Crime: Its Cause and Treatment

by Clarence Darrow

It has grown to be a commonplace in the discussion of crime to speak of isolation and sterilization as the proper treatment of the criminal and defective. This is generally done without any clear understanding of the laws of heredity.

The laws of the transmission from parent to child of traits and tendencies are not yet well enough known to justify any attempt to interfere with the function of life, except in the case of the idiotic. It is plain that crime cannot be inherited. Certain defects in the brain and nervous system can be and are inherited. No brain or nervous system is perfect, so the problem is one of the incapacity which causes the maladjustment. Crime results from defective heredity when applied to the environment. It comes from the inability of the machine to make the necessary adjustments of life. The making of the criminal is largely a question of his fortune or misfortune in the environment where he is placed. It is absurd to say that one inherits the tendency to rob or rape or burglarize or kill. He may inherit an unstable organization that in certain hostile environments will lead him to any of these crimes. For that matter all men inherit the organization that will bring these results if the environment is sufficiently hard. Society may in many ways place too high a value on human life. Still we punish men who place too low a value on the lives of others, and the state should be very slow to destroy life or the capacity for life.

There is much to learn, much to explain about the mysterious workings of heredity, before man can undertake to say that he has the wisdom or justice to choose the ones who should be the bearers of life to the future.

It is most common to find in the same family various degrees of intelligence. Now and then a man of such high powers and faculties is born that he is regarded by scientists as a "sport" who defies all known laws in his origin. Often one person in a family is of commanding strength, while the rest are commonplace.

The insanity and disease that afflict many men of genius is well known. Grasset in his book The Semi-Insane and the Semi-Responsible has given a long list of eminent names. Many great authors have depicted insanity in their most gifted characters. Genius is frequently an indication of insanity. It is a wide departure from the normal.

The obscure and lowly origin of many of the world's greatest men seems to point to the fact that Nature has methods that man cannot comprehend and with which it is not wise for him to interfere. The fact is that genius, or even great strength or ability in the parent, is by no means sure to be handed down. In fact, it is very rare indeed that such unusual traits persist. That sterilization should follow as a punishment for sex crimes is without any sort of logic except that sterilization relates to sex. The whole idea is born of the hatred or loathing of certain crimes.

Generalizations have been made from a few poorly authenticated cases, and these generalizations have gone far beyond anything that the evidence can justify. It does not follow that because the father and son have black hair, or the mother and daughter have blue eyes, or that their mannerisms are similar, that inheritance is responsible for character, much less for crime. Certain things are clearly traceable to heredity. Other things may be the result of association or what to us must still be accident.

Often the fact is pointed out that great progress has been made in the culture of plants and the breeding of animals. This is true. No intelligent farmer to-day would think of raising any but the best stock. He takes pains with the breeding of his cattle. If he wants rich milk and butter, he breeds Jerseys or Guernseys. If he wants a larger quantity of milk and a fair beef animal, he breeds Holsteins. If he wants beef only, perhaps he raises Durhams. At any rate he knows what he wants and breeds that kind. Similarly the horse-raiser will breed for race horses or dray horses as the case may be, and the system works with almost mechanical certainty. He gets what he wants and would never think of raising scrubs and taking a chance on results. The effect of selective breeding and culture is beyond dispute, and to many it seems obvious that all that is needed to perfect the human race and wipe out misery and crime is to supervise human breeding in the same way, so that the species may be controlled.

At first glance this seems to be the logical thing to do, especially as the effects of heredity can no more be doubted in man than in animals. Still there are important questions to be asked and grave dangers to be encountered. When we say that the well-bred Berkshire hog is better than the "razor-back," we mean that it will produce more meat for food. In other words the hog is better for man. If we were to ask which would be the better, if the hog were to be considered, the answer would probably be the "razor-back." The fact that the food consumed by the Berkshire produces a large quantity of fat, makes him unfitted to live if he were living for his own sake. Turn both hogs out to run wild, and the "razor-back" will live and the Berkshire die. Nature will make her selection and adapt the hog to his environment. The Berkshire will produce more lard, but it will not run so fast; it has no more brains and cannot adapt what it has so well to the preservation of life. The same thing is doubtless true of other animals and likewise of plant life. The Jersey cow would not survive in a natural state. She gives too much milk and for too long a time. Man has made of her a milk-machine. Turn all thoroughbred horses out on the plains to shift for themselves, and they would either die or gradually be modified until they were adapted to the free and wild life of the plains. This would not be so good for man, but would be better for the horses. In plants and animals, man can by selection breed or cultivate any characteristics that he may choose, but he cannot produce a horse which is both a draft horse and a running horse; he cannot produce cattle that are the best both for milk and beef. He is urged to try scientific breeding on the human race. How would he have man changed? Would he experiment for more intellect, or a bigger and stronger physique? Would he breed for art and civilization or would he breed for strength and physical endurance? What qualities are desirable for the human race? This would be a very hard question even to entrust to a popular vote. While the capacity of cattle to produce milk can be increased, cattle cannot increase their own capacity or improve their own quality. This can be done only by the slow and patient processes of Nature in the line of adapting the animal to its environment. The rapid change that is to come about by breeding must be directed and controlled by man. The cattle have nothing to say about the process. No doubt a higher order of beings who could control man might, and perhaps would change him by selective mating. How they would change him would depend on the use they wished to make of him, not on what the man himself would like to do. The contemplation of a higher order of beings experimenting with the human race is not a pleasant one for intelligent men.

Can we imagine men, through government, forcibly experimenting with each other? Who would settle the kind of man that was to be evolved or the specific changes that would be required? Or, what was to be done and how? Who could prophesy what man would be like when he should be made over in the likeness of something else? Who are the people with the breadth and tolerance and infinite wisdom, in whose hands it would be safe to place the remodeling of man? It is hard to conceive that it can be seriously considered.