Criminal Types

by V. M. Masten

In short, be actually a compassionate criminologist with an open mind, and not a misinformed, or half-informed, or uninformed ego-centric, single-track dilettante, who drives ruthlessly along rock-strewn roads, over which life students of budding and budded felons soon enough learn that they must pick warily their way all of the way.

But, warning! Listen to the “personal equation” cult, and many of the conclusions given off in this chapter by the writer postulate him a fit subject for the psycho-analyst. According to that wrecking crew, nothing clings to the habitual young felon that can’t be cast off with such as baseball, and a bit of “laying on of hands”—by the “crew,” of course.

The “hands” have been patting and puttering persistently during the past three decades. Result? The mounting American Apaché has not so much respect for law and agents of the law, as eagle for sparrow. He rides gun-hung, kills for the mere blood-lust of killing, lies “until the cows come home,” and laughs up his sleeve betimes over the use he makes and use made of “research” of him.

Caught and corralled—against which the chances are about ten to one—he nestles down in many a State nest, where he practically dictates in a boiled shirt, and “does” what he sneeringly terms, “sleepin’ time.” This, spite of the written effusions of ex-criminals, who rush to print with grossly overdrawn statement—for a consideration.

Writing and speaking about the class of criminals in question, gentlemen affect the esoteric. They have it, for instance, that the offenders are mostly “morons,” hopelessly ox-like mentally by nature’s fling in embryo, or the victims of arrested mental development. Therefore, gentlemen are moved to hurl anathema at those who dare the assertion that appreciable irresponsibility applies only to “morons” who had not measured up to average intelligence at any form of human activity, do not do so, and probably cannot do so.

Apparently, it does not occur to our friends that the mind that functions alertly along any one line, can be developed to function alertly along many lines. In any case, the question of the subject’s voluntary efforts will be uppermost; yet that question may be quite foreign to his intrinsic mental content. If he chooses to be a mighty clever thief, just as another chooses to be a mighty clever mechanic, and pursues single-mindedly his choice, he won’t know any more about mechanics than the mechanic knows about thievery; but if he becomes a mighty clever thief, he will have used brains sufficient for any ordinary accomplishment. That he had side-tracked honest for crooked skill agreeably with the weight of influences exerted upon him, relates usually to his moral obliquity, and not to his meagre mentality.

Specific mental efforts held in “arrest” by him who spurns the fruition of such efforts, by no manner of means classifies him a “moron” in the sense that he is commonly classified a moron. His choice of mental activity is oblique, but his execution under the choice stamps him as anything but a mental dud. He is usually a moral mongrel from mixed causes, and must be prescribed for as such.

Were any but the lowest grade of predal felons—bungling imitators they—fit subjects for kindergarten treatment, they were not able to master the most massive time-locked safe locksmiths can contrive; nor could they “get away” with about ninety per cent of their loot; nor hold peace officers in contempt, and the combined sleuths of the land pretty much at bay; nor press so cunningly, individually and collectively, for ill-timed and placed prison perquisites, and for comparative freedom of choice in the matter of their response to actual reformative measures; nor cast crooked lines and haul in the bebadged; nor enlist the “pull” and “protection” of higher-up grafters and meanest of secondary thieves; nor so mix high-soaring mixers of prison broth that they don’t know which way to turn for ingredients, and do turn over the seasoning thereof to habitual criminal rounders; nor lead up to false cards, exposed all the way from prevention to parole, inclusive of gross stretching of probatory extensions.

Real prison discipline for such men means a sharp tacking of their minds away from criminal shoals. Aside from educative activities understood, such as trades and scholastic instruction closely and consecutively imparted, it means a taking up of their loose, anti-social slack, mental and physical; particularly and essentially, of their smug contention to the effect that society is an “easy mark” for all kinds of criminous flim-flam and bunco-steering.

Well, then, what are the corporal and semi-corporal disciplinary tools to be employed on the job? Any tool, this side of cruelty or brutality stripped of revenge, which will bring it home to habitual, by-choice marauders who do murder for diversion, that they cannot dance on the shoulders of the State.