, but the shape of their
heads shows them different from other men. As a class their heads are
much less symmetrical and what are known as the higher faculties are much
less developed than with the ordinary man.
If it were established even that the criminal type is inferior mentally
and physically and that they have all misshapen heads, this alone ought
to be sufficient to raise the inquiry as to who was responsible for their
acts. Long ago a wise man said that no one could by taking thought add a
cubit to his stature, and yet we hang and pen because these unfortunates
have not grown as tall, as large, or as symmetrical as the ordinary
man. But the mental actions of man have been shown to be as much due to
law and environment as his physical health,—certain sections of the
world are indigenous to men who kill their fellows; and more than this,
certain portions produce men who kill with guns, others who kill with
a knife, others still who administer poison. In certain sections, the
chief crime is horse stealing; in others, running illicit distilleries;
again, burglary; in some places, poaching; sometimes, robbery; and
again, smuggling. A study of conditions would reveal why each of those
crimes is indigenous to the particular soil that gives them birth, and
just as draining swamps prevents the miasma, so a rational treatment
of the condition caused by the various crimes would cure them, too. If
our physicians were no more intelligent than our lawyers, when called
to visit a miasmic patient, instead of draining the swamp they would
chloroform the patient and expect thus to frighten all others from taking
the disease.
Observation as to so-called crime has gone much further. The number of
inmates of our jails is much larger in winter than in summer, which
ought to show that there is something in the air that produces a wicked
heart in the winter, or that many persons directly or indirectly go to
jail because in winter, food and warmth are not easily obtained and
work is hard to get. For many years it has been observed that jails are
very much more crowded in hard times than in good times. If work were
sufficiently plenty or remunerative both jails and almshouses would
be compelled to close their doors. Long ago it was ascertained from
statistics that the number of crimes rose and fell in exact accord with
the price of bread. All new communities, where land is cheap or free and
labor has ample employment, or, better still, a chance to employ itself,
are very free from crime. England made Australia its dumping ground for
criminals for years, but these same criminals when turned upon the wide
plains with a chance to get their living from the soil, became peaceable,
orderly citizens fully respecting one another’s rights. England, too,
used certain portions of her American colonies where she sent men for
her country’s good. These criminals like all the criminals of the world
were the exploited, homeless class. When they reached the new country,
when they had an opportunity to live, they became as good citizens as the
pilgrim fathers who were likewise criminals themselves. As civilization
has swept westward through the United States, jails have lagged behind.
The jail and the penitentiary are not the first institutions planted
by colonists in a new country, or by pioneers in a new state. These
pioneers go to work to till the soil, to cut down the forests, to dig
the ore; it is only when the owning class has been established and the
exploiting class grows up, that the jail and the penitentiary become
fixed institutions, to be used for holding people in their place.