The pertinent question remains, has the study and development of criminology served any useful purpose? Little perhaps can come of it in its restricted sense, but it has taken a wider meaning and embraces larger researches. It has inquired into the sources and causes of crime, it has collected criminal statistics and deduced valuable lessons from them, it has sought and obtained guidance in the best methods of prevention, repression, and forms of procedure. The champions of law and order have been greatly aided by the criminologist in carrying on the continual combat with crime, and in dealing with the most complicated of social phenomena. The new science has, in fact, by accumulating a number of curious details, in recording the psychology, the secret desires, the springs of the criminal’s nefarious actions, his corrigibility or the reverse, “prepared the way to his sociological explanation” (Tarde). Thanks to the labours of the criminologist we are moving steadily forward to a future improved treatment of the criminal, and may thus arrive at the increased morality and greater safety of society. Very appreciable advance has been made in the increased attention paid to juvenile and adult crime, the acceptance of the theory, now well established, that there is an especially criminal age, a period when the moral fibre is weaker and more yielding to temptation to crime, when happily human nature is more malleable and susceptible to improvement and reform.
The study of criminology has, however, gone far to satisfy us that the true genesis of crime is not to be sought in the anatomical anomalies of individuals, or in the fact that there are people who under “any social conditions whatever and of any nationality at no matter what epoch, would have undoubtedly become murderers and thieves.” On the contrary it may be safely assumed that many such would have done no wrong if they had, e.g., been born rich, had been free from the pressing needs that drove them into crime, and had escaped the evil influences of their surroundings. The criminologists have strengthened the hands of administrators, have emphasized the paramount importance of child-rescue and judicious direction of adults, have held the balance between penal methods, advocating the moralizing effect of open-air labour as opposed to prolonged isolation, and have insisted upon the desirability of indefinite detention for all who have obstinately determined to wage perpetual war against society by the persistent perpetration of crime.
Authorities.—See A. Weingart, Kriminaltaktik, ein Handbuch für das Untersuchen von Verbrechen (Leipzig, 1904); F. H. Wines, Punishment and Reformation (New York, 1895); C. Perrier, Les Criminels (Paris, 1905); G. Macé, Femmes criminelles (Paris, 1904); E. Carpenter, Prisons, Police and Punishment (1905); R. R. Rentoul, Proposed Sterilization of certain Mental and Physical Degenerates (1904); R. Sommer, Kriminalpsychologie und strafrechtliche Psychopathologie auf naturwissenschaftlicher Grundlage (Leipzig, 1904); F. Kitzinger, Die internationale kriminalistische Vereinigung (1905); Reports of Committee on the best mode of giving efficiency to Secondary Punishments (1831-1832); Reports of the House of Commons Committee of 1853, of the royal commission of 1884, of the departmental committee of 1895, and the annual reports of H. M. inspectors for Great Britain and Ireland.
(A. G.)
CRIMMITZSCHAU, or Krimmitschau, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, on the Pleisse and the main Leipzig-Hof railway, 7 m. N.W. from Zwickau. Pop. (1900) 22,845. The most important industries of the town are the manufacture of buckskin, the spinning of carded yarn and vicuna-wool, and the processes of dyeing, finishing and wool-spinning connected with these. Among other manufactures are brushes, boilers and the like, machinery, metal ware generally, the cases and other parts of watches. The town has a modern school (Realschule), a commercial school, and technical schools for weaving and finishing.
CRIMP (possibly connected with “crimp,” to draw together, or fold in parallel lines, in the sense of “confine”; the primary meaning, however, seems to be that of “agent,” and the word may be a distinct one, of which the origin is lost), an agent for the supplying of soldiers and sailors, by kidnapping, drugging, decoying or other illegal means. Crimps were formerly regularly employed in the days of impressment (q.v.). Now the term is used, first of any one who engages to supply merchant seamen without a licence from the Board of Trade, and is not either the owner, master or mate of the ship, or is not bona fide the servant, and in the constant employment of the owner, or is not a superintendent (Merchant Shipping Act 1894, § 111); and, with a wide application, of the extortionate lodging or boarding-house keepers, who are generally in league with the “crimp” proper.
Sections 212 to 219 inclusive of the above act provide for the protection of merchant seamen in the United Kingdom from imposition. Local authorities at seaports have power to make by-laws for the licensing and regulating of lodging-houses for sailors, and to inflict penalties for the infringement thereof. If this power be not exercised, the Board of Trade may do so. Penalties are also imposed by the act for overcharging by lodging-house keepers, for detaining of seamen’s effects, and for soliciting. Unauthorized persons are prohibited from boarding a ship in port without leave. The Board of Trade officer at a port may provide money for sending a seaman to his home on discharge, and may forward his wages after deducting the expenses. Facilities are also given for having wages sent home from foreign ports at a small charge. These provisions have practically killed “crimping” in the United Kingdom. In the ports of the United States of America crimping was long prevalent, especially on the Pacific coast, and its prevention was very difficult, but state regulations as to the licensing of boarding-houses, and the limitation of the amount of so-called “blood-money” paid by masters of vessels to the suppliers of crews to ships denuded by desertions, have reduced the abuse materially.
The term “to shanghai” is used of a more serious offence. Literally meaning “to ship to Shanghai,” in China, it is applied to the drugging or rendering unconscious by violence or other means of persons, whether sailors or not, and shipping them to distant ports, in order fraudulently to obtain money in advance of wages, or for the sake of the premium paid for supplying crews.