Criminal Sociology [22]
lapse into crime at an early age through the temptation of their personal condition, and of their physical and social environment, and who do not lapse into it, or do not relapse, if these temptations disappear.
Thus they commit those crimes and offences which do not indicate natural criminality, or else crimes and offences against person or property, but under personal and social conditions altogether different from those in which they are committed by born and habitual criminals.
There is no doubt that, even with the occasional criminal, some of the causes which lead him into crime belong to the anthropological class; for external causes would not suffice without individual predispositions. For instance, during a scarcity or a hard winter, not all of those who experience privation have recourse to theft, but some prefer to endure want, however undeserved, without ceasing to be honest, whilst others are at the utmost driven to beg their food; and amongst those who yield to the suggestion of crime, some stop short at simple theft, whilst others go as far as robbery with violence.
But the true difference between the born and the occasional criminal is that, with the former, the external cause is less operative than the internal tendency, because this tendency possesses, as it were, a centrifugal force, driving the individual to commit crime, whilst, for the occasional criminal, it is rather a case of feeble power of resistance against external causes, to which most of the inducement to crime is due.
The casual provocation of crime in the born criminal is generally the outcome of an instinct or tendency already existing, and far more of a pretext than an occasion of crime. With the occasional criminal, on the other hand, it is the casual provocation which matures, no doubt in a favouring soil, the growth of criminal tendencies not previously developed.
For this reason Lombroso calls the occasional criminals ``criminaloids,'' in order to show precisely that they have a distinctly abnormal constitution, though in a less degree than the born criminals, just as we have the metal and the metalloid, the epileptic and the epileptoid.
And this, again, is the reason why Lombroso's criticisms on my description of occasional criminals are lacking in force. He says, as Benedikt said at the Congress at Rome, that all criminals are criminals by birth, so that there is no such thing as an occasional criminal, in the sense of a NORMAL individual casually launched into crime. But I have not, any more than Garofalo, drawn such a picture of the occasional criminal, for as a matter of fact I have said precisely the opposite, as indeed Lombroso himself acknowledges a little further on (ii. 422), namely, that between the born and the occasional criminal there is only a difference of degree and modality, as in all the criminal classes.
To cite a few details of criminal psychology, it may be stated that of the two physiological conditions of crime, moral insensibility and improvidence, occasional crime is especially due to the latter, and inborn and habitual crime to the former. With the born criminal it is, above all, the lack or the weakness of moral sense which fails to withstand crime, whereas with the occasional criminal the moral sense is almost normal, but inability to realise beforehand the consequences of his act causes him to yield to external influences.
Every man, however pure and honest he may be, is conscious now and then of a transitory notion of some dishonest or criminal action. But with the honest man, exactly because he is physically and morally normal, this notion of crime, which simultaneously summons up the idea of its grievous consequences, glances off the surface of the normal conscience, and is a mere flash without the thunder.
With the man who is less normal and has less forethought, the notion dwells, resists the weak repulsion of a not too vigorous moral sense, and finally prevails; for, as Victor Hugo says, ``Face to face with duty, to hesitate is to be lost.''[11]
[11] For instance,
Thus they commit those crimes and offences which do not indicate natural criminality, or else crimes and offences against person or property, but under personal and social conditions altogether different from those in which they are committed by born and habitual criminals.
There is no doubt that, even with the occasional criminal, some of the causes which lead him into crime belong to the anthropological class; for external causes would not suffice without individual predispositions. For instance, during a scarcity or a hard winter, not all of those who experience privation have recourse to theft, but some prefer to endure want, however undeserved, without ceasing to be honest, whilst others are at the utmost driven to beg their food; and amongst those who yield to the suggestion of crime, some stop short at simple theft, whilst others go as far as robbery with violence.
But the true difference between the born and the occasional criminal is that, with the former, the external cause is less operative than the internal tendency, because this tendency possesses, as it were, a centrifugal force, driving the individual to commit crime, whilst, for the occasional criminal, it is rather a case of feeble power of resistance against external causes, to which most of the inducement to crime is due.
The casual provocation of crime in the born criminal is generally the outcome of an instinct or tendency already existing, and far more of a pretext than an occasion of crime. With the occasional criminal, on the other hand, it is the casual provocation which matures, no doubt in a favouring soil, the growth of criminal tendencies not previously developed.
For this reason Lombroso calls the occasional criminals ``criminaloids,'' in order to show precisely that they have a distinctly abnormal constitution, though in a less degree than the born criminals, just as we have the metal and the metalloid, the epileptic and the epileptoid.
And this, again, is the reason why Lombroso's criticisms on my description of occasional criminals are lacking in force. He says, as Benedikt said at the Congress at Rome, that all criminals are criminals by birth, so that there is no such thing as an occasional criminal, in the sense of a NORMAL individual casually launched into crime. But I have not, any more than Garofalo, drawn such a picture of the occasional criminal, for as a matter of fact I have said precisely the opposite, as indeed Lombroso himself acknowledges a little further on (ii. 422), namely, that between the born and the occasional criminal there is only a difference of degree and modality, as in all the criminal classes.
To cite a few details of criminal psychology, it may be stated that of the two physiological conditions of crime, moral insensibility and improvidence, occasional crime is especially due to the latter, and inborn and habitual crime to the former. With the born criminal it is, above all, the lack or the weakness of moral sense which fails to withstand crime, whereas with the occasional criminal the moral sense is almost normal, but inability to realise beforehand the consequences of his act causes him to yield to external influences.
Every man, however pure and honest he may be, is conscious now and then of a transitory notion of some dishonest or criminal action. But with the honest man, exactly because he is physically and morally normal, this notion of crime, which simultaneously summons up the idea of its grievous consequences, glances off the surface of the normal conscience, and is a mere flash without the thunder.
With the man who is less normal and has less forethought, the notion dwells, resists the weak repulsion of a not too vigorous moral sense, and finally prevails; for, as Victor Hugo says, ``Face to face with duty, to hesitate is to be lost.''[11]
[11] For instance,