Page:Report of the Commission Appointed to inquire into the Penal System of the Colony.pdf/13

11 Colonies and elsewhere, attracted no doubt by the discoveries of gold. Now that the gold industry is settling down to a regular business this condition of things is rapidly passing away, and the foreign offenders who were attracted here fortunately show little desire to settle in the colony after they have been released from custody.

Having regard, nevertheless, to the large proportion of foreign offenders still in our midst it would not be reasonable to expect a young colony, such as Western Australia is, to take upon itself to initiate costly methods of reforming the criminal, such us are adopted in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and at Elmira, in the State of New York, where older, more settled, and wealthier communities have set in motion various elaborate and costly schemes of criminal reform.

Your Commissioners are of opinion that criminals of foreign or extra-West Australian origin should be encouraged, as far as possible, on their release from custody, to return to the countries from which they came. Whilst in prison they should be compelled to do such remunerative work as will, at any rate, to a large extent recoup to the State the cost of their maintenance.

CAUSES OF CRIME.

In order to deal with crime in an effectual and practical manner we must first understand its causes, and ascertain how far these causes are removable and remediable.

In this relation the tendency of scientists during the last few decades has been more and more to study the individual characteristics and peculiarities of the criminal as compared with non-criminal individuals, rather than the nature of the offence which he has committed. Scientific researches in this direction have supplied us with statistics of a very definite kind, showing that the criminal is not a normal individual, but a morbid variety of mankind, physically and morally degenerate.

Fortunately, this innate degeneracy of body and mind is in degree only, and thus those who are but slightly degenerate become criminals owing to stress of circumstances. They are therefore amenable to and susceptible of reclamation and reformation when placed in a suitable environment.

The recognition of this—the biological—factor in crime gives us a definite standpoint from which we can view it, and enables us to understand more clearly what natural and social influences are likely to affect the criminal man, who, from his degeneracy, has less control over his actions than the ordinary man.

The social environment is the cultivation medium of crime.

Neglect of sanitary and hygienic requirements greatly increases crime. So also does lack of education, especially of that part of education which deals with the physical and moral well-being of the individual.

Crime is ever influenced by climate, there always being an increase of crimes of violence in hot weather.

Ferri holds that any system of taxation which unduly increases the cost of the prime necessaries of life induces a corresponding increase in offences against property.

Again, any process by which public veneration for the law of the land is weakened most certainly increases crime. Thus purely expedient and experimental laws, not founded upon the dictates of justice and morality, may be the means of creating a temptation to do that which is punishable but not immoral. For instance, it is right to sell goods to any person who wants them and can pay for them at any hour which may suit the convenience of the parties concerned, but in some countries it is illegal. Such enactments must surely, by insidiously undermining the general respect of the people for the law, lead to an increase in the number of breaches of the law.

Poverty is generally admitted to be the main cause of the great bulk of anti-social offences; but here we are met with the curious paradox that crime is nevertheless most rife in times of prosperity. The Queensland Commissioners in their Report called special attention to what strikes them as being an extraordinary thing that in Queensland the years of exceptional prosperity should have been also years of exceptionally heavy criminal records, but since that report was published, investigations in other parts of the world point in the same direction, and establish the same conclusion as that indicated by West Australian official statistics.