WHO ARE THE REAL CRIMINALS?
Some reader of the preceding chapter may perhaps remark, "This is all very well so far as it goes. It doubtless is entirely true from a purely technical point of view. But that is only one side of the matter. How about the real criminals?" This is neither an unexpected nor an uninvited criticism. Who are the "real" criminals? Charles Dudley Warner says: "Speaking technically, we put in that [the criminal] class those whose sole occupation is crime, who live upon it as a profession and who have no other permanent industry. They prey upon society. They are by their acts at war upon it and are outlaws." Now the class of professional criminals to which Mr. Warner refers as contrasted with the great mass of criminal defendants as a whole is, in point of fact, relatively so small, and so easily recognized and handled, that it plays but an inconspicuous part in the administration of criminal justice.
The criminals who conform accurately to childhood's tradition are comparatively few in number. The masked highwayman, the safe-cracker and even the armed house burglar have, with a few exceptions, long since withdrawn from the actual pursuit of their romantic professions and exist practically only in the eagerly devoured pages of Sherlock Holmes and the "memoirs of great detectives." New and almost more picturesque figures have taken their places,—the polite and elegant swindler, the out-at-the-elbows but confidence-inspiring promoter of assetless corporations, the dealer in worthless securities, and the forger who drives in his own carriage to the bank he intends to defraud. In some cases the individuals are the same, the safe-cracker merely having doffed his mask in favor of the silk hat of Nassau Street. Of yore he stole valuable securities which he was compelled to dispose of at a tremendous discount; now he sells you worthless stocks and bonds at a slight premium. Mr. J. Holt Schorling, writing in The Contemporary Review for June, 1902, points out that while all crimes other than fraud decreased materially in England from 1885 to 1899, the crime of fraud itself materially increased during the same period.[8]
The subject is a tempting one, but it is not essential to our thesis. The devil is not dead; he has merely changed his clothes. Criminal activity has not subsided; it has instead sought new ways to meet modern conditions, and so favorable are these that while polite crime may be said still to be in its infancy, it is nevertheless thriving lustily.
While the degenerate criminal class is the subject of much elaborate and minute analysis by our continental neighbors, its extent is constantly exaggerated and its relation to the other criminal classes not fully appreciated. To read some supposedly scientific works one would imagine that every court of criminal justice was or should be nothing but a sort of clinic. To these learned authors, civilization, it is true, owes a debt for their demonstration that some crime is due to insanity and should be prevented, and, where possible, cured in much the same manner. But they have created an impression that practically all crime is the result of abnormality.
Every great truth brings in its train a few falsehoods,—every great reform a few abuses. The first penological movement was in the direction of prison reform. While perhaps the psychological problem was not entirely overlooked, it was completely subordinated to the physical. It is a noble thing that the convict should have a warm cell in winter and a cool one in summer, with electric light and running water, wholesome and nutritious food, books, bathrooms, hospitals, chapels, concerts, ball games and chaplains. "But it must be noted that along with this movement has grown up a sickly sentimentality about criminals which has gone altogether too far, and which, under the guise of humanity and philanthropy, confounds all moral distinctions." To a large number of well-meaning people every convict is a person to whom the State has done an injury.
Then came the study of degeneracy, with the cranium of every criminal as a subject of investigation. In 1881 or thereabouts Professor Benedickt published his conclusion that "the brains of criminals exhibit a deviation from the anthropological variety of their species, at least among the cultured races." It was a commendable thing to point out the relation of insanity to crime. It is an undeniable truth that there are insane people who are predisposed to crime just as there are those who are predisposed to dance.
The vicious criminal class contains many who are actually or incipiently insane, and it numbers a great many more who are physically and mentally normal, who yet by reason of their education and environment are not much to be blamed for doing wrong. But it is far from true that a majority of the "real" criminals are mentally defective. Crime and insanity are no more closely related than sin and insanity. Certain criminals are also perverts. But they would be criminals even if they were not perverts. The fact that a man who takes drugs is also a criminal does not prove that he is a criminal because he takes drugs. We know many drug-takers who are otherwise highly respectable. Go to the General Sessions and watch the various defendants who are brought into court and you will discover little more degeneracy or abnormality than you would find on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue among the same number of unaccused citizens.