Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

The second exclusion concerns the nature of the punishment. Acts [[378]]which bring no other punishment than moral disapprobation are not reckoned as crimes. They are not so called unless they are threatened with something more severe than this.

The provisional result is, then, as follows: A crime is an act committed within a group of persons that form a social unit, and whose author is punished by the group (or a part of it) as such, or by organs designated for this purpose, and this by a penalty whose nature is considered to be more severe than that of moral disapprobation. This definition, however, considers only the formal side of the conception of crime; it says nothing as to its essence. It is proper, then, to consider next the material side.

Crime is an act.[4] The question which presents itself first of all is this: Is crime considered from a biological point of view an abnormal act? The answer to this, which is of the highest importance for the etiology of crime, must be negative. From a biological point of view almost all crimes must be ranked as normal acts. The process which takes place in the brain of the gendarme when he kills a poacher who resists arrest is identical with that which takes place in the brain of the poacher killing the gendarme who pursues him. It is only the social environment which classes the second act rather than the first as a crime. From the biological point of view homicide is not an abnormal act. Sociology and history prove that men have always killed when they thought it necessary. No one would maintain, for example, that those who take part in a war are biologically abnormal.

The same observation may be applied to assaults. No anthropologist would maintain that a policeman clubbing a mob of strikers was performing a biologically abnormal act, or that the strikers were abnormal because they did not choose to let themselves be maltreated without defending themselves. It is only the social circumstances which class this defense as a crime, and cause the action of the policeman to be considered otherwise.

The same thing is true with regard to theft. For centuries it was considered the right of the soldiers to pillage the country of the conquered (and in colonial wars it is still done at times). Soldiers are not, however, from this fact considered to be biologically abnormal individuals. And yet there is no biological difference between these acts and those of the ordinary thief; for anthropology does not ask whether one steals on a large scale or on a small.[5] [[379]]

Continuing our researches into the essence of crime, it is obvious that it is an immoral act, and one of a serious character. Why do we find any act immoral? This question cannot be answered by asking of each individual separately, Why do you think such and such an act immoral? Moral disapprobation is primarily a question of feeling; ordinarily we take no account of why any given act is approved or disapproved by us. Sociology alone can solve the problem by taking the acts considered as immoral in relation with the social organization in which they take place. And in treating the matter thus we observe that the acts called immoral are those which are harmful to the interests of a group of persons united by the same interests. Since the social structure is changing continually, the ideas of what is immoral (and consequently of what is or is not criminal) change with these modifications.[6]

Considered in this way from the material side, a crime is an anti-social act, an act which is harmful in a considerable degree to the interests of a certain group of persons. This definition is not yet complete, however, for many acts of this nature are not crimes.

The best thing to do in order to find what is lacking in this definition is to examine a concrete case. A short time ago there was added to the Dutch penal code a new article threatening with a penal term of some years the railroad employe who went out on a strike. The proposal of this law, presented after a partial strike of the railroad employes, aroused great indignation on the part of organized labor, while the bourgeoisie in general regarded a strike as an immoral act which would henceforth be followed by a severe penalty. Notwithstanding the violent opposition on the part of the deputies of the labor party the plan was accepted.

It is clear that what must be added to our definition (already contained implicitly in the formal definition) is that the act must be prejudicial to the interests of those who have the power at their command. If, in the case cited above, the deputies of the proletariat had had the majority the Dutch penal code would contain no penalties against railroad employes on a strike. Power then is the necessary condition for those who wish to class a certain act as a crime.

It follows that in every society which is divided into a ruling class and a class ruled penal law has been principally constituted according [[380]]to the will of the former. We must at once add that the present legal prescriptions are not always directed against the class of those ruled, but that most of them are directed against acts that are prejudicial to the interests of both classes equally (for example, homicide, rape, etc.). These acts would without doubt continue to be considered criminal if the power were to pass into the hands of those who are at present the governed. However, in every existing penal code hardly any act is punished if it does not injure the interests of the dominant class as well as the other, and the law touching it protects only the interests of the class dominated. The rare exceptions are explained by the fact that the lower classes are not wholly without power.