institutions. Probably the percentage would be still lower if among
these were not a number of rather common convictions for acts which are
peculiar to women, like abortion, infanticide, child abandonment and the
like. As to the other crimes, few women are burglars or robbers, or
guilty of other crimes of violence, except murder. Women steal and
poison and blackmail and extort money and lie and slander and gossip,
and probably cause as much unhappiness as men; but their crimes, like
their lives, are not on so large or adventurous a scale. They do not so
readily take a chance; they lack the imagination that makes big
criminals or lays broad schemes. In many of their crimes they are often
the accomplices of men and take rather a minor part, although sometimes
a quite important one. For this reason they are often not detected and
frequently not prosecuted, a fact which leaves the percentage smaller
than it otherwise would be. Then too, juries are apt to acquit women of
crime even when they are indicted and tried. It must be a positive case
and one which calls for no possible feeling of sympathy or where there
is no personal appeal that will work the conviction of a woman. Men have
so long adopted an attitude of chivalry toward women that very few
juries will convict them. This too has much to do with the small number
of female convicts.
Some writers claim that the small number of women in penal institutions
shows that women are better than men; but this is a hasty conclusion
arrived at from insufficient facts. There are fewer female prisoners
because women have lived a more protected life; they have not been
engaged so generally in business; they have not been so constantly
obliged to fight their way in the world; their lives have been more
quiet and smooth; they have been surrounded by strong conventions and
closely watched. Especially is this true with regard to the girl as
compared with the boy. Such protection naturally keeps them from the
commission of crime. The great consideration shown to them by
prosecuting witnesses, prosecuting officers, judges and juries,
supplements the protected life and is an added reason for the showing
made by statistics. It is notorious that a woman is seldom convicted of
murder. This has been the subject of much complaint on the part of the
public; still a man may condemn such acquittals and when placed on a
jury will himself vote for acquittal.
After all, the juries are right. Most of the cases of murder against
women involve sex relations. Nature has made the bearing and rearing of
children first of all the woman's part, and this fact so dominates her
life that nothing else seems important to her in comparison. She is not
able to judge in a broad and scientific way matters so clearly affecting
life. It may even be possible that in the evolution and preservation of
life, her judgments are right. At least they are the natural judgments
for a large number of women, or these tragedies would not occur. No
doubt as woman enters the field of industry formerly monopolized by man,
and as she takes her part in politics and sits on juries, the percentage
of female criminals will rapidly increase. In fact, the percentage of
women prisoners has been climbing for many years. As she takes her place
with men she will be more and more judged as men are judged, and will
commit the crimes that men commit, and perhaps furnish her fair quota to
the penitentiaries and jails.
Whether this will be better or worse for the race is no part of the
discussion, and can only be told by long experience. Women must accept
the facts and make their choice of activities in view of these facts.
Quite apart from any sentiment, I think that it is a mistake to believe
that men and women should be judged alike. The structure and nervous
system of women cause physical and mental disturbances which affect
their judgment and life. If there were any justice in human judgment and
civilization, then each human being would be judged according to his
make-up, his tendencies, his inclinations and his capacities, and no two
would be judged alike.
Any sudden change in the treatment of women in the courts will work a
great injustice that will leave its effect on both women and men, and
still more on the life of the race.
IX
JUVENILE CRIMINALS
This subject would scarcely have been noted a few years ago. True, there
was in the past a small mixture of children in the grist ground out in
the criminal courts. Usually they received some leniency, and were
viewed with more curiosity than alarm. The juvenile criminal was
regarded as a prodigy with a capacity for crimes far beyond his years.
Something of the attitude obtained in regard to him which attaches to
the child chess player or the child mathematician. The child criminal is
now common, and for the most part is a product of the city.
All crime is doubtless much more common in the city than the country,
and the young criminal especially is a product of the crowded community.
To those who look for natural causes for all phenomena the reason is not
far to seek. The city itself is an abnormal thing. Primitive man and his
ancestors were never huddled together in great multitudes, as are the
dwellers in cities today. To a degree almost all animals are gregarious,
but the units of organization are much smaller with them than with man,
excepting possibly in the case of the ant and the bee, insects which
seem specially adapted to live a highly automatic and cooperative life,
such as human beings cannot possibly reach. But primitive men and their
direct ancestors lived in small groups. They could not have preserved
their life in any other way. They lived by fishing and hunting and by
gathering roots, berries and herbs. Later they tended their flocks and
cultivated the fields in a simple way.
With the introduction of the modern machine, the factory system and the
railroads, in the last century, our great modern cities were evolved. As
they grew more complicated, new problems arose. The life of the crowded
city is most difficult even for normal men and women. The adjustments
are too numerous and too complex for an animal made with simple tastes
and for a pastoral life. But, if it is hard for men, it is almost
hopeless for children, especially the children of the poor who fill our
prisons, asylums and almshouses.
Every child needs the open air and the open life of the country. He
needs, first of all, exercise which should be in the form of outdoor
play. No healthy boy wants to live indoors, even though his home may be
a convenient city "flat." The woods, the fields, the streams, the lakes,
the wide common with plenty of room, have always made their natural
appeal to the young. And as sunlight kills most of the deadly germs, so
outdoor life with exercise and play takes care of most of the unhealthy
thoughts, habits and ideas of child-life. In the past, our schools both
in the city and country have done little to help the young. For the most
part healthy children have always looked on them more or less as
prisons. Here they have been confined and kept from exercise and play,
to study useless and unrelated facts and to commit to memory dry rules
which are forgotten as soon as their minds are ready to retain anything
worth while.
Schools should be made to fit the needs of children, and not children to
fit schools. The school that does not provide work and play for the
child which he is glad to do, has learned little of the psychology and
needs of youth. Botany, Zoölogy, Geology and even Chemistry can be
taught to children before they learn to read, and taught so that it will
seem like play, and through this the pupil will acquire a natural taste
for books. It is only within the last few years that the modern school
has really begun to educate the child. It has been a hard fight that
scientific teachers have waged with conventional education for the right
of the child. What has been done is too recent and scattering to show
material results.
Nothing is so important to the child as education. The early life is the
time that character is formed, habits are made, rules of conduct
taught, and it is almost impossible to up-root old habits and
inhibitions and implant new ones in later years.
It is true that "the child is father to the man," and he is the father
of the criminal as well as the useful citizen. Outside of the hopelessly
defective, or those who have very imperfect nervous or physical systems,
there is no reason why a child who has had proper mental and physical
training and any fair opportunity in life should ever be a criminal.
Even most of the mentally defective and those suffering from imperfect
nervous systems could be useful to society in a sheltered environment.
Poor as the country schools have always been, the outdoor life of the
country child is still so great an influence that he generally escapes
disaster. He is not sent to a factory, but lives in a small community
where he has fresh air and exercise.
Of course here as everywhere we must allow for the defective, the
imperfect, the subnormals and the children of the very poor. These
unfortunates furnish a large percentage of the inmates of prison, and
most of the victims for the scaffold which civilization so fondly
preserves.
The growth of the big cities has produced the child criminal. He is
clearly marked and well defined. He is often subnormal even down to
idiocy. In most cases he is the result of heredity. Many times he may
have fair intelligence, but this is usually attached to an unstable,
defective nervous system that cannot do its proper work, and he has had
no expert treatment and attention. He is always poor. Generally he has
lost one or both parents in youth and has lived in the crowded districts
where the home was congested. He has no adequate playground and he runs
the streets or vacant, waste places. He associates and combines with
others of his kind. He cannot or does not go to school. If he goes to
school, he dreads to go and cannot learn the lessons in the books. He
likes to loaf, just as all children like to play. He is often set to
work. He has no trade and little capacity for skilled work that brings
good wages and steady employment. He works no more than he needs to
work. Every night and all the days that he can get are spent in idleness
on the street with his "gang." He seldom reads books. He lacks the taste
for books, and such teachers as he knew had not the wit to cultivate a
taste for good reading. Such books as he gets only add to his unhealthy
thoughts.
Many writers have classified the crimes that the boy commits. It is
scarcely worth the while. He learns to steal or becomes a burglar
largely for the love of adventure; he robs because it is exciting and
may bring large returns. In his excursions to pilfer property he may
kill, and then for the first time the State discovers that there is
such a boy and sets in action the machinery to take his life. The city
quite probably has given him a casual notice by arresting him a number
of times and sending him to a juvenile prison, but it has rarely
extended a hand to help him. Any man or woman who has fairly normal
faculties, and can reason from cause to effect, knows that the crimes of
children are really the crimes of the State and society which by neglect
and active participation have made him what he is. When it is remembered
that the man is the child grown up, it is equally easy to understand the
adult prisoner.
X
HOMICIDE
Crimes against persons are not always as easy to classify and understand
as crimes against property. These acts are so numerous and come from so
many different emotions and motives, that often the cause is obscure and
the explanation not easy to find. Still here, as everywhere in Nature,
nothing can happen without a cause, and even where limited knowledge
does its best and cannot find causes, our recognition of the connection
between cause and effect and the all-inclusiveness of law can leave no
doubt that complete knowledge would bring complete understanding.
It is always to be borne in mind in considering this class of crimes
that the motive power of life is not reason but instinct. If men lived
by reason the race would not survive. The primal things that preserve
the race, the hunger for food, drink, sex, are instinctive and not only
are not awakened or satisfied by reason, but oftentimes in violation of
it. Nature, first of all, sees to the preservation of the species, and
acts in a broad way that life may not perish. Nature knows nothing about
right and wrong in the sense in which man uses these words. All of our
moral conceptions are purely of social origin and hence not instinctive
in human life, and are forever giving way to the instincts on which
Nature depends. The preservation of life has called for the emotions of
hate, fear and love, among the other emotions that move men. The animal
fears danger and runs away, and thus life is preserved. The weaker
animal is almost entirely dependent for life upon his fear. He is
sometimes afraid when there is no danger, but without fear he would be
destroyed. Sometimes the animal hates and kills and thus preserves
himself. The love of offspring is the cause of the care bestowed upon it
which preserves its life. The herd instinct in animal species develops
packs and clans and tribes and states. Man is the heir to all the past,
and the instincts and emotions of the primitive animal are strong in his
being. These may have been strengthened or diluted as the ages have come
and gone, but the same instincts furnish the motive power for all his
acts. Man fears and hates, and runs or kills and saves his life. He
loves, and preserves his offspring.
Man sees an object. Instinctively he may fear it or he may hate it. He
may run from it or destroy it. He gathers impressions through his
senses. The nerves carry them to the brain. He comes to fear certain
persons and things, to hate certain other persons or things, and to
love still others. If the hatred is strong enough or the danger great
enough or the desire sufficient, he may kill. Whether he plans the
method or deliberates upon the act can make no difference. He is
prompted by the instinct, and the reflection simply means the
consideration of reasons for and against, or the reaching of
inhibitions. If he acts, it is one of the primal emotions that causes
the act. He is the "machine" through which certain emotions find their
path and do their work. Infinite are the causes and circumstances that
give rise to an emotion strong enough to take human life.
Killings which result from a sudden passion are easily understood.
Everyone has been overwhelmed by rage, where reason and judgment and all
acquired restraints are entirely submerged. The primitive man with his
primitive emotion reasserts himself. It is mainly accident or the lack
of some particular circumstance that prevents a murder. Of course some
people are overwhelmed more easily than others. Some natures are less
stable, some nervous systems less perfect, and the built up barriers are
weaker. The whole result of stimuli is determined by the strength of the
feeling acting upon the machine. Such a person is not ordinarily
dangerous to the community. The act itself would generally assure that
it could never happen again. Some killings, however, are more
deliberate. They are preceded by a settled hatred which preys upon the
mind and fights against the preventive influences that training and
habit have formed. Under a certain combination of circumstances these
restrictions are swept aside and the emotions have their way.
There are, of course, certain broad classifications of homicides. A
considerable number, perhaps more than any other, come through the
commission of robbery, burglary and larceny. In the midst of the act the
offender is caught, and kills in an effort to escape. These murders fall
under the heading of property crimes; the cause is the same, and the
rules governing them are the same. The second group, with respect to
numbers, grows from the relations of men and women. Wives kill husbands
and husbands kill wives; sweethearts kill each other. Jealousy and
revenge are commonly mixed with sex life and sex association. Many
socialists have argued that under an equal distribution of property,
where women were freed from fear of want, these crimes would disappear.
But this argument does not take human nature into account. Jealousy is
inevitably associated with sex relations. The close contact of men and
women over long periods of time inevitably causes friction and
misunderstanding. These conditions often grow chronic, and in marriage
are aggravated by the necessity of close association regardless of the
real feelings that may exist. Certain claims are made by husbands and
by wives, which are probably inherent in the relationship; sometimes
they flow from habit and custom, but, from whatever cause, such claims
are so exacting that either the husband or wife finds them hard to meet.
Because of the fact that the feelings of men and women for each other
are deeper and more fundamental than those of any other relation, they
are more subject to misfortune and tragedy. The hatreds born from the
deepest affection are most beyond control. Then the desire of possession
is overwhelming. It would be strange if more killings did not result
from the relations of men and women than from any other cause. It is
easy to understand why this is true. It is likewise easy to understand
how laws, reason and judgment are powerless to prevent. Juries seem to
understand this when women kill husbands and lovers, but a
long-established code of chivalry and a cultivated attitude toward
women, which is partly right and partly wrong, make it impossible to see
that men are just as helpless under strong feelings as women. No doubt a
public opinion that would favor divorces on a greater number of grounds
and make them easily obtainable would prevent large numbers of such
killings, but the cause can not be altogether removed.
The law has long singled out killing as the greatest crime, doubtless
because man prizes life first of all. Of course every effort should be
made to protect life. Still, in measuring the character of the offender,
in determining his possibilities as a useful citizen, homicide is
probably one of the lesser crimes. Many times it implies no moral
turpitude, even with those who believe in moral turpitude. It may imply
very little lack of physical stability. Homicide practically never
becomes an occupation. Most killings are accidental in the sense that
they are casual and dependent on circumstances, and there is as a rule
much less danger of repetition than there is of the original commission
of a homicide by one of a defective nervous system who has never before
committed an unlawful act. A large number of men convicted of murder are
used as "trusties" in our penal institutions, even when their
imprisonment is for a long term, or for life. This shows from the
experience of prison officials that this class of offenders is, as a
rule, of a better fibre than almost any other class.
Doubtless no sort of treatment will ever entirely get rid of homicide.
Brains and nervous systems are so made, that inhibitions are unable to
protect in all cases. Nations and men readily engage in killing, either
from sport or because of a real or fancied wrong. Mob psychology shows
how whole communities are turned into ravenous beasts, hunting for
their prey. The world war, and all wars, show cases of mob psychology
that have led large masses of men to take an active part in killing. The
pursuit of those charged with crime shows that all people like the chase
when the emotions are thoroughly aroused. Under certain impulses,
communities gloat over hangings and commend judges and juries because
they have the courage to hang, when, in fact, they were too cowardly not
to hang and when their reason did not approve the verdict and judgment.
Men who do not kill often wish others might die and are pleased and
happy when they do die. We approve of death when it is the right one who
dies. Whether all persons are murderers or not may depend upon a
definition of murder. But, beyond doubt, all persons are potential
murderers, needing only time and circumstances, and a sufficiently
overwhelming emotion that will triumph over the weak restraints that
education and habit have built up, to control the powerful surging
instincts and feelings that Nature has laid at the foundation of life.
XI
SEX CRIMES
Most of the inmates of prisons convicted of sex crimes are the poor and
wretched and the plainly defective. Nature, in her determination to
preserve the species, has planted sex hunger very deep in the
constitution of man. The fact that it is necessary for the preservation
of life, and that Nature is always eliminating those whose sex hunger is
not strong enough to preserve the race, has overweighted man and perhaps
all animal life with this hunger. At least it has endowed many men with
instincts too powerful for the conventions and the laws that hedge him
about.
Rape is almost always the crime of the poor, the hardworking, the
uneducated and the abnormal. In the man of this type sex hunger is
strong; he has little money, generally no family; he is poorly fed and
clothed and possesses few if any attractions. He may be a sailor away
from women and their society for months, or in some other remote
occupation making his means of gratifying this hunger just as
impossible. There is no opportunity for him except the one he adopts. It
is a question of gratifying this deep and primal instinct as against
the weakness of his mentality and the few barriers that a meagre
education and picked-up habits can furnish; and when the instinct
overbalances he is lost.
Incest, which is peculiarly the crime of the weak, the wretched and the
poor, has a somewhat different origin. Westermarck in his "_History of
Human Marriage_" shows that in the early tribe there was no inhibition
against the marriage of blood relations; that the restriction then was
against the members of the tribe that used one tent; these might or
might not be blood relations. The traditions and folk-ways against the
marriage of close relations grew from the familiarity that came from the
living together of brother and sister, for instance, in one home. This
feeling gradually worked itself into custom and habit and from that into
folk-ways and laws. Sometimes we read accounts of the marriage of a man
and woman who found, after years had gone by, that they were brother and
sister who had been separated in infancy and grew up without knowledge
of their relation to each other. Whether Nature forbids the marriage of
relatives by preventing offspring or by producing imperfect offspring is
a doubtful question. Certain communities in Europe have lived together
so long that all are related and still they seem to thrive. Considering
the general custom and feeling on the subject, however, the man and
woman who know that they are closely related and who marry are different
and weaker than the others; and this may show in their offspring.
Although the subnormal may have no such feeling, they are judged by the
traditions and customs of the normal and on that judgment are sent to
prison.
Many sex crimes are charged to children in the adolescent age; children
who have no knowledge of sex and its development and are helpless in the
strength of their newly-discovered feelings. This class of offenders is
almost always the inferior and the poor who are moved by strong
instincts which they have not the natural feeling, the strength, the
education, nor the desire to withstand.
While most crimes against persons are not directly due to economic
causes, still the indirect effect of property is generally present in
these crimes as well as others. The fact that the poor and defective are
generally the subjects of prosecution and conviction in these offences
shows how closely economic conditions are related to all crimes.
Other criminal statutes are of more modern date, and as a rule involve
not much more than adultery, except in regard to the age of the girl
offender, which is generally placed below eighteen. Still the sex age of
neither boys nor girls can be fixed by a calendar. It depends really
upon development, which is not the same with all people or in all
environments. Many girls of sixteen are more mature and have more
experience of life than others of twenty. Most laws provide that below
sixteen one cannot give consent and that a sexual act is then rape. It
is doubtful if there should be any intermediate age between sixteen and
eighteen, where an act is not rape but still a minor offence.
XII
ROBBERY AND BURGLARY