Sociology and Modern Social Problems

by Charles A. Ellwood

The problem of crime is one of the great problems of social pathology. There have been developed, in order to deal with this problem scientifically, a number of subsidiary sciences, especially Criminology and Penology, which are sciences dealing with the causes, nature, and treatment of crime. We cannot therefore deal with this problem adequately in this chapter, but again must refer the student to the literature on the subject.

The Definition of Crime.—The best definition of crime and the simplest is that it is a violation of law. It is evident from this definition that crime is primarily a legal matter; and as laws vary from age to age and from country to country, so too the definition of crime varies. Nevertheless, because crime is a variable quantity that does not make it impossible of scientific treatment; for law itself is only one aspect or phase of the social life, namely, that which has to do with the control of conduct through organized social authority. Therefore, while crime is primarily a legal matter, it is also a social matter and has at the same time psychological and biological implications. While crime is an expression of social maladjustment defined by the law differently under different circumstances, it nevertheless has psychological and biological roots; and these we must take into account in a scientific study of crime.

The simplest and best definition of the criminal accordingly is a violator of the law. However, because the criminal lacks social adjustment the causes of this lack of adjustment are very often in certain psychological and biological conditions of the individual. While the criminal is defined by the law differently from age to age, he is nevertheless under all circumstances the socially peculiar and sometimes the psychologically and biologically peculiar person. Under all circumstances he is a variation from his group; and whether the causes of his variation are psychological or biological is the problem that concerns us.

But in the group of socially maladjusted persons whom we call criminals are many classes and it is necessary to note the chief of these classes before we can understand the many causes of crime.

The classification of criminals. The legal classification of criminals according to the nature of their crime is manifestly of no use for scientific purposes. What we need is a classification of criminals according to their own peculiar nature. Inasmuch as the nature and conduct of a criminal person is largely a matter of his psychology the most scientific classification of criminals must be upon a psychological basis; and a simple psychological classification can be made upon the basis of habit, that is, as to whether the habit of crime is inborn, acquired, or not yet formed. According to this classification then there are three main classes of criminals: (i) The instinctive or born criminal. This is a person in whom the tendency to crime is inborn, and this inborn tendency is always due to some congenital defect. The most common type of the instinctive or born criminal is the moral imbecile, a person only slightly mentally defective who cannot distinguish right from wrong. It is evident that in the instinctive or born criminal biological causes of crime predominate. This class is however relatively small among the general criminal class, and it is estimated by experts that it constitutes not more than from 10 per cent to 15 per cent of our prison population. (2) The habitual criminal. The habitual criminal is a normal person who has acquired the tendency to crime from his environment. The most marked type of the habitual criminal is the professional criminal, who is frequently a person above the average in ability and who deliberately chooses a career of crime, taking the risks of his calling. It is evident that the professional criminal class is the most dangerous class of criminals with whom society has to deal. A more common type of habitual criminal, however, is the occasional habitual criminal, a weak person who drifts into crime through temptation and who has not strength of character enough to throw off the habit. It is estimated that habitual criminals of both types mentioned constitute from 40 per cent to 50 per cent of our prison population. (3) The single offender. The single offender is a normal person who commits only a single crime through some sudden stress or temptation, but lives ever after a law-abiding life. The two types of the single offender are the criminal by passion and the accidental criminal. The criminal by passion is a moral, and oftentimes a conscientious, person who commits a crime through some sudden stress of passion, under great provocation. The accidental criminal, on the other hand, is the weak type of moral person who yields once through some sudden temptation, but who regrets it ever afterward. It is estimated that single offenders constitute from 40 per cent to 50 per cent of our prison population. Strictly speaking, they are only legal criminals, and not criminals in the sociological sense, being relatively moral and law-abiding citizens whose variation from the normal is confined to some single offense. Nevertheless, single offenders constitute, as we have already seen, a very considerable proportion of our prison population.

If this classification of criminals is correct, it is evident that it is very important both in studying the causes of crime and in devising practical measures for dealing with the criminal class; for the instinctive criminal, the habitual criminal, and the single offender manifestly need very different methods of treatment. One of the gravest faults of the criminal law and of penal institutions hitherto is that they have not provided for the different treatment of different classes of criminals.

The Extent of Crime in the United States.—According to the United States census there were in prisons on June 30, 1904, a total of 81,772 prisoners above the age of five years serving sentences. Of this number 77,269 were males and 4503 were females; again, 55,111 were whites, and 26,661 were colored. Classified according to the prisons in which they were found, 53,292 were in state penitentiaries, 7261 were in state reformatories, 18,544 were in county jails, and 2675 were in city prisons. These were only the persons serving prison sentences. An unknown number were in county and city jails awaiting trial and serving out fines. Again, it must be remembered that this was simply the prison population on a single day, June 30, 1904. During 1904 there were, according to the census, 149,691 persons committed to prisons to serve sentences. To all of the above we must add also the 23,034 juvenile delinquents who were found, on June 30, 1904, in the juvenile reformatories of the United States.

Unfortunately we have no figures from previous censuses with which we can compare the above, as the census of 1890 and previous censuses included prisoners awaiting trial. In 1890, however, there were, deducting the 15,526 awaiting trial and serving out fines, 66,803 persons above the age of five years serving sentences.

These prison statistics, however, give us little idea of the actual amount of crime in the United States, because they include only the persons committed to prison to serve sentences, and do not include the vast number who escape the meshes of the law or who simply receive fines, or whose sentences are suspended. It is estimated by competent authorities, basing their estimate upon the number of known convictions of crime in certain large cities, that there are not less than 1,000,000 convictions for crime, annually, in the United States—including, of course, convictions for both felonies and misdemeanors. That this is not an excessive estimate may be indicated by the fact that in the state of New York alone in 1900, a year before the custom of suspending sentence on probation came so largely into vogue, there were nearly 100,000 commitments to prison.

All these figures, however, fail to give us any very correct idea of the amount of serious crime in the United States—the prison statistics, because they understate the matter, the statistics of convictions, because they overstate. A peculiarity about serious crime in the United States, it must be remembered, is that so many persons escape through the meshes of the law, and this is particularly true in the case of the characteristic American crime of homicide. An enterprising newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, has for years, with the help of the Associated Press, collected statistics of homicide and suicide in the United States. While these statistics seem relatively incomplete and inaccurate for the earlier years, since 1892 they present every appearance of great accuracy, and have not been seriously impugned. According to these statistics the United States has had for the last dozen years from six to ten thousand cases of homicide annually, including all cases where one person has killed another. In 1896 the number was 10,652, in 1899, 6225; in 1900, 8275; in 1904, 8482; in 1906, 9350; in 1908, 8592. The census of 1904 showed only 2444 persons committed to prison for homicide in that year, but these figures are not in conflict with those of The Chicago Tribune, because the census statistics omit the vast number of persons who committed homicide but who escaped, were not convicted, were killed, or for some other reason failed to show up in the statistics of commitment. Accepting The Chicago Tribune's figures as relatively accurate, it may be remarked at this point that the number of homicides is far greater in the United States than in other civilized countries, with the exception of Italy, Spain, and some other countries of the Mediterranean region. England, for example, has only between three and four hundred cases of homicide annually as compared with our six to ten thousand, although England's population is about 30,000,000 as against over 80,000,000 for the United States. The greatest number of these homicides take place in the Southern and Western states, Texas leading, according to the statistics, with about one thousand homicides annually. This suggests that to some extent our high homicide rate is due to the survival of frontier conditions in a large number of the states, although it is probably even more due to American individualism and lawlessness, the tendency of every man to take the law into his own hands.