CRIMINAL TYPES
BY COL. V. M. MASTEN
BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY RICHARD G. BADGER
All Rights Reserved
Made in the United States of America
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
INTRODUCTION
Very much in the printed page has been aimed wide of the mark alike of the
prevention, the deterrence, and the reclamation of the predal felon.
It is intended that this semi-technical volume shall help to call the
truly reformative turn. Also, the intention is that the subject matter of
the book shall at once amplify and reënforce conclusions reached in The
Crime Problem and Stop Thief! the author's previous publications.
A distinctively scientific treatise on crime and criminals is not essayed
by the writer, for the very good reason that such a treatise is not, at
this moment, to any man's hand. This, because human society seethes in the
most fateful transitional state of all time up to this time; because human
expression is more complex and varied than during any other period of
human history; because material values change with constantly changing
conditions; and because the criminal picks his tools and plys them
agreeably with the pressure upon him of objective influences germane in
those conditions of change.
The crass criminal presents no psychic problem. He is much as he was,
impelled much as he was, when cavemen carried clubs. Having, usually, but
mediocre mental equipment, and being crowded out of the big games of life,
he has recourse naturally either to individual force, or to crooked
cunning with which to match the throws of his better-equipped brothers.
By and large, the issue with the low-grade habitual forager is a very
simple one; in the final analysis, he leaves society no choice other than
to fight him with the like of his chosen weapons.
There will be isolated and sporadic exceptions to the general rule given;
but as to the grand majority of marauding criminals, they must be met,
both in and out of prison, with force more impressive than that which they
employ; palpably so, else penal codes might as well be pigeon-holed for
containing meaningless proscriptions.
It is as all would like it when the force can be confined to educative
measures so ordered for sustained averages as to encourage the imprisoned
to help themselves; but when they won't help, just _won't_, then steps
must be taken which will make it practically impossible for them further
to filch from their fellowmen.
If a thief will have it no other way than to be a thief, then control of
him, and not his social rehabilitation, must be the desideratum.
Circumstantial felons there will be so long as social circumstance makes
for them. Always a certain percentage will go down under the pressure of a
closely competitive social scheme that recks but little of moral
weaklings, and less of physical slackers; but such bear serious relation
to criminal statistics in the sense only that they are dragged down to
habitual crime appreciably by criminal recidivists; by repeating felons
who forage on society by choice, who make no bones about it, who shout
stout defense of it, and who glory in it.
With the latter class of criminals it is up to America to deal, and to _do
it now_. During recent decades, and within and without prison walls,
crime-breeding slack has been paid out to them until to kill ruthlessly
means not so much to them as would warts on their hands.
Therefore: reformative régimes should function so as to free such
prisoners of shackles forged by their lower selves. When refractory units
will not coöperate to that end, the aim of society must be for deterrence
that protects society from them, and no apology whatsoever to them for the
deterrence.
For society habitually to bare its breast to the deadly strokes of
derailed underdogs, just because they are derailed underdogs, is for
society to spade at its own grave.
Statistics that involve general conclusions are avoided herein. They are,
because under present opportunity for specific research, they cannot be
made either substantially reliable or inclusive. At the best they may
mislead. At the worst they will lie.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I TYPAL EARMARKS 11
II THE CRIMINAL MIND 32
III THE MORAL CRIMINAL 51
IV THE PSYCHIATRIST 66
V THE CRIMINOLOGIST 88
VI LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF CRIME 104
VII CHAMOIS-SKIN CRIMINOLOGISTS 121
VIII "EXCESS PROPHETS" 141
IX CRIME AND THE LAY CRITIC 154
X PRISON DISCIPLINE 169
XI PSYCHOLOGY AND THE CRIMINAL 192
XII SUMMARY 236
CRIMINAL TYPES
CRIMINAL TYPES
I
TYPAL EARMARKS
Criminal types there are, but there is no one criminal type.
Closely-allied criminous expression is vastly different as to individual
intent. That will be so because the underlying causes for like offenders
are dissimilar and variable.
The height of the offense usually squares with the depth of depravity, the
which is no respector of facial or other deviations from the Apollo type.
Jails would be more numerous than churches, were natural criminals surely
shadowed forth in visible signs such as long, tapering fingers; rodent
eyes, or those bead-like, shifty, countersunk and narrowly spaced; bull
neck, connected with a vertically-lined back head; laterally-extended
side-jaw bones; protruding fore jaw; the ape's forehead, marked by the
ape's fuzzy hairline, the same fuzzy hair extending inward from under the
outer edges of the eye sockets; eagle's beak, or more commonly, the
tangential, flattened nose of the gorilla, with arms like his, unusually
long and big-boned as compared with the rest of the frame; thin lips,
emphasizing a cruelly-set mouth, or thick lip above a ponderous jaw; and
ears in all sizes, conformation, setting and contour, opposed to the
perfect model.
It is true that the predal felon frequently features several of such as
the signs indicated. It is also true that millions of honest freemen
feature the same signs, and do no worse than dissemble, as more or less do
all humans. And it is further true that, in so far as emphasis on such
symbols is concerned, the bulk of lawbreakers would pass unnoticed in a
promiscuous crowd.
Still, close parallels prevail as between members of classes of the
anti-social. They ply the same tools, speak the same language, are bound
by and large by the same laws of clan, foregather in the same caves of
earth, affect the same mannerisms and mental attitude, and spend
ill-gotten gain for intrinsically the same things, if over different
counters; but they do not yield of themselves in the same measure to the
powers of darkness. If they did, the bulk of them would be capital
criminals, instead of offenders against property.
Usually the pack are of one mind as to the method of procedure, else they
wouldn't "pal" it as one. Type then matches type as closely as members of
criminal types match; yet no two will be actuated by absolutely the same
motives, and no two will have come by motives to act in absolutely the
same way. The demarcation may call for the most careful of research; but
it will be there, and it will demarcate, if only by shading so slight as
to escape other than the truly expert examiner.
Glaring cross-matches of type evolve not infrequently, as for example: of
two on the same job, the one would ride rough-shod and quickly over human
life to what he seeks. The other balks, then and there, at ruthless
spilling of blood, and will "queer the deal" rather than be party to a
killing.
The first duty of the criminologist is to probe to the cardinal causes for
a given type of criminal. Doing it, he will uncover the fact that aside
from the congenital thief--who thieves as naturally as his more polished
prototype mulcts agreeably with man-struck statutes--the average criminal
commonly consummates in effect to help whirl the treadmills of parasitic
sporting mongers. He is the pawn sacrificed in the all-comprehensive
predal game. His the lay to go out and "get the goods," somewhere, anyway;
theirs to induce him to stake his loot against odds that are unbeatable at
long play. He takes all of the chances coming and going; but since he is a
generous and constant provider, nimble-fingered and witted gentry pass
some little of coin to grease his going, and to "stake" him, fresh from
durance for having waxed a bit too bold while operating out of the domain
of comparative immunity. In big cities, the "bull" usually gets him only
when he bungles.
In any case it is "Easy come, easy go" with the criminal, both as to the
gelt he gets and his punishment for getting it the way he gets it; and so,
while plying their nefarious tools, all types of criminals play both ends
against the established social order.
The marauding type figure, for instance, that it is clever business to
crack a man on the cranium, relieve him of a money satchel containing a
small fortune, "plant" the fortune, then if caught and convicted, loll
around a prison for a few months; and it is "clever" as seen from the
criminal's point of view, however asinine it may be from the viewpoint of
deterring him.
Right here hides "the nigger in the woodpile": the thief is sentenced
merely to serve time, without regard for restitution of that which he had
stolen. In many cases the time served is little more than "sleepin' time"
the which he jeeringly dubs it; and in no case does it cover the question
of equity.
What actual redress has a man for the loss of thousands of dollars, in the
imprisonment of a malefactor, no matter how long his term of imprisonment
runs?
What the deterrence in a comparatively short prison term that leaves the
prisoner with a firm grip on his bundle of loot?
What expect other than that certain types of men will gladly dare issues
written to their hands, hearts, and natural predilections? Why wouldn't
such go after what they want with murderous tools?
How repress the criminal by bidding for him, and how deter him through
laying odds in his favor that are close to prohibitive as against society?
Where the sense in penal procedure that puts a premium, both in and out of
prison, on the won't-work criminal rounder, and blisters the itinerant who
does no worse than hawk harmless wares?
Why, on the one hand, tempt cupidity, and on the other hand, tax honesty?
And if, as an individual, you will have it that way, why feel peeved about
it, shall an automatic be shoved against your stomach as a raucous voice
bites off the command, "Cough up the coin?"
Penal law will serve the commonwealth as it should only when it shall have
assured restitution in kind by the thief, up to the reasonable limit.
This, as to immediate restitution of "planted" loot not only; but the
sentence should further amerce to a fine of the unpaid balance, to be
worked out usually in prison by the prisoner and credited to the account
of the party, or parties, he robbed.
If fine in prison working days were not congruous with generous justice,
then the penalty to further amerce to stated monthly payments by the
prisoner on parole, to be held reasonably to his last by the State, or in
lieu thereof, to be re-apprehended and required to pay by compulsion as
stated.
Cases would come up, of course, whereof the exact lettering of law of the
kind could not be executed; but such law could and should be framed so as
to embrace the great bulk of predal offenses, and still carry sufficient
of elasticity to enable committing magistrates to judge and dispose wisely
for the common good.
It will be objected that such legal procedure would visit hardships on the
families of offenders. Unquestionably that would be so in isolated
instances, albeit the bulk of predal felons do not have families, and when
they do, they are frequently a drag on them.
Again, it is, in the end, for the best interests of all concerned, that
the State shall bring the last pressure to bear in order to stop the
thief; particularly, marauding and foraging thieves. And again, the State
could furnish work for the families of prisoners in cases of special
need--and save money.
Through it all, relative distinction should be made as between the purely
circumstantial and habitual thief. Not that social bon-bons should be
tossed to the former; but that very close to even-handed justice should be
meted out to the latter. So much distinctively should be done because
by-choice predal felons always constitute the nucleus of crime and
criminal intent in America.
Isolated cases will not be entirely congruous with any general rule of
penal law; but consideration of the peace and security of the great mass
must go before emotional procedure whatsoever which crosses the curbing of
the gun-hung hound who goes a'riding to kill.
To split hairs of deterrence over confirmed social hyenas, is to furnish
them with the last formula from which to tear things.
At any rate, the most efficient punishment is natural punishment. To make
the thief pay in kind is absolutely the best way by which to discourage
the thief; and shall he have been made to pay for a "dead horse," he shall
have, mayhap, for the first time in his life, absorbed an awakening
respect for the law of consequence. And having got so far, mayhap there
will be hope for him; but not so, so long as society practically furnishes
him grist to grind in such as subterranean "protection," false sentence,
false probatory extensions, and false prison régimes which allow him to
pick and choose, play up and down and under.
Specifically writing, the time to start "restitution" is in the time of
youth, and the occasion, the first offense. Then, when the toll against a
lad is comparatively in pennies, the degradation of thieving should be
brought home to him in a parole paper contingent upon his restoration,
dollar for dollar, of that of which he had deprived another. Thereafter,
raise the imposition to suit repetition, so long as he is held subject to
probation. At the reformatory, the same rule should hold, plus legal
interest on the obligation--shall he have come up through a juvenile
school of reform, after having broken probatory parole.
Measures of the kind wouldn't cure all of thievery, since many thieves are
born thieves who take to thieving as ducks to water; but they would serve
in due time to cause the bulk of potential thieves to consider it most
carefully before deciding for the anti-social chute.
Whatever the type of criminal, he is usually motivated cardinally in the
selection of a criminal career by a very positive distaste for actual
work. If he is an itinerant, half-baked tradesman, he will take a "flyer"
here and there at his craft, especially while the police are combining for
those of his kidney; but consecutive, concentrated endeavor in a humdrum
groove he will not abide. And since his instinctive impulsions are those
of the parasite, and his appetites those which require some little of
money to satisfy, he takes naturally to the tools of the crook.
What crooked tools he will select will depend largely upon his natural
fitness to employ them. Usually he aims to excel in his particular line,
and he will usually choose the line in which he thinks he can do so. If he
is rough-hewn, likes the feel of rough tools, and has the knack of
handling them, he will likely enlist in the yeggman division. One whose
tastes are more refined and temper more timorous, will naturally go in for
forgery, if he guides a cunning tracing pen. The big-tent men, with nerve
and daring, take the longest chance with superior intelligence and
engraving skill, and keep paying tellers agog. Those who pack a plausible
"gift of gab," backed by no mean knowledge of the intricacies of high
finance, as well as where the same does and does not trench upon legal
proscriptions, constitute the Wallingfords of "fake" promotion; and lesser
lights of the same persuasion who have neither the smoothness of
personality, approach and attack of their bigger brothers, form the
"now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't" fraternity of endless variety and
variety of working tools. The sneak-thief runs true to his name, and is
properly most dreaded by the clan criminal, some of whom he is most liable
to "double-cross," and others to euchre with the cards of the
"stool-pigeon." Second-story operators, his near relations, are commonly
drug-soaked neurotics with a penchant for the air-line, and bizarre ways
and means of getting to it and getting away with it.
Since the temptation is great to get a whole lot for nothing and to do it
quickly, and since it is so easily done these days, the marauding criminal
will be most any type of criminal; but he is commonly a
murderously-inclined high-wit of his class of exceptional nerve and
resourcefulness, to the first of which he is commonly helped by such as
heroin, and to the second by that spitting devil in spurious hands--the
automobile. When he is a low-wit, and plans accordingly, the "finest"
betimes get him; and when they do, he is a low-wit indeed if he cannot
flash an indestructible alibi. Why not, when the testimony of his
retainers is accepted at its face value in our courts of law?
The above partition of the predal crew is far from final, either as to
selection of tools, or the manner in which they are employed. There will
be overlapping and underlapping all along the criminal line, although the
criminal is commonly quite as nice as another about his caste, habitually
foregathers with those of his attainment, and affects to spurn smaller
fry.
But bear it in mind that no two criminals are impelled to criminousness by
identically the same underlying impulsions.
The moral weakling stepped off with pyramided peculation, got caught at
it, and lacking moral stamina to face out squarely a grave mistake, chose
the supposedly lesser line of resistance to "easy money."
This lad, congenitally tainted with light fingers, brought up in the midst
of criminal suggestion, deprived of the benefit of influences that might
have counterbalanced, literally kicked into the company of habitual
thieves, finally casts his lot with them and lets it go at that.
That young man, inoculated with several species of the sporting bug, and
with virus that saps at once his courage and vitality, gets entangled
where he can't get clear, juggles figures, and finds his way into a 6 x 8
cell, where, being a consummate ego-centric--spite of the miserable mess
he has made of it--he indulges in self pity, swears to himself that
"everybody gave him the worst of it," and declares for reprisal upon
society in general. This is the type most likely either to "overlap or
underlap," depending upon the prison régime and the after-parole
circumstance.
Another, engulfed over a heartless wench who rouses in him the demon
jealousy--through playing him against the fellow who flashes "real" money,
and for whom she adjusts the base string of her bow--goes desperate for
means with which to match his rival's flings, "borrows" "bundle" after
"bundle" from his employer, bets all, mostly on the wrong "ponies," is
held up, then thrown down by the girl, and then caves in and limps into a
life of crime.
Such as the latter two types are criminals by the legal book, but as a
rule they are not intrinsic criminals. Rather, they are comparatively
spineless misfits in a closely competitive social scheme.
One who does predicate the alloy in man is the born brute who wields a
blackjack with unrepressed satisfaction, kills ruthlessly without pity or
subsequent remorse, and comes naturally by a social sense so blunted and
oblique that he wouldn't walk a straight line if he knew it led to
paradise. Partly as a side issue for gain, and partly to assure
appreciable immunity from punishment for the common crimes of his class,
the likes of him take on political thugism, and practically the same thing
when they act as "starkers" for the active agents of certain labor unions.
Needless to add, down-and-out ex-prize fighters, and would-be pugs of the
prize ring, constantly recruit the mounting army corps of footpads, and
"buzz-wagon" bandits.
To immigration laws framed and executed as if in response to the dictation
of the spewed human spawn of the universe, is America indebted initially
for brigades of her most dangerous brigands.
Sicilian and Neapolitan-Italians, members respectively of the Camorra and
Mafiauso, particularly run to death-dealing criminality, prosecuted mainly
individual against individual or group against group within the clan, or
clan against clan, or either or both in the form of blackmail against
countrymen who have made or are making their pile, some honestly, more the
reverse. The law does not cope with them and their ox-like blood-brothers
in crime from the North and East of Italy, because the law goes about it
piecemeal. Nothing short of a thorough governmental housecleaning of such
will meet the issue as the government has allowed it to be presented by
them. However they may war against each other, they move practically as
one against the foundations of American institutions. Therefore they must
be met with America's concentrated power, consecutively applied. Pecking
at them, here a peck, there a peck, is childish compromise with them, and
they know it; therefore, they are of the most flippant of the genus
criminal: the more naturally so, because their native countries played
into their hands much as America plays into them.
Close in the running with the foreign-born marauder is the mostly
second-generation hyphenate, who would stretch the commandment to all of
earthly time, and retain the phrasing--"In it thou shalt do no manner of
work." This usually low-strata, erotic, intrinsically dirty, diseased,
all-round trickster type, habitué of pool rooms, tinhorn gambling dens,
and lowest-down houses of prostitution, is pernicious because he is so
all-pervading, while versatile in his limited sphere: meaning, for
instance, that he is just enough of a card shark to flank a real captain
at crooked dealing, and just enough of a bandit to "steer" and help
plunder such as an inebriated plunger, or to assist in a
roughly-engineered hold-up. He will affect good clothes and the like, but
will usually wear them in such pattern, color, ensemble, and fashion, as
to render him at once suspect to the trained eye. Even in the matter of
dress, criminals example duck following duck, and doing it, take on little
habits, especially of using and placing their hands, that are informing.
Also, as to the predatory type, particularly, the set, wolfish expression
of countenance is quite likely to be as marked as is the "poker face" of
the green-cloth gambler. And also, his sexual excesses will be lined in
his face, as plainly as the geographic divisions between States.
Prolific dupes of the preceding type of criminal are potential criminals
brewed originally in the home still: mama's or papa's, or mama's and
papa's self-indulged pets, given money to burn, and unquestioned
opportunity to burn it after the manner of the globe-trotting freelance.
Enough said, save only that criminals so fashioned are usually the most
difficult and most tenacious of criminals; the former, because they are
usually the most intelligent; and the latter, for the reason that they
were home-primed, up through the most impressionable periods of youth and
young manhood, for that which they quite naturally take on in the end. The
intrinsic good in such lads is never entirely obliterated; hence they have
their sober moments--so sober in fact that they commonly make for the
"white stuff" and forgetfulness, as well as for nerve to go on with it.
And then--finis!
The mental dud and habitué of iniquitous dens fetches and carries for more
pretentious criminals. He will likely be a graduated dock-rat. Also, the
passive agent on whom certain criminals execute their sexually-perverted
desires; and also, he will be taking his kindergarten degrees at picking,
snatching and sneaking. Such crowded-out derelicts are much to be pitied
and little blamed, since they are the victims of cumulative circumstances
wholly unfortuitous.
So one might pick and parse to many times the length of this chapter, not
forgetting the meanest of secondary, subterranean crooks, who sport one or
another badge of authority, while declaring themselves "in" on the
division of criminal spoils. When the "division" reaches to those who pull
political strings, we have the ulcerating stage of the criminous sore in
the body politic.
While considering the limited list of criminal types herein adumbrated,
recall again and again that not less than seventy per cent of the members
of them are the ready dupes of those who utter and shove this or that mint
of spurious sporting coin, inclusive of "dames" of all varieties of their
variety, who urge them to do their worst.
Hundreds of pages could be filled, just in following out to their
ramifications, the holds with which catch-as-catch-can gamesters alone
throw crime-driven lads. More often than the reverse, "sporting" induces
the first criminal offense; and still more often the gaming confirms the
offender. It does firstly, because the gambling mania is less insistent
and tenacious only than abnormal mating hunger, by which it is commonly
aggravated; secondly, for the reason that a "killing" at gaming seems so
often to offer the only way out; and thirdly, in that a tyro will as
likely beat professional gamblers at their games, as a "bush league"
base-ball team the best of them all.
And so, after all, the chosen path of criminals is far from rose-strewn.
"Big" and "little," and "lesser" grafting and gambling "fleas" land on
their "backs" and "bite 'em."
Then, as if to make certain the job shall be completed after the plans of
Mephisto, the State stings the budding criminal to social death through
paroling him time and again from prisons wherein he had taken on not
enough of any kind of skill to make a decent living with it for
himself--say nothing of for a wife and family. Hence, naturally, if not
perforce, he resumes the whirl around the criminal circle.
Is it, then, that the State itself is in appreciable degree responsible
for its criminals of all grades and types? It is, beyond peradventure. It
is, primarily as hereinbefore stated. It is further in allowing sprouting
"roughnecks" to run as they list at all hours of the night. It is further
still in not establishing State control over such children, through
parents with whom the aim should be to hold them to natural care of their
offspring. Where that cannot be done, the State should assume full
educative and disciplinary direction, and do it at the earliest possible
moment.
Vicarious cases of the kind should be followed through to the logical end.
When it gets down to self-preservation as against the nurture of the most
natural of criminals, the State needs must step in and extend the helping
hand, as well as establish the whip hand in minimizing the causes of, and
motives for, the criminal.
During recent decades, the States generally have contrariwise motivated
for crime sequentially emphasized, through attempted mating with
reformative processes of cross-fire banalities, and worse.
Out of laudable desire to subject tempest-tossed humans to the least
possible of punitive discipline, the States have suffered introduction
into prison curriculums of distractions that disorder, even disintegrate
reformative measures, as for examples:
(1) Stated periods of free conversation between inmates have been
stretched to all-pervading promiscuous chatter, the most of it entirely
foreign to reformative endeavor.
Such as relating by Ikey the "Starker Kid," how he "blimped" on the
"bean" with a blackjack this or that wayfarer, bears intimate relation to
the following count. It does, because "promiscuous chatter" will hold up
any kind of work. Concentration is killed by it; hence it is not tolerated
in free-life occupations, and hence to fix the habit of it in a prisoner
is seriously to handicap him.
(2) Paroles are governed commonly by mere conduct, rather than by most
material industrial and associated averages: a fatal retrogression, in
itself not balanced by the total of alleged progressive measures
instituted during recent years. He is a mental dud of a self-determining
criminal indeed, who won't play up to that hand and "be good" on the
surface, while planning to "stall" as to activities cardinal to his social
rehabilitation.
(3) The tone of amusement and the spirit of play has been reduced, the one
to the level of the crumb-grubbing, dance-hall rounder; the other to match
the mode of the man-mauling brute. Too nice distinctions need not be made
in either case. They should not, in fact, be attempted on any field of
recreation where red-blooded lads foregather; but such as bestial
brutality carrying homosexual suggestion should be nipped religiously in
the budding, else the depraved instincts of the minor percentage will be
taken on gradually by the major percentage, and in degree by all.
Just because general assembly for free play affords abnormal units the
best chance to imbue their betters with the bad, is just why the latter
should be most carefully guarded by State agents on recreative fields. The
memory of "roughneck" sexual manifestations abides in the minds of lads,
and constantly stands athwart of efforts to enlist their undivided
attention for fundamental results.
Periods of play should be, as they are not, so planned as to coincide with
free-life recreative hours. Also, the periods should be capitalized only
in the sense of needed exercise, beyond which prison play is, on its very
face, non-reformative. Nothing short of all-around intensive instruction,
prosecuted in accordance with what will be the free-life exactions upon
the grossly ignorant and unskilled, will work for their social
reclamation. They must take up many loose stitches, and do it within a
time allowance that is meagre.
(4) Camaraderie as between officers and inmates is carried to
contempt-breeding familiarity; and freely-sprinkled cursing charged with
foul suggestion, binds the "contempt." Arraignment of such manifestations
may seem far-fetched, if not trivial. Very positively it is neither. The
reformative régime that suffers loose and foul-mouthed relations between
officers and inmates cannot, by any possibility, express a wholly
worthwhile purpose. The moral tonus of the place will be let down
appreciably; general laxness will be the rule.
Aside from the fact that "Hello, Bill!" relations wrongly expressed
commonize and corrupt, they tempt lads to make a foil of them, to the end
that they may be as lazy and shiftless as they dare be.
And so, since the type of correctional plant in question will rather
establish than reform all types of criminals, it is up to heads of houses
of correction to run them true to reformative form. This, spite of both
outside and inside pressure for fallacious methods, even though the
"heads" must yield a cheap, ephemeral, and at bottom spurious popularity,
in quest of measures that strike in and take root.
Such measures will not issue from minds obsessed by biological theories,
stretched to the breaking point in favor of their furtherance; nor from
the brains of stubbornly purblind mortals who refuse advanced tools of
approved temper. They probably will originate with, and they certainly
will be applied by, middle-of-the-road criminologists, who understand why,
to the very dregs, it is, that the person given generally to loose,
spineless practice, is reformatively less serviceable only than the person
wedded to restrictive, hide-bound, single-seeing theory. Either way, the
criminologist must strike the justifiable mean; shall he allow himself to
be ridden by fetichism, he will surely foozle essentially, no matter what
the surface signs.
Whatever his type, the average felon is usually a singular problem and a
complex entity. As such he must be searched out, studied, observed when
and where he is not observing, and then prescribed for. His exactions in
full will not be made known at any one place, at any one time, to anyone
on earth, through any one means known to man. When his limitations are
mostly made manifest, they are found to be relatively much the same as
those of the grand average of the common herd of humans.
Construe the criminal as you will, his crying need is for practical help
to put on knowledge and skill with which to execute his social duties. He
can well be spared frills, thrills, and a plethora of patting on the back;
but not unquestionable suggestion and example, if he is to pull up and win
out.
To school him not to lean, is first aid to any type of criminal.
To school the public to plumb to the cardinal causes for the like of the
late, Los Angeles, degenerative manifestations, is to inform the public
along the lines of the conclusion of this volume. It is also to disclose
the deviltry, directed against the young, by the "camouflaged" libertine
who deals in the vicious by-products of the sporting life. Hence, the
writer bites again and again at the vicious-by-products of sport, by which
he, himself, had been so ruthlessly disciplined, when a unit of the
professional sporting mass. From having been "done" at it, he doesn't have
to guess.
II
THE CRIMINAL MIND
_Large contentions less avail than instances observed. Kipling._
Rudyard Kipling has been an adjustable man among men. His evenly-balanced
mind has sized the stature of his fellows. He has nursed no crotchets by
which to be betrayed into half-baked "contentions." He has painted with
pat regard for time, place, and individuals, whether the latter wore nose
rings or royal purple. He has not debased a broad culture in hectic
pursuit of dollars. He has stuck to a staunch last and striven handsomely.
Since much of so much must have been out of the generous hand of Nature,
one could wish Kipling had studied criminals as he has studied other men,
and that his "instances observed" thereof were spread as he would spread
them in print over the globe.
A pen like Kipling's would go far to clear away mental cobwebs, spun about
the criminal mind by gourd-vine protagonists during the last three
decades. As would he with our subject, let us begin at the beginning:
Whether the biblical account of the killing of Abel by Cain be taken as
inspired writing, or as pure myth clothed out of man's imagination, it was
the first criminal act imaged by human consciousness. Also, Cain's reply,
"Am I my brother's keeper?" to those who sought the murdered Abel, shadows
forth fundamentally the attitude of mind of the average citizen towards
the felon of to-day. It adumbrates, as well, the predilection of the
criminal, now as then, to hide the truth with a smoke-screen of
subterfuge; this, cleverly betimes, as in Cain's case, through shunting
question with question, though the more common and vulgar method is resort
to the clumsily covered lie.
Crass criminals give America cause for pause, only because America either
directly or indirectly places crime-weapons in their hands. Along
criminous trails they blaze they usually leave easily-recognized marks. In
the main, they are scrambled-brained imitators, whom to catch and trip is
no great chore.
It is totally different as to the self-determining, self-reliant, mentally
keen and resourceful criminal, who is nearly callous to the effects of
criminousness, and who seeks life's zest through matching wits with agents
of the law.
Criminals of the latter class will meet you good-naturedly in ethical
argument on your chosen ground, where they will catch you unawares "if you
don't watch out."
For example, you expatiate on individual social service as a duty, and on
the cumulative blessings which would accrue therefrom.
"Fine!" replies our man, and adds: "But how many are rendering that kind
of service? How many besides those who make a 'soft' living at it, and
those who first gouged and got theirs?"
You declare that line of argument doesn't cover the question of individual
responsibility; that it doesn't answer for a thief to point other social
slackers.
"All right," rebuts Thief, "but why ring all of the solemn bells on the
retailers? Why not sound the curfew on a batch of the big bandits, and
land them where you land hard-pressed 'pickers'?"
It's waxing a bit awkward, because Thief's query plumbs to the crux of the
question; a plumbing he cunningly elects shall put society on the
defensive. That won't do, so you switch and let fall your king card in
challenge to him to square criminous conduct with the enacting predicates
of divine law.
If he believes, after a fashion, in a Supreme Being, you have him there to
a degree; albeit the belief seldom strikes deeper than fear of far-removed
consequence, the sting of which he is led to depend upon earth-born vicars
to draw.
Finally to muss you up mentally, and in part to remove the moral stigma
with which the Almighty stamps such as thieving, he will cite the
twelfth-hour repentance and shriving of the thief on the Cross.
Here, again, your counter attack won't carry, unless you can drive home
the historical fact that the thief in question had thieved against his
intrinsic grain; that he had several times started out to seek the Saviour
to be shriven of the unnatural load he had borne; and that he was turned
back by fear of fatal strokes at the hands of members of the capital band
of murderous marauders with whom he had ridden.
The crucial point to which we have been leading up is, of course, that
America deserves the flippant, murderous footpad of all nationalities;
first off because she has made no serious effort to understand what he is,
and why he is what he is; and secondly, for the reason that she has failed
miserably to match either the subjective or objective tools he has
employed.
Essentially, America has gone out of her way to make the master criminal
welcome, and then to wash his blood-stained hands for him. More than that,
she has insisted not only upon his being what he isn't, either mentally,
morally or physically; but further upon attaching to him the least modicum
of responsibility for his criminal acts. Having furnished him with the
complete formula for anti-social thoughts and deeds, she naturally gets
the one from his lawless tongue, and the other out of the muzzle of his
automatic.
Nor does the responsibility of America rest solely unto herself for the
thieves and thugs she has bidden to her bosom, and there nurtured them
with national pabulum that soured on their stomachs, or allowed them to be
so nurtured. Thereof, she has complicated the crime problem the world
over.
Time and again the forefathers warned against overfeeding of liberty and
underwriting of patriotism, foreseeing that did they warn in vain, it
would be a question of only a comparatively few years when America would
lose her autonomous character, and with the loss, her intrinsically
singular meaning in the matter of human progress.
That sterile hour probably will not strike. Americans look up with faith
and strength; yet they drift with hyphenates and social wolves; with
hyphenates who constantly press for group expression encircled by the
restrictive collar of creed; and with social wolves become so bold that
they utter lobo howls of defiance on public thoroughfares, where they are
suffered to sink poisonous fangs into the very vitals of Constitutional
law.
With the former we have begun to deal by determining to make it our
business to know that the oath of allegiance to America shall issue from
the mouths of aliens who hold mentally in reserve not a thing that
crosses that oath. This, primarily, through lengthening the probation
period prior to issuance of final papers granting citizenship; and
secondarily, through an undercurrent of public opinion so strong as
against the conditional patriot, as to make that opinion carry for what it
should and must.
With social wolves, it is again "totally different." It is totally
different because an appreciable percentage of them are the offspring of
Americans whose ancestry strikes back native-born for several generations.
They have been mainly the product of American life and living, ways and
means.
True enough, the tussle has been and is with alien criminals and
undesirables who recently have sieved into America; but that fact doesn't
let America out for her own brood of social backsliders; neither for the
manner in which she has compromised with the full bandit crew, constantly
mounting in numbers, and constantly less regardful of law and order.
In part, at least, the mind of the criminal who operates in America, is
American-made. There is no getting away from that fact, and there is
nothing hidden or strange about it.
Take a case common to alien criminals and potential criminals: up to last
accounts, Italy's Camorrists and Mafiausists ran to illegal rope under
indifferent hindrance by Italy; yet they much prefer America as a camping
ground. Why? Why for the simple reason that loose as is Italy's legal hold
upon them, the like grip of America is even less binding. Furthermore,
money-making, money-spreading, and license-breeding America is ripest for
loot.
In no civilized country on earth, right now, when other countries are in
the throes of disintegrating aftermath of the World War, can an
individual, of his own volition, commit capital crime, and count chances
of immunity from commensurate punishment in his favor, as he counts them
in America.
That being the precise case stripped of lame excuse and lamer balderdash,
why should it be extremely difficult to declare the functioning, as to his
specific acts, of the mind of the capital criminal in America? And by
"capital," we do not mean to point the ruthless bungler who employs clumsy
weapons clumsily; but the plausible, brainy crook, who cunningly "plays
'em all" against rightly-ordered social edicts, which he instinctively
hates.
Actually look into and beyond the eyes of the "king-pin" criminal, while
you seek to impress him with the just might of impartially executed law.
Note how a hard glint will strike through the eyes, even though from
ulterior motives he tries to hide it, and pretends to follow you
reservedly.
Far from being the pitiable dunce and dupe he is so commonly rated, the
by-choice American criminal of high grade is the most dangerous, least
excusable, coolly-calculating menace to the social order the world has
ever known. He is the most dangerous because he is the most resourceful,
and has the least regard for human life; he is the least excusable for the
reason that no country has ever borne with him and tried to help him pull
up, as America has borne with him and tried to help him pull up; and he is
flippantly the rest, and more, because the bids for him in America are
made by exactly those whose first business it should be to overreach him.
Did he fail to make the most of those bids, he indeed would be the misfit
"moron" agreeably with alleged "scientific" classification of him.
Contrariwise, he "plays 'em all": the judge; the patrolman; the
politician; the social worker; the reformer, active and passive; probation
officers; the prison agent of high degree he knows must play up to the
merry-go-round cult of reformers, if he would hold his job; and, in a
pinch in order to bag bigger game, he will "double-cross" any one or all,
if he is sure he can keep the double-crossing under cover.
In so far as he shunts essential human values out of his mind, he is a
fool, since true happiness is not for the thief or thug; but his material
concepts fit human nature closely enough to enable him to go after and get
pretty nearly what he wants, in and out of prison, while advisedly making
use of all of the long odds in his favor. Doing it, he fears only
higher-up spoilsmen who sacrifice criminal pawns.
Maybe he could, and maybe he couldn't enter a room, envisage the objects
therein at a glance, then step into an adjoining room and tale off most of
those objects. Probably you couldn't do so; but if you couldn't, you
wouldn't put it down conclusively that you had thereby demonstrated your
arrested mental development.
Largely because of such easily-misleading "tests," America has been at
meticulous pains to school the criminal to believe himself irresponsible
for his illegal acts; this, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the mark
of the true moron would rightly attach to him, did he fail to grind all of
such gratuitous grist coming to his mill.
If America elects to classify the criminal exactly as he would be
classified; and then to dispose of him exactly as he would be disposed of,
that's America's business. His business is to promote the calling of false
turns on him in favor of easy going at his chosen calling; and he attends
strictly to business, without care otherwise for what you tag him
mentally.
Ostensibly as opposed to the "business," he will play any card for a
consideration along any line you suggest; but not for a moment does he
lose sight of his cardinal aim, which is to be a crook hailed by crooks.
Lay gentlemen particularly state the case in words opposed to those which
precede; but just because they are lay gentlemen they do not, and they
cannot, by any possibility, state the case as it is.
Being a real criminologist presupposes long years of consecrated study of
and contact with criminals, in their midst. It also postulates a broad
culture, inclusive of the specific bearing of genetic parallels and the
reverse; and, as a matter of course, close study of such as the etiology
of crime, and of individual and race psychology.
Notwithstanding, lay gentlemen have written, during recent years, most of
the basic specifications for the social rehabilitation, by institutional
correction, of the habitual, predal felon. Result? Let a parallel case
give answer:
Before the discovery of the anti-toxin for diphtheria, suppose a
criminologist to have had a strong humanitarian leaning to be of active
service in the discovery and use of that anti-toxin. Assume further that
he conned a few chemical paragraphs, messed about in hospitals, tinkered
at synthesis and the reverse in the laboratory, and wrote copiously from
his treasured notebook: how far, think you, would he have gotten in his
quest?
The parallel is not perfect, to be sure, but it will serve to point these
vital facts: (1) The ninety-and-nine of puttering, basically uninformed,
amateur penologists have been primarily a nuisance, and the thousandth has
been useless in the work. (2) Secondarily, they have been much more than a
mere nuisance, in that they have made it their business to pull down the
framework of rational reformative régimes put up by actual criminologists.
(3) And in the stead of that deleted or destroyed, they have rung in
either puerile activities and inactivities, or sporting-monger activities
to the point of offense against God, against Nature, and against the
social exactions upon the criminal.
The criminal has not concerned himself about the social exactions upon
him. He has not because he isn't built that way, and because he hasn't had
to do so. Those highest up in reformative councils have obligingly
lettered reformative measures to his hand. Therefore he is always on his
toes to ding fulsome praise of them in indiscriminating ears, while
naturally condemning those he cannot fool all of the time.
So much, in part measure, is of the criminal pot as it boils; and so much
tells why the criminal stands pat with commanding cards gratuitously dealt
him. When society shall have matched his all-around play in the matter,
will be time enough for society to belittle mental gifts with which he is
enabled to euchre the land's combined agents of the law.
In any case, relief is in sight. The bulk of predatory criminals are
instinctive pug-uglies. The instinctive pug-ugly bids fair to be America's
representative hero. United States Senators and other governmental
celebrities, who, with their women, occupied box seats at the
Dempsey-Carpentier "boxing"--please don't laugh--"exhibition," so attested
by travelling hundreds of miles to occupy those seats.