Crime: Its Cause and Treatment

by Clarence Darrow

As all things end, prison sentences are generally finished. The prisoner is given a new suit of clothes that betrays its origin and will be useless after the first rain, ten dollars in cash, and he goes out. His heredity and his hard environment have put him in. Now the state is done with him; he is free. But there is only one place to go. Like any other released animal, he takes the same heredity back to the old environment. What else can he do? His old companions are the only ones who will give him social intercourse, which he needs first of all, and the only ones who understand him. They are the only ones who will be glad to see him and help him get a job. There is only one profession for which he is better fitted after he comes out than he was before he went in, and that is a life of crime. Of course, he is a marked man and a watched man with the police. When a crime is committed and the offender is not found, the ex-convict is rounded up with others of his class to see, perchance, if he is not the offender that is wanted. He is taken to the lock-up and shown with others to the witnesses for identification. Before this, the witness may have been shown his photograph in convict clothes. Perhaps they identify him, perhaps they do not; if identified, he may be the man or he may not be. Anyhow, he has been in prison and this is against him. Whenever he comes out and wherever he goes, his record follows him as closely as his shadow. Even his friends suspect him. They suspect him even when they help him.

Such is the daily life of these unfortunates. What can be done? I can see nothing that the officers of the law can do. Officers represent the people. They reflect mob psychology. Even though an officer here and there rises above the crowd, as he sometimes does, it is of no avail. His place soon is filled by someone else. If only the public would understand! If only the public were more intelligent, which in this case at least would mean more human! If only the statement I repeat so often could be understood! There are no accidents; everything is the result of law. All phenomena are a succession of causes and effects. The criminal is the result of all that went before him and all that surrounds him. Like every other mortal, he is a subject for pity and not for hatred. If society is not safe while he is at large, he must be confined and kept under guard and observation. He must be kept until he is safe and a favorable environment found for him. If he will never be safe for society, he should never be released. He must not be humiliated, made to suffer unduly, despised or harried. He must be helped if he can be helped. This should be the second, if not the first object of his confinement.

Assuming that the scientific attitude toward crime should be accepted by those who make public opinion, and that this should become crystallized into written law, the problem would be easy.

The officers of the state can, as a rule, be depended upon to deal properly and considerately with the known insane. The insane are more trying and difficult than the criminal. Courts and juries and the public, however, recognize their mental condition and do not visit them with vengeance. It is appreciated and understood that they cannot with safety be left at large; but they are given the care and consideration that their condition demands. If the criminal should be looked upon as are the creatures insane from natural causes, the State's Attorney could then be trusted to prepare the case and do the best he could for all concerned. The defendant would no longer be a defendant. His case would be under investigation; his past life would be shown, his credits as well as his debits; he would need no lawyer, not even a public defender; no jury would be required, and the uncertainties and doubts that hang around judgments would be removed. There would be little chance for a miscarriage of justice. Even should there be, it would result in the speedy release of one against whom the public bore no ill-will. One who was sick or insane would ordinarily not need a lawyer, as the state would bear him no malice and make no effort to do more than investigate the case and present the facts. The whole matter should be a purely scientific attempt to find out the best thing to be done both for the interest of the public and the interest of the man.

No doubt, in many cases, men are convicted who are perfectly innocent of the crime of which they are accused. This is especially true with the poor who can provide for no adequate defense and who perhaps have been convicted before of some misdemeanor or crime. This is also often true in cases where there is great prejudice against the defendant, either on account of the nature of the case or of the defendant on trial. For instance, during the recent war a wave of hysteria swept over the world, and courts and juries trampled on individual rights and freely violated the spirit of laws and constitutions. The close of the war left the same intense feelings of bitterness which made justice impossible in cases where the charge savored of treason, and involved criticism of the government, or advocacy of a change of political systems.

Questions of race, religion, politics, labor and the like have always awakened violent feelings on all sides, have made bitter partisans and strict lines of cleavage, and have made verdicts of juries and judgments of courts the result of fear and hatred. In spite of this, most of the inmates of prisons have done the acts charged in the indictments. Why they did them, their states of mind, the conditions and circumstances surrounding them, what can be done to make them stronger and better able to meet life are never ascertained, and few courts or juries have ever deemed these things proper subjects for consideration or in any way involved in the case.

In law every crime consists of two things: an act and an intent. Both are necessary to constitute legal guilt, and on the prevalent theory of moral guilt and punishment both are necessary to make up criminal conduct. There can be no legal or moral guilt unless one intends wickedness; unless he deliberately does the act because he wishes to do wrong and knows he does wrong. The question then of moral guilt, which is necessary to the commission of a criminal act, touches all the questions suggested and many more. Even if freedom of action is to some degree assumed, the question still remains as to the degree of guilt in fixing punishment and responsibility. The question involves the make-up of the man, his full heredity, so far as it can be known.

Most of every man's heredity is hidden in the mist and darkness of the past. He inherits more or less directly through an infinite number of ancestors, reaching back to primitive man and even to the animals from which he came. The remote ancestry is, of course, usually not so important as that immediately behind him. Still, plainly, his form and structure and the details of his whole machine, including the marvelously delicate mechanism of the brain and nervous system, are heritages of the very ancient past. Neither are the processes of inheritance well understood nor subject to much control. Often in the making of the man Nature resorts to some "throw-back" which reproduces the ancient heritage. This can be seen only in general resemblances and behavior, for the genealogical tree of any family is very short and very imperfectly known, and the poor have no past. In three or four generations at the most the backward trail is lost and his family merged with the species of which he forms but a humble part.

Enough, however, is known of ancestry and the infinite marks of inheritance on every structure as well as enough of the reaction of the human machine to the varied environment that surrounds it, to make it clear that if one were all-seeing and all-wise he could account in advance for every action of every man. More than this, he could see in the original, fertilized cell, all its powers, defects and potentialities and could, in the same manner, look down through the short years during which the human organism, grown from the cell, shall have life and movement, and could see its varied environment. If one could see this with infinite wisdom, he could infallibly tell in advance each step that the machine would take and infallibly predict the time and method of its dissolution. To be all-knowing is to be all-understanding, and this is infinitely better than to be all-forgiving.

To get this knowledge of the past of each machine is the duty and work of the tribunal that passes on the fate of a man. It can be done only imperfectly at best. The law furnishes no means of making these judgments. All it furnishes is a tribunal where the contending lawyers can fight, not for justice, but to win. It is little better than the old wager of battle where the parties hired fighters and the issue was settled with swords. Oftentimes the only question settled in court is the relative strength and cunning of the lawyers. The tribunal whose duty it is to fix the future place and status of its fellowmen should be wise, learned, scientific, patient and humane. It should take the time and make its own investigation, and it can be well done in no other way. When public opinion accepts the belief that punishment is only cruelty, that conduct is a result of causes, and that there is no such thing as moral guilt, investigations and sorting and placing of the unfortunate can be done fairly well. The mistakes will be very few and easily corrected when discovered. There will be no cruelty and suffering. The community will be protected and the individual saved.