Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

“Crime is the necessary result of the joint action of two groups of conditions. The first group is due, partly to the innate, partly to the acquired character of the agent; the other to the environment surrounding him. The microbe of crime flourishes only in the culture medium of society. This sentence, which has gradually become a commonplace, indicates the significance of social conditions for the origination and development of criminality.”[13]

“It is obvious that a diminution in the number of certain crimes may be brought about by an improvement in the social order. The impulse toward crime is undoubtedly quickly strengthened by social conditions, and also quickly made weaker. Political and religious offenses become so much the more numerous, the more definitely and relentlessly the dominant opinion takes its stand against diverse persuasions. If today a certain tendency in art were to attain state recognition and the protection of the criminal law, tomorrow the aesthetic heretic would be persecuted as the religious heretics were persecuted in earlier centuries. The sexual instinct will constantly long for satisfaction and take it where it finds it. If you prohibit the possibility of such satisfaction within the bounds of legality, the [[188]]instinct will break the bonds and lead to crime. And whoever finds neither bread nor work will, in the great majority of cases, be able to discover ways and means of securing the one without the other at the expense of society.… ‘The beast in man’ is in all circles, in all strata of our society.… But the beast, with all its wild passions, with rage and hate, with covetousness and envy, with thirst for blood and insatiable vanity, is it not derived from father or mother, who have drained the pleasures of life or the woes of life to the dregs, who were corrupted in blood through their own fault, or without their own fault, before they gave life to the germ to which they imparted the curse of their forefathers as a heritage?

“A reorganization of our social order will materially lessen the impulsion to crime in the men who are living today, but infinitely more important and infinitely more permanent will be its effect upon coming generations. While diminishing the number of those tainted by heredity it will tame the beast in man. This is no Utopia. It will be easier, perhaps, to underestimate the effect of such a transformation, than to appreciate its full value.

“But which transformation? That is the question that we must answer, if we are not to be pushed aside as harmless visionaries.

“Our entire education, in school as in life, rests upon suggestion. What keeps us from crime is the inhibitory ideas, which are instilled into us until they permeate our flesh and blood and control our actions, without our being conscious of it. ‘Thou shalt’, ‘thou shalt not’, these general prescriptions of right and morality, of religion and philanthropy, or whatever you choose to call it, must determine our conduct, unless we stop to consider, hesitate, and delay.…

“The inhibitory ideas, however, retain their force only if we live in the community of our fellows, the enclosed circle held together by like views and a community of interests. Put upon his own resources, the true man makes himself known. But the men who can do this are rare. The great majority of us need outside support. Who has not seen in his own experience how the judgment and prejudice, the beliefs and superstitions of his associates have a determining effect upon him; how he supports others and is supported by them? Break up the enclosed circle and you weaken or annihilate the inhibitory ideas; shatter society to atoms, so that each stands by himself in the war of all against all, and you set loose whatever evil instincts have their roots in us; ‘declass’ man and you have driven him into the arms of crime.

“And this declassing has been most abundantly provided for by [[189]]our present economic system. It has unshackled egoism without setting any bounds to it. It reaps what it sows. In the proletariat it has created the very medium in which the microbe of crime flourishes. Next to the wealth of individuals lies the misery of the masses. Do we still wonder, then, that the criminal-statistician laments an increasing number of cases. Every society has the criminals that it deserves.”[14]

—The opinion of Professor von Liszt and of other bio-sociologists with regard to crime is a union of the doctrine of the Italian and French schools. Having already given a criticism of these schools I will limit myself to a few remarks.

The formula, “every crime is the product of an individual factor on the one side, and of social factors on the other”, is of little value for the question, being applicable to every act, even the most laudable, and explains very little of what is peculiar to crime. A more special examination of the so-called individual factor of crime shows that it is formed, for example, of great needs, of highly developed muscular strength—in short, of things which do not belong to crime alone; or it may be a lack of moral conceptions (the result of an unfavorable environment, of bad education, etc.). A veritable individual factor is to be found only in some special cases, where crime is the result of a predisposition, resulting from a morbid mental condition, combined with unfavorable circumstances. At times, then, crime is the resultant of an individual factor with a social factor; in most cases this is not so. In maintaining that it is always these two together which give birth to crime, one makes use of a commonplace, since by individual factors are understood conditions necessary to every act; or else the statement is quite inaccurate.

Finally it may be said also that most of the bio-sociologists, while recognizing the great influence exercised by environment do not give any description of this environment. It is not enough to name social imperfections existing in our days, and to demand their reform, one after another; we must first of all find out whether these imperfections are connected with the present economic system, and can be removed without attacking the system itself.[15]— [[190]]