Criminal Sociology

by Enrico Ferri

The taxes and other indirect restrictions on the production and sale of alcohol are far more efficacious than our more or less enormous gaols. The question of pronounced and chronic drunkenness has increased in gravity, owing to its effect upon the physical and moral health of the people.

In France the average consumption of wine, estimated at 62 litres (13.64 gallons) per head in 1829, exceeded 100 litres in 1869; and in Paris the average of 120 litres in 1819-30, reached 227 litres in 1881. The average yearly consumption of alcohol in France rose from .93 in 1829 to 3.24 in 1872, and 3.9 in 1885, the rates in a few towns being still higher. The total manufacture of alcohol in France (95 per cent. of <p 117>which is consumed in the form of drink) rose from 479,680 hectolitres in 1843 to 1,309,565 in 1879, and 2,004,000 in 1887. Simultaneously, we have seen that there was an increase of crimes and offences in France, suicides in particular having increased from 1,542 in 1829 to 8,202 in 1887.

Moreover I have shown by a special table (Archivio di Psichiatria) that in France, despite a certain inevitable variation from year to year, there is a manifest correspondence of increase and decrease between the number of homicides, assaults, and malicious wounding, and the more or less abundant vintage, especially in the years of extraordinary variations, whether of failure of the vintage (1853-5, 1859, 1867, 1873, 1878-80), attended by a remarkable diminution of crime (assaults and wounding), or of abundant vintages (1850, 1856-8, 1862-3, 1865, 1868, 1874-5) attended by an increase of crime.

I was also the first to show that in the vintage months there is an increase of occasional crimes and offences against the person, owing to that connection between drink and crime which had already been remarked upon by M. Pierquin amongst others, and illustrated by the newspaper reporters on the days which follow Sundays and holidays.

But apart from their natural variation, the connection between drink and crime is definitely established. Every day we have the confirmation of Morel's statement, that ``alcoholism has produced a demoralised and brutalised class of wretched beings, characterised by an early depravation of instincts, and by indulgence in the most immoral and dangerous actions.'' It is <p 118>useless to quote again in this place the data of psycho- pathology and legal medicine, or those of prison statistics relating to imprisoned drunkards, or to tavern brawls as the proved causes of crime.

Nevertheless it is a fact that the relation of cause and effect between drink and crime has recently been denied, with the aid of arguments based upon statistics. M. Tammeo opened the discussion by observing that the countries of Europe and the provinces of Italy distinguished by the largest consumption of alcohol, show lower ratios under the worst crimes of violence. He gave to his remark a relative and limited value, for he only denied that the abuse of liquor was the most active cause of crime. After him M. Fournier de Flaix, maintaining the same proposition with the same statistical arguments, and admitting that ``alcohol is a special scourge for the individual who indulges in it,'' yet concluded that ``alcoholism is not a scourge which menaces the European race.'' And he repeated that the nations which consumed the greatest quantity of alcohol show a slighter frequency of crime, especially against the person. Lastly M. Colajanni enlarged upon the same proposition, using the statistical data so fully set out by M. Kummer, and drew a still more positive conclusion, that ``there is a lack of constancy, regularity, and universality in the relations, coincidence, and sequence, as between alcoholism and crime and suicide; so that it is impossible to establish any statistical relation of cause and effect between these phenomena.''

Passing over the grave errors of fact in M. Colajanni's brochure, I will only observe that this pro<p 119>position is a pure misapprehension of statistical logic.

If we once admit (and unfortunately it cannot be denied) the bad influence of alcohol on bodily and mental health, in the form of spirits as well as of wine—as to which it is not correct to say that the southern departments are not consumers of alcohol—it cannot be maintained that alcohol, which is physically and morally injurious to individuals, is not hurtful to nations, which are but aggregates of individuals.

There is an easy answer to the statistical arguments. (1) A symmetrical and continuous agreement of figures is never found in any collection of statistics, for in all that concerns a society the intervention of individual, physical, and social causes is inevitable. (2) A negative conclusion from these partial and natural disagreements (for it is especially true in biology and sociology that every rule has its exceptions, due to intervening causes) would only be justified if it had been maintained that alcoholism is the sole and exclusive cause of crime. But as this has never been asserted by anybody, all the statistical arguments of Fournier and Colajanni are based on a misapprehension. And unfortunately they do not destroy the link of causality between drink and crime. This connection is occasional, in assaults, wounding, and homicide in acute alcoholism. It is habitual, in the case of chronic alcoholism, as in crimes against property, the person, morality, and public officers. And this in spite of the relatively low figures, though lower than the facts warrant, con<p 120>tained in the general statements, apart from special and scientific inquiries into alcoholism as a direct and manifest cause of crime and suicide.

I wrote as early as 1881 that alcoholism, prior to its becoming a cause, is the effect of wretched social conditions in the poorer classes; and that to the one-sided simplicity of economic causes it is necessary to add certain bio-psychical conditions and conditions of physical environment, which go far to determine the geographical distribution of spirit-alcoholism (chronic and more serious, in northern countries and provinces) and wine-alcoholism (acute and less deep-seated, in the countries and provinces of the south).