Criminal Types

by V. M. Masten

Beyond all men, penologists welcome light on the predal puzzle; also, they evaluate accurately—though the public does not always as yet—the smudge from the farthing candles of self-seeking academicians. And that is to ignore the perjured meanderings of press agents who peddle spurious wares for a price. Of the latter, ex-prisoners cunningly thereby take a whack at law and order while they “cop the coin.” Moreover, lay “uplifters” encourage the criminal cunning.

It is bad enough when those who ought to know the fallacy and sin of it, attempt to substitute false procedure, loose methods, and maudlin sentiment for the vigorous and synthetic, if kindly education and training which alone can make good and self-supporting lads of lads who instinctively stumble. It is not far from dastardly when censure for the disappointing results which follow, is heaped on the shoulders of those who make creditable use of tools quantitatively and qualitatively so meagre, that the States must needs wax ashamed of them.

We give serious attention to the trite, wholly injudicious, and grossly false allegations against “prison guards” and their superiors in rank, because it is past time to attach advalorem tags to ever-recurring, petty consideration of a grave problem; a problem so profound, that those who give to it the most consecrated research are surest to put on the mantle of charity and the modest mien; and a problem with which Americans supinely drift, content to leave prescriptions for remedial measures to those who could not box their criminological compasses under either a theoretical or practical showdown.

In about the same ratio, prison guards and college graduates fail to make broad use of their institutional training. Neither, so derelict, draw inspiration for work to the true perspective of service. The one will see in education but books, and the other in the prisoner but deviltry. Nevertheless, at college is the place to study books, and in prison the place to study the prisoner. There is but one way by which one can come actually to know the criminal, and that is to live and work with him.

We rightly accord praise to those who point the defective equipment of certain so-called “types” of criminals. By the same token, let us dig up better than sneers for those who remodel faulty human clay and shape it into something like the true image of man.

Those noisiest and most illogical find naught in the criminal to challenge other than means of reformation which would ordinarily correct the pranks of a headstrong youth. So, in free life, we induct the occasional criminal, and in institutional life encourage him to lock arms with the habitual criminal; for, once started on the toboggan of crime, the former usually gravitates to the level of the lowest of his class.

Of all ills, in or out of prison, with which our people are afflicted, that of false clemency with coddling is the most pronounced and far-reaching. So, natural laws will have it; and so, therefore, the after-parole record attests.

While the personal equation in prison management should never be negatively considered, the reformation of the criminal still resides at his finger tips. That, in the final analysis, whether or no our man likes “Steve” of the institutional staff; approves or disapproves of any part of the house régime; tells the truth about all following his release, or tells out-of-whole-cloth, stock-in-trade lies, with which the habitual criminal is ever ready to assail the ears of the super-emotional.

The last and only reliable test of the efficiency of a régime of reform reduces to the question of recidivation; which is to say: what percentage of the grand total of the paroled lapse into crime following parole, are caught at it, and are reincarcerated, either under the original or new indictment? As a matter of fact, we have not and cannot have informing data concerning the above, vital point, until we shall have established an international bureau of anthropometry, as well as regulations pertaining to the indeterminate sentence which shall insure reasonable supervision over, and control of, the paroled felon. Then, even, regiments of habitual repeaters will not be “caught at it.” And then, those will “report” as from a prayer meeting, who had just cracked a safe.

The criminal in America is peculiarly a menace to society because of that which we do not know and do not find out about him. Such data as we have stands a serious blemish on the penological escutcheon of the nation, and makes comparison with the best pre-war results of other nations as unsatisfactory as humiliating.