The Criminal & the Community

by James Devon

In many cases, however, it assists the professional criminal; for the intoxicated man is an easier prey to him than the sober citizen. He can be assisted home by willing hands that will go through his pockets with skill on the road. He can be lured into dens that when sober he would avoid, and there be robbed at leisure and with little risk. He may even be relieved of his property without any pretence of friendliness, with small chance of his offering effective resistance or causing a hot pursuit. In all these ways he affords opportunity to the thief, and to the extent that the drink places him in this condition it is a cause of crime.

It appears then: (1) that the great mass of prisoners were under the influence of drink at the time they committed the offence for which they have been convicted; (2) that of these the “crime” of the majority is drunkenness, or some petty offence resulting therefrom; (3) that nearly all the crimes against the person are committed by, or upon, people who were intoxicated at the time; (4) that many offences against property are partly the result of drink; (5) that the majority of crimes against property are not due to drunkenness on the part of the criminal.

But the amount of crime in Scotland is not in proportion to the amount of drinking in any district. The consumption of drink is not confined to our cities and towns, and excessive indulgence sometimes takes place on the part of people who live in the country, yet no considerable proportion of our prison population comes from the courts of country districts or of small towns. The vice may be present without issuing in crime, though the drink itself has the same effect on the drinker whether he be living in the town or in the country.

In the country and in small towns, where the population is stable and where people are not packed together, they have opportunities each of knowing his neighbour, and they take some interest in one another. Indeed, one often hears complaints of villagers taking too much interest in their neighbours’ affairs. If a man drink more than he can carry, there is usually someone about who will see him home; or at worst he finds rest until he recovers, without the necessity of interference of an official kind. In the town, although a man may have friends who would be willing to look after him, he is separated from them, not by green fields, but by rows of tenements and multitudes of passers-by who have no personal interest in or knowledge of him; and if he lie down he obstructs the traffic and has to be taken in charge. He need not be any more drunk than the man in the country, but he is a greater public nuisance.

In the country if a man have his evil passions stirred or inflamed by drink and seek to indulge them, friendly hands restrain him from doing the injury he might otherwise do, and the crime which has been conceived may never be executed; but in the city a man may, and sometimes does, brutally assault and even slay another person, while people are living above, below, and on each side of him; and no one troubles to look in and ascertain what is going on. Men do not know their neighbours and do not care to interfere in the affairs of strangers. They have learnt to attend to their own business and to leave other things to their paid officials. The officials likewise attend to their business; and the prison cells are filled with men and women who have taken liquor to excess and have had no friendly hand to assist them or to keep them out of mischief. In the absence of this restraint and help, crime is just as likely to result from excessive drinking in the country as in the town.

There is another difference in favour of the country toper that is worth noting. The man who sells him the drink is usually a member of the community in which he lives, and he cannot afford persistently to outrage the sentiments of those among whom his lot is cast. He will not find it to his comfort to obtain the bad opinion of his neighbours; and if he get the name of filling his customers full he may run the risk of losing his license. It is not to his interest to disregard the welfare of his patrons even were he so inclined. Each district has its own standard of what is fair and allowable, and no publican can safely continue to fall below it. In the large towns the licenses are not usually held by men who live in the district. Many of them are in few hands. The licensee is represented by barmen who have a most harassing and exacting time; who work long hours for wages that are seldom what could be called high; who are engaged selling drink to men the majority of whom they do not know; and who are expected while keeping within the law to sell as much liquor as possible. Public opinion in the district can only touch the publican on his financial side; and then only by a campaign directed to ensure regulations that are sometimes as futile as they are vexatious, and that attack indiscriminately the man who is really trying to conduct his business in a reasonable way and him whose only care is to get as much out of it as he can.

But not only is there drinking in the country as well as in the town. There is no district of the town that has a monopoly of temperance. There are fewer public-houses in the wealthier than in the poorer districts, but there are more private cellars. There is no bigger proportion of teetotalers among men who have money than among men with none; and business men are as much given to drinking as artisans or labourers. There is a difference in their methods of consumption, the one judiciously mixing his potations with solids, the other taking his amount in a shorter period of time and running a bigger risk of getting drunk. Even when he does get beyond the stage of being quite clear in the head, the wealthier man has the means of getting home quietly, and there may be no scandal and no arrest. Though there may be as much drinking in the district in which he lives as in some of the congested parts of a city, there is less crime in proportion to the number of inhabitants; so that there are other factors than drink necessary to the commission of crime, even when drink is present.

In Glasgow we are accustomed periodically to learn from the testimony of English visitors that we are the most drunken city in the kingdom; and tourists write to the newspapers and tell their experiences and impressions of sights seen in our streets, quoting statistics of the arrests for drunkenness. This alternates with panegyrics of the city as the most progressive in the world—“the model municipality.” We are neither so bad nor so good as we are sometimes said to be. That the streets of Glasgow—or rather some of them—are at times disgraced by the drunkenness of some who use them, is quite true; but the fact that some travellers at some times see more drunk people in a given area than may be seen in any English city does not justify the inference that the inhabitants of Glasgow are more drunken than those of other cities. In no English city is there so large a population on so small an area. If there are more drunk in a given space there are also more sober people; but only the drunks are observed. In Glasgow, moreover, the ordinary drink is whisky, which rapidly makes a man reel. It excites more markedly than the beer consumed so generally in England, which makes a man not so much drunk as sodden. If it were worth the retort, one might point out that even if it be true that in Scotland you may see more people drunk, in England you see fewer people sober.

As for the statistics of arrests they are absolutely useless for purposes of comparison, if only because of the different practices that prevail in different parts of the country in dealing with drunks. It is also well known that a comparatively small number of persons is responsible for a very large number of arrests.

The facts show (1) that drink puts a man into a condition in which he is more liable to commit an offence or crime than he is when sober; (2) that while drinking is common in all parts of the country, police offences and crimes occur mainly in closely populated districts; (3) that the amount of crime and police offences in Scotland is not dependent on the amount of drinking alone, but is mainly dependent on indulgence in drink under certain conditions of city life; (4) that the major portion, and the most serious kind, of crimes against property, are not attributable to drink.