Criminal Sociology [23]
I will recall a fact which Morel has related of himself, how one day, as he was crossing a bridge in Paris, he saw a working-man gazing into the water, and a homicidal idea flashed across his mind, so that he had to hurry away, for fear of yielding to the temptation to throw the man into the water. Again, there is the case of Humboldt's nurse, who was attacked one day by the temptation to kill her charge, and ran with him to his mother in order to avoid a disaster. Brierre de Boismont also tells us of a learned man who, at the sight of a picture in a public gallery, was tempted to cut the canvas, and ran away from his impulse to crime.
The criminal of passion is one who is strong enough to resist ordinary temptations of no exceptional force, to which the occasional criminal would yield, but who does not resist psychological storms which indeed are sometimes actually irresistible.
The forms of occasional criminality, which are determined by these ordinary temptations, are also determined by age, sex, poverty, worldly influences, influences of moral environment, alcoholism, personal surroundings, and imitation. Tarde has ably demonstrated the persistent influence of these conditions on the actions of men.
In this connection, Lombroso has drawn a clear distinction between two varieties of occasional criminals: the ``pseudo-criminals,'' or normal human beings who commit involuntary offences, or offences which do not spring from perversity, and do not hurt society, though they are punishable by law, and ``criminaloids,'' who commit ordinary offences, but differ from true criminals for the reasons already given.
A final observation is necessary in regard to this anthropological classification of criminals, and it meets various objections raised by our syllogistic critics. The difference existing amongst the five categories is only one of degree, and depends upon their organic and psychological types, and upon the influence of physical and social environment.
In every natural classification the differences between various groups and varieties are never anything but relative. This deprives them of none of their theoretical and practical importance, and so it is with this anthropological classification of criminals.
It follows that, as in natural history we advance by degrees and shades from the inorganic to the organic creation, life beginning in the mineral domain with the laws of crystallisation, so in criminal anthropology we pass by degrees and shades from the mad to the born criminal, through the links of moral madmen and epileptics; and from the born criminal to the occasional, through the link of the habitual criminal, who begins by being an occasional criminal, and ends by acquiring and transmitting to his children the characteristics of the born criminal. And finally, we pass from the occasional criminal to the criminal of passion, who is but a species of the other, and who further, with his neurotic and epileptoid temperament, not infrequently approximates to the criminal of unsound mind.
Thus in our everyday life, as in science, we very often find intermediate types, for complete and unmixed types are always the most uncommon. And whilst legislators and judges, in their complacent psychology, exact and establish marked lines of cleavage between the sane and the insane criminal, experts in psychiatry and anthropology are often constrained to place a prisoner somewhere between the mad and the born criminal, or between the occasional criminal and the normal man.
But it is evident that even when a criminal cannot be classed precisely in one or the other category, and stands between the two, this is in itself a sufficiently definite classification, especially from a sociological point of view. There is consequently no weight in the objection of those who, basing their argument on an abstract and nebulous idea of the criminal in general, and judging him merely according to the crime which has been committed, without knowing his personal characteristics and the circumstances of his environment,
The criminal of passion is one who is strong enough to resist ordinary temptations of no exceptional force, to which the occasional criminal would yield, but who does not resist psychological storms which indeed are sometimes actually irresistible.
The forms of occasional criminality, which are determined by these ordinary temptations, are also determined by age, sex, poverty, worldly influences, influences of moral environment, alcoholism, personal surroundings, and imitation. Tarde has ably demonstrated the persistent influence of these conditions on the actions of men.
In this connection, Lombroso has drawn a clear distinction between two varieties of occasional criminals: the ``pseudo-criminals,'' or normal human beings who commit involuntary offences, or offences which do not spring from perversity, and do not hurt society, though they are punishable by law, and ``criminaloids,'' who commit ordinary offences, but differ from true criminals for the reasons already given.
A final observation is necessary in regard to this anthropological classification of criminals, and it meets various objections raised by our syllogistic critics. The difference existing amongst the five categories is only one of degree, and depends upon their organic and psychological types, and upon the influence of physical and social environment.
In every natural classification the differences between various groups and varieties are never anything but relative. This deprives them of none of their theoretical and practical importance, and so it is with this anthropological classification of criminals.
It follows that, as in natural history we advance by degrees and shades from the inorganic to the organic creation, life beginning in the mineral domain with the laws of crystallisation, so in criminal anthropology we pass by degrees and shades from the mad to the born criminal, through the links of moral madmen and epileptics; and from the born criminal to the occasional, through the link of the habitual criminal, who begins by being an occasional criminal, and ends by acquiring and transmitting to his children the characteristics of the born criminal. And finally, we pass from the occasional criminal to the criminal of passion, who is but a species of the other, and who further, with his neurotic and epileptoid temperament, not infrequently approximates to the criminal of unsound mind.
Thus in our everyday life, as in science, we very often find intermediate types, for complete and unmixed types are always the most uncommon. And whilst legislators and judges, in their complacent psychology, exact and establish marked lines of cleavage between the sane and the insane criminal, experts in psychiatry and anthropology are often constrained to place a prisoner somewhere between the mad and the born criminal, or between the occasional criminal and the normal man.
But it is evident that even when a criminal cannot be classed precisely in one or the other category, and stands between the two, this is in itself a sufficiently definite classification, especially from a sociological point of view. There is consequently no weight in the objection of those who, basing their argument on an abstract and nebulous idea of the criminal in general, and judging him merely according to the crime which has been committed, without knowing his personal characteristics and the circumstances of his environment,