By No Means All Delinquents Are Defectives.—One must not overlook the fact, however, that delinquent and defective are by no means synonymous terms, and that many delinquents are with little doubt the product of adverse social circumstances.
The recent careful work of Doctor William Healy[13] in connection with the juvenile delinquents of Chicago shows convincingly that the underlying causations of delinquency are many. Such factors as immorality or constant quarreling of parents, bad companions, lack of parental control, defective sense organs, debilitating habits, lack of healthy mental interests and a host of other environmental factors are not infrequently sufficient in themselves to develop delinquency in the absence of inherited deficiency. The present-day efforts of the student of heredity should not be misunderstood. They are not attempts to make all delinquents out defectives, but rather to determine what percentage of delinquents may be legitimately reckoned as defective and to make the facts known. Since there is no longer any reasonable doubt that, to express it in the mildest terms, an amount of delinquency far from negligible is due in great measure to congenital omissions or propensities, then the sooner the public learns this the better, for we may then set about supplementing our present efforts at race betterment through external improvement by devising means of cleansing the fountain source as well.
It can scarcely be doubted that the average man differs little if any in inherent personality and capacity from many a criminal who is such by occasion rather than by undue predisposition. Who can truthfully answer how many individuals there are who are not potentially criminals to some extent, given sufficient evocative conditions of ignorance, vice, adverse economic pressure and undue temptation?
“Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied.”
No Special Inheritable Crime-Factor.—The main difficulty in trying to find a hereditary basis for crime lies in the multiplicity of things crime may be. The individual impulsions which lead to certain offenses may be utterly different from those which conduce to others. Undoubtedly many inborn tendencies which are perfectly normal or neutral in themselves may be warped by circumstances into the commission of what are classified as crimes. The moral man may have the same desire for a thing that the criminal does, but when he finds that this desire can only be gratified by injury to others, he inhibits it because of his repugnance to such injury. The criminal makes no such inhibition.
In general, crime means an offense of some kind against person, property or state. But a biological analysis of it, could it be made, would require among other things knowledge of crime in terms of motive or lack of motive, whether the act was intended to benefit the perpetrator, some other person, or even the race or state; whether the offense was one of dishonesty, of cupidity, of lust, or of violence against another.
As a matter of fact no satisfactory classification of crime can be made since so many factors enter and in such varying degrees. Most classifications made in our legal codes are a hodge-podge based on a mixture of motive on the part of the participant, degree of turpitude involved, nature and extent of the injury inflicted, and the object against which the offense was perpetrated, whether an individual, society or the state. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that in many instances what was crime in the past is no longer so, and vice versa many things which are regarded as criminal to-day were not considered so in the past. So the futility of seeking a specific inherent propensity for “crime” is manifest. How, for instance, in terms of hereditary determiners shall we draw the fine lines of distinction among those who bribe legislators and legal officials, those who are avaricious and dishonest in the world of trade, and those who are wilfully obtuse in providing proper safeguards for employees?
What Is Meant by a Born Criminal?—All we can do is to fall back on the assurance that any act directly or indirectly injurious to society is an offense, and that those offenders who are congenitally unable to distinguish between what is generally accepted as right and wrong, or who if recognizing this are nevertheless uncontrollably impelled toward or are unable to refrain from anti-social acts because of some inherent condition of intellectual or volitional make-up, may be legitimately classed as individuals born with an aptitude for crime and social transgressions. In such individuals the natural mental make-up is lacking in some of its necessary elements so that memory, judgment, or will-power are not up to the minimum that is necessary for the establishment of proper conduct. In some cases, apparently, this lack finds expression in almost any kind of vice or crime into which circumstances happen to lead the individual. In others, however, there seem to be tendencies toward the commission of certain types of crime or vice. Certain family strains are characterized by petty thieving, others by deeds of violence, and still others by sexual offenses. Certain types of mental defect are closely associated with certain crimes. Thus sufferers from incipient paresis seem particularly prone to commit assaults and larceny; epileptics, crimes of brutality and violence.
The Epileptic Criminal Especially Dangerous.—One of the characteristics of epilepsy, indeed, emphasized by various psychiatrists, is that frequently it leads to loss of those forms of self-restraint which are absolutely indispensable to morality and the safety of society. Cruelty, atrocious sexual offenses and other vicious crimes are the result. It is a noteworthy fact, moreover, that often in the milder forms of affliction, where instead of well-marked convulsions only momentary lapses of consciousness occur, the greatest amount of mental and moral deterioration and fluctuation is sometimes found.
The situation as regards the epileptic is well presented by Doctor William Healy, Director of the Juvenile Psycopathic Institute of Chicago, in an article entitled “Epilepsy and Crime; the Cost”, in the Illinois Medical Journal, November, 1912. He says: