Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

The indirect influence is not less important than the direct. War, our present industry, the family, marriage, political institutions, revolutions, vagrancy, prostitution, education, etc. are important causes of crime, but they can all be reduced to economic causes. According to many persons education is the one means of preventing moral evils, but John Stuart Mill has already said: in our present society the poor have no education, and that of the rich is bad. There is no possibility of a good education if a certain material well-being is lacking. Hence those who expect everything from education under the present conditions are wrong.

But where does well-being cease and poverty begin? Both are only relative conceptions; consequently we cannot fix their limits. [[222]]In order to attain the minimum of criminality in any given society there must be the certainty of the means of subsistence, stability of economic conditions, and equality in the distribution of wealth.

Some authors deny that political revolutions have their causes in economic conditions. Lombroso and Laschi, for example, attempt to explain them chiefly by physical influences; which is the more astonishing, because in the general opinion it is from economic causes that they are derived. They adduce, among other things, to support their opinion, the fact that out of 147 revolts that took place in Europe between 1793 and 1880, only a third were attributable to economic conditions. It goes without saying that this does not at all prove the correctness of their thesis, since in all these cases the authors are speaking only of direct causes, while most military revolutions, revolts against the royal power, etc., spring from economic conditions, even if indirectly. It is true that in the 19th century the direct revolutionary influence of crises and famines has decreased, because of the measures taken by the governments. This does not however prevent there having been revolts occasioned by such conditions (Lyons in 1831, etc.). The frequent revolts in Belgium and France, rich countries, do not furnish any proof against the thesis of Dr. Colajanni; for notwithstanding the great wealth of these countries, nothing proves that it is equally divided. As soon as the poverty of a people has passed certain limits, we see in that country neither crimes, revolutions, nor suicides, since all energy is then extinct.

Another question is this: how far is there a correlation between the progress made by socialism and the increase of criminality.[10] Several authors, like Garofalo, are of the opinion that there is an intimate connection between the two. But they do not furnish any facts as proofs in support of their assertion, to which, on the contrary, the facts give the lie.

The countries where socialism is most widely spread do not show the greatest criminality; rather the contrary. The German and Italian districts where there are the most socialists are no longer the most criminal. How could it be otherwise? While socialism is the conscious and collective reaction against the existing order, crime is the unconscious and individual reaction against that order.

Next, Dr. Colajanni turns his attention to idleness and vagrancy, which are both causes of crime. Out of 32,943 thefts in Paris in 1882, 57% were committed by vagrants. [[223]]

But are idleness and vagrancy considered in themselves also offenses? Any man is harmful to his species, says Féré, when he does not collaborate, either materially or intellectually, in production. According to Dr. Colajanni, idleness and vagrancy, viewed from such a high social point of view, are really offenses. But then the idle rich are also guilty of these offenses. Finally, what are the causes of these crimes? Spencer, Féré, and Sergi say: the vagrants are the weak, the degenerate, the parasites of society. The question is this, then: do these phenomena find their origin inside or outside of the human organism? Romagnosi says that vagrancy and idleness ought to be punished only when they are not excusable. To make them inexcusable it would be necessary to procure employment for every man who was willing to work. Spencer, Sergi, and Garofalo, on the contrary, are of the opinion that these crimes are almost always to be imputed to the same persons. However, Spencer should not have forgotten that in his own country, aside from industrial crises, numerous occurrences have forced a great number of persons to become idlers and vagrants through no fault of their own, as for example, the Irish and Scotch farmers driven from their lands by the landlords.

And Garofalo should have known that it is capitalism that has made the work of men superfluous by employing women and children, and that the cause does not rest with those who suffer from it; on the contrary, the cause of economic crises is not in their victims, but in the system that is in force.

An examination of the causes of these two phenomena obliges us to distinguish between habitual and accidental, or forced, vagrancy. However—and this is too often forgotten—the latter transforms itself into the former, for the taste for work is, like morality, an acquired social product. This is why this quality is lost when one is long without work.

One of the most important causes of the possible transformation of a worker into a vagrant is a long illness. Having lost the habit of work, and being enfeebled, a man will find great difficulty in going to work again. If he does not succeed he descends step by step until he comes finally to mendicity. But it is chiefly the economic transformations, inventions, overproduction, that must be called the “causa causarum” of the phenomena cited above.[11]