That the younger sons of the "Jukes" family fell into habits of vagabondage (leaving it to the elder sons to carry on the criminal traditions of the family) is also worthy of notice. It serves to show that whatever the influence of heredity may be, as a factor disposing towards crime, it cannot be an independent and final factor. In families living after a primitive manner of life, as this family did, the elder sons are invariably the companions of their fathers and accompany them on their depredatory raids. The younger sons are left to the milder environment of their mother's society. Thus from a criminal point of view, the environment of the elder sons is more intense than that of the younger sons. The difference in environment accounts for the difference in character formed; the more intense environment accounting for criminals and the milder environment for vagabonds. Sometimes the influence of environment is overcome, and we noticed that among the "Jukes" a proportion of the family was honest and industrious. Acknowledging the transmission of a physical defect from a criminal ancestry, we must bear in mind that the conditions of the criminal's life are such as are calculated to produce in himself that defect which he transmits. His body becomes weakened, his nervous system disordered, and the physical substratum of his mind diseased. These defects he transmits to his offspring and thus handicaps them in the effort that is required from the individual to adapt himself to the conditions of society.
This is the criminal "taint" or handicap that makes it more likely that the individual should fall into crime than the normal man. Although society regards this hereditary criminal as a monster, it has been made clear that he is really more deserving of compassion than one not so handicapped. To secure society from his injurious acts, our courts frequently take the illogical and unjust course of imposing a more severe punishment upon him. This is in itself a clear evidence of the demand that exists for penological reform.
Environment.—By environment we understand bad homes, bad associations, and generally bad conditions.
Of the condition of the 12,000 persons who passed through the Elmira Reformatory between the years 1876-1902, only 1.47 per cent. came from good homes and 37.4 per cent. from fair homes. Of the character of the men's associations, 56.6 per cent. was positively bad; 41.9 per cent. was "not good;" .9 per cent. was doubtful, and 1.6 per cent. was good.
It is scarcely necessary from a practical point of view to enquire into the actual amount of crime which results from a bad environment, for it is only too obvious that none but those of the strongest wills and of the highest morality can resist the influence of bad surroundings when these are constant. Our enquiry should rather be directed to ascertain what constitutes a bad environment and what are the causes that produce it. It should also seek to discover by what means its evil influence may be checked and how to eradicate these influences when present. The attitude of our law-courts towards the criminal is practically this:—"You have been reared amidst evil surroundings whose influence you could not resist, you are a criminal, an outcast from society, you must be punished by being locked up in a school of crime in the hope that it may inspire you to live a better life. The sentence of the court is ..." And society endorses this attitude!
The evil influence of bad surroundings is well exemplified by an instance recorded by Viscount D'Haussonville in his work "L'Enfance a Paris":—"Some years ago a band of criminals were brought before the jury of the Seine charged with a terrible crime, the assassination of an aged widow, with details of ferocity which the pen refuses to describe. The president of the court having asked the principal, Maillot, called 'the yellow,' how he had been brought to commit such a crime, he replied:—What do you wish that I should tell you Mr President? Since the age of seven years I have been found only on the streets of Paris. I have never met anyone who was interested in me. When a child, I was abandoned to every vicissitude—and I am lost. I have always been unfortunate. My life has been passed in prisons and gaols. That is all. It is my fate. I have reached—you know where. I will not say that I have committed the crime under circumstances independent of my own will, but finally—(here the voice of Maillot trembled) I never had a person to advise me. I had in view only robbery. I committed robbery but I ended with murder."
The following description of the manner in which parents may defeat the work of the juvenile reformatory or industrial school was given by Senator Roussel at the Fourth International Prison Congress:—"The pernicious influence of parents relative to minors is manifest in two ways and at two periods of the child's life. First in extreme youth, when he is only a burden, his parents neglect him. He is left without proper care, often without proper food and subjected to all the hazards of the streets; he is forced to be a vagabond and a beggar, and this situation continues until a violation of the law places the little unfortunate in the hands of justice. Later, everything is changed. When by maturity of age and good effects of penitentiary education, the child instead of being a burden can be a source of profit, we see those same parents, who had abandoned him in his infancy, and apparently had forgotten him altogether, go to him and win him back to them by their entreaties, and finally on his discharge regain him by virtue of parental authority. This indiscretion of evil parents ... is the way that the first-fruits of correctional or charitable education are corrupted and that a great many minors who would have become useful members of society, are definitely lost to it."
It may be heresy to criticise our public school system but it is more than an open question whether we are not producing a generation of badly educated people who are not aware of their own ignorance, who see no dignity in labour and who prefer to make their living by speculation rather than by work. The fault largely consists in estimating the efficiency of a school or a teacher solely by the results obtained at examination and making the children work for this end and this end only. Their memories are taxed to the uttermost but no attempt is made to develop them into reasoning, enquiring and labour loving beings. The difficulty with which children in the sixth and seventh standards follow the simplest arguments is simply amazing. The teachers, moreover, have no opportunity for cultivating the art of pedagogy. Their whole time is taken up preparing matter to pour into the child's mind. The bad salaries that are paid can also have but one result, viz., the depriving the State of the services of the most manly and most noble teachers and having the work committed to those of the genus prig.
Bad homes, bad schools and playgrounds only once removed from cattle yards, will be, in this country, the most potent factors in producing crime.
Alcohol.—The influence of alcohol in the commission of crime is both direct and indirect. We see its direct influence in those crimes which are committed whilst the culprit is either in a state of intoxication or else just recovering from such a state. To detect and trace its indirect influence a much closer study is required. The inconsequent, lazy and thriftless life of the criminal demands some sort of stimulant, and this is found readily at hand in alcohol. Alcohol is not the cause of the crimes of these people but it is closely associated with such cause. The man who stabs another in a saloon is not then guilty of his first crime. Under the influence of intoxication he has lost his power of self-control and he commits a deed for which he may in a sober moment have still a degree of moral abhorrence or be perhaps too much of a coward to perform.