Section 690 of the Penal Code lays down the statute very clearly on this subject: “Where a person is hereafter convicted of a felony, who has been before that conviction, convicted in this State, of any other crime, or where a person is hereafter convicted of a misdemeanor, who has been already five times convicted in this State of a misdemeanor, he may be adjudged by the Court, in addition to any other punishment that may be inflicted upon him, to be an habitual criminal.”
Section 691 says, “The person of an habitual criminal shall be at all times subject to the supervision of every judicial magistrate of the county, and of the Supervisors and Overseers of the Poor of the town where the criminal may be found, to the same extent that a minor is subject to the control of his parent or guardian.”
Another large class of persons who are totally unfit to be at large are kleptomaniacs, dipsomaniacs, pyromaniacs, epileptics and incendiaries. They should be placed permanently in an asylum. If necessary they could be deported to some island, where many of them could be put to work to cultivate the soil.
What we shall do with our unemployed criminals who roam the country in search of plunder is becoming a very serious problem. It is said that New York has from forty to fifty thousand ex-criminals. This is a low estimate. Whether it is true or not I am not prepared to say. At any rate, there are enough to keep over ten thousand policemen busy watching for this fraternity night and day.
It is safe to say that New York alone has a floating population of twenty thousand habitual criminals, who are ready at any moment to commit crime, without a moment’s warning, and then sail under a new name or leave for parts unknown.
There are also at least forty thousand men and women habitual misdemeanants in New York, who have been in prison for small offences, such as drunkenness, disorderly conduct, assault and petit larceny, from one to fifty times, and even more. What is going to be done with these?
The only remedy for the twentieth century tramp and habitual criminal is either to cure them, exile them or kill them. What shall it be? Perhaps the better and more humane method would be to colonize them until permanently reformed and cured. But while locked up they should be compelled to work for their living.
The obstinate criminal is a dangerous character. He lives on crime; his hand is against every man, and naturally in the interest of self protection every man is against him. It can be said of the unreformed criminal what the frontier man says of the Indian—”dead Injun, good Injun.”
Nor should petty thieves, paupers or tramps be allowed to go at large under any circumstances. They are social parasites and the State and city authorities should place them where they can be cured of their insane, lazy notions and made to work for a living or be permanently locked up. They have no more right to be at large than lepers or yellow fever patients, as they defile all with whom they come in contact.
A well known prison authority told me a short time ago that hundreds of men and women in this city go and return from prison like the swinging of a pendulum, and they are hardly out of prison before they are back in the toils again. What shall be done with them? That is the question which our authorities are called upon to answer.