Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/570

 532

The Green Bag

or somatic characteristics. He does say that if one should say that the de

assertions. Speaking of the marked anti-Lombrosian tendencies that have

linquent is the same as other men, “he must surely have a more complicated conception of human nature than that represented by simple free will."

developed in Germany particularly, he

The question of the existence of distinct

criminal

types

is of course

bound up with that of the action of social factors, and if the latter have

seems to side partly at least with the German writers, including Aschaﬁen burg, whose "Crime and its Repression" is also scheduled to appear in this series. ‘‘According to Sommer, even if there be no criminal type in the Lombrosian sense, it does not follow that there does

great importance it must be more

not exist a born or endogenous delinquent,

diﬂicult to indicate general character istics common to criminals in the mass. The sociological theories have thus viewed the criminal in an altogether

as the Germans have called the individual

different light from Lombroso and writers adopting his method, and the socialistic theorists, to whom De Quiros

devotes a section, have carried this tendency to an extreme, treating crime solely as a social phenomenon. Colajanni maintains that there is a direct relation between economic misery and crime. That De Quiros does not go so far as

this in the sociological direction is plain. He disagrees with Colajanni’s emphasis on the economic factor; the relations

oranthropological factor of the Italians." Therefore Sommer can say that Aschaf

fenburg has “placed in relief the basis of that doctrine which rests on the endogenous origin of crime." This non-committal position of the

author is much to his credit, and it makes it impossible to class him with the extremists of either the anthropologi cal or the sociological school, though he evidently leans toward the theory of

criminal types.

The problem, he says,

is essentially that of human personality, thus recognizing its complexity. Criminal anthropology, as he remarks,

between this factor and criminality,

has been the chief factor in revising our

he says, are not yet deﬁnitely known.

conceptions,

Of Bouger's “Criminality and Economic

fails to lay suﬂicient emphasis on the origin of the attitude of modern penology

Conditions," which is to appear later in the Modern Criminal Science Series, he remarks that it is based more on

the opinion of the author than on facts. Where, then, does the author belong, and what is his position with reference to the question of distinct criminal types? He himself tells us that the polemic waged around this question whether the criminal is born so or made

so “completely ﬁlls the history of the modern theories of criminology." And the seriousness of this problem De Quiros apparently fully realizes, approaching

it with the caution becoming the truly scientiﬁc investigator and modestly refraining

from

any

over-conﬁdent

but

De Quiros perhaps

partly at least in the perception that the criminal is the victim not only

of inherent forces but of those operating upon him externally from society.

Besides

the anthropological

factor, another that has been changing our penological conceptions, he says,

is that tendency, so complex in its origin as to be diﬁicult to describe, which leads toward the goal of penal tutelage substituted for punishment. These two factors need to be combined, he tells us, for criminal anthropology without the principle of penal tutelage leads to a crude or indifferent penology, while the penal tutelage movement,