Percentage of departments exceeding the average of all France in:
| Rapes. | Crimes against Persons. | |
| Agricultural Departments (42) | 33% | 48% |
| Mixed (26) | 39% | 39% |
| Manufacturing (17) | 52% | 59% |
Not only poverty, but often wealth as well may cause crime. This is why some very wealthy districts show a figure for criminality as high as do the very poor. “The cause of all this is only too clear. On the one side poverty and the lack of absolute necessities impel toward the theft of indispensable things for the satisfaction of the individuals’ own needs. This is the first cord binding poverty and assaults upon property. On the other hand, poverty makes men impulsive through the cortical irritation following the abuse of wine and alcohol, that terrible poison to which so many of the poor resort to still the pangs of hunger. Account must be taken also of the degeneration produced by scurvy, scrofula, anemia, and alcoholism in the parents, which often transforms itself into epilepsy and moral insanity. Poverty also drives men to commit brutal eliminations of individuals who are an unwelcome burden upon the family, … Poverty is indirectly a cause of sexual crimes, on account of the difficulty which the poor have of obtaining satisfaction through prostitution; on account of precocious promiscuity in factories and mines; etc., … On the other hand, when a slight temptation toward evil is presented to an individual in comfortable circumstances, he is rendered physically and morally stronger by sufficient nutrition and a sounder moral training, and is less pressed by need, so that while he feels the impulsion to do evil, he can more easily resist it.
“But wealth, in its turn, is a source of degeneration from other causes, such as syphilis, exhaustion, etc. It drives men to crime through vanity, in order to surpass others, and from a fatal ambition to cut a figure in the world.”[11] It may be asked why it happens then that the inmates of prisons are almost always poor and rarely rich. The answer, according to the author, is that because of the influence [[96]]of his fortune, family, etc., the rich man can more easily extricate himself from the clutches of the law than the poor man, who knows no one, cannot employ a famous lawyer, etc. etc.
Professor Lombroso sums up his opinion as follows: “The economic factor has a great influence upon crime, not, however, that poverty is the principal cause of it, for excessive wealth, or money too quickly acquired, plays a large part as well; and poverty and wealth are frequently neutralized by the effect of race and climate.”[12]
II.
R. Garofalo.
In Chapter III of his “Criminologie”, and more especially in the first part, bearing the title “la Misère”, this author treats of the influence of economic conditions upon criminality.[13] The question which must be answered with regard to this subject, according to Garofalo, is the following: “Whether the so-called ‘economic iniquity’, a condition by which all citizens are either proprietors or proletarians, is the chief cause or, at least, one of the most important causes, of criminality.”[14]
It may be that a workman, i.e. a person who can only provide for his own needs and those of his family by selling his labor, can find no work, and for that reason falls into theft; but the author is of the opinion that in our days this almost never happens (leaving aside periods of crisis), and that if it happens the worker will generally find some one ready to help him, and that crime is therefore not a necessity. There is, indeed, absolute poverty, but it is almost always the result of a lack of courage and energy, and not due to a lack of work. It is not hunger, but a desire to procure the same pleasures as those enjoyed by the favored of fortune, that impels the working-man to commit crime. But this is not only the case with the working class but with other classes as well. For this desire belongs to every man; the millionaire envies the multimillionaire, etc. In order that this desire should lead to crime, it is not necessary that there should be a particular economic situation, but only a particular psychic condition[[97]]—the individual must have his sense of honesty weakened or wanting. Desire will cease to lead to crime only when there is no longer any advantage to be gained by it, and since this is inconceivable, crime will always exist. This explains why the number of crimes committed by the proletariat is very great, but at the same time why the cases of forgery, bankruptcy, etc. are very numerous among the other classes. In 1880 the figure for crimes against property (and analogous crimes) committed in Italy by proletarians, compared with those committed by property-owners, was as 88 to 12, while the ratio of the number of proletarians to that of property-owners was as 90 to 10. These proportions are nearly the same, which proves that as regards these crimes the proletarian class is no more criminal than the others.