Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/472

 458 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

virtuous characters, well established, do not need and are rarely conscious of amenability to existing penal laws ; weak characters easily get themselves enmeshed and stranded ; the habitually way- ward are unmindful and disregardf ul of legal penalties ; and the small ratio of all the criminals included in the class of deliberate and professional offenders brave penalties and derive zest there- from.

The bulk of prisoners consists of those who are weak, habitu- ally wayward, and unreflective persons — who do not readily connect, in consciousness, a present infelicitous experience with its remoter cause and consequence. Certainty and celerity of detection and arrest or sudden confrontment with an immediate menacing force may call the halt ; but such temporary deterrence cannot effect a permanent change of habitual tendency.

Among the many thousands of this inconsiderate class of prisoners I have investigated none is now recalled to memory who, antecedent to his crime, took serious account of the possible consequences. And a habitual criminal, a fair type of his class, on his discharge remarked : "I mean now to quit, if I get on all right, but not because I am afraid of prison. I am a man who is never afraid." Such men are no more hindered from crimes by the liability to be imprisoned, than railroad travelers are hindered from traveling because there are occasionally fatal railroad acci- dents. The professional class feels imprisonment to be accidental rather than naturally consequential. One, worrying over his im- prisonment because of its interference with his customary associa- tions and excitements, solemnly said : "This is a judgment on me for leaving my own line. So long as I kept steadily at the sneak line I was prospered, but when I tackled burglary my bad luck began."

Ineffective too, for deterrence, is the supposed disgrace of a criminal conviction and committal to prison. The generality of prisoners do not feel any disgrace. A certain tone of respecta- bility colors the prisoner's conception of crime, which is partly a product of his knowledge of current commercial irregularities, corrupt partisan politics, frauds committed in high places with avoidance of convictions, and jubilant newspaper notices of