Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/672

* CRIMINOLOGY. 580 CRIMINOLOGY. struggle for existence, and by the sharp contrast it oilers between rich and poor, between luxury und penury, excites envy and class hatred. Ao cording to Levasseur, urban j)opulation in France has a criminality double that of the rural ])opu- lation; while according to Mr. V. D. Morrison, London, with less than one-fifth of the population of England and Wales, furnishes one-third of the indictable crimes. A fourth point of great importance is the in- fluence of poverty. If poverty in itself were a decisive factor, we would expect poor countries to produce the most criminals ; but poor countries like Ireland, Spain, and Hungary show a smaller ratio of theft in the population than rich Eng- land. It is rather where great poverty exists side by side with great wealth that temptation is greatest and crime most frequent, especially crimes against property. Swift and unexpected industrial and commercial changes and hard times put character to unusual strains and in- crease the number of law-breakers. Inventions and progress in industrial processes often make it more difScult for men to support existence in their accustomed ways. There can be no doubt, moreover, that the keen struggle for existence imposed upon the poor classes disorganizes the family and destroys many of the beneficent in- fluences of home life. It may reasonably be maintained, on the other hand, that excessive wealth, with the idleness that it frequently be- gets in the possessor, is quite as apt as destitu- tion to lead to viciousness and crime. A wealthy criminal has, of course, more numerous and effi- cient means for escaping detection and punish- ment than a poor ofl'ender. Humanitarian novel- ists have accustomed the general public to the belief that hunger and pressing want frequently lead to theft. This belief does not by any means coincide with such facts as we possess; French criminal statistics indicate, for example, that thefts of food — bread, flour, meat, etc. — consti- tute only 5V2 per cent, of the total number com- mitted during the period from 1830 to ISGO. Among the other factors of crime which may properly be classed as 'social* are : the influence of social theories which tend to engender con- tempt for human life and the institution of private property: the absence of a widespread, deep-seated religious spirit which restrains men from yielding to evil impulses; the corruption of partisan politics which permits the worst ele- ments of the population to become the official guardians of the public peace and prosperity; JjTiching and public exhibitions of cruelty which debase human character ; detailed accounts of crimes in the daily press; the influence of asso- ciation and suggestion by which gangs of shift- less men or boys form centres of criminal life under the leadership of unscrupulous chiefs; social disturbances like war, crises, revolutions, and expositions, which disturb the even tenor of social progress and relax the social bond. lNDivTDr.i. Factors. Finally the individual factors of crime should be briefly considered. They have been carefully studied by a score of scien- tists, beginning with Lombroso, the founder of criminology, who w,as disposed at first to over- look all but the individual factors. Sex. — In all civilized nations women are less addicted to crime than men, and girls less than boys. Among most European peoples between five and six males are tried for offenses against the law to every one female. Women are less inclined to acts of violence than men on account of their pliysical weakness, but when wcnnen do become criminals their crimes are frequently character- ized by a cruelty and relentlessness not found in male oll'enders. The crimes of women are mostly infanticide, abortion, poisoning, domestic theft. They are addicted equally with men to the per- petration of parricide, and more frequently con- victed than men of parricide. Women are also more hardened criminals than men, probably because a woman may regain her rank in so- ciety only with the greatest difficulty. Age. — In proportion to the population crime is, as we should expect, at its lowest level from infancy till the age of sixteen. From that age it goes on steadily increasing in volume till it reaches a maximum between thirty and forty. Females do not enter upon a criminal career so early as males, and the criminal age is earlier in coming to a close for W"omen than in the case of men. Education. — The question whether education re- duces or increases criminality is far from being conclusively answered. Those States which have the best systems of education have also the most criminals in their jails and prisons. But as a rule the proportion of our prison population un- able to read or write is considerably higher than in the free population. M. Henri Joly, an emi- nent French criminologist, maintains that most frequentl}- passions and vices which have noth- ing to do with instruction are the veritable mo- tives of crime. It seems reasonably certain, however, that the lack of instruction in manual and trade processes and the absence of personal, moral, and spiritual influences accounts for much of the tendency to crime. Drunkenness. — All authorities agi'ee that intemperance is a serious cause of crime. It weakens the will, leads to evil associations, dulls the conscience. Statis- tical information concerning this point is usually non-official and of little scientific value. Eered- iti/. — Individual degeneracy, which Dr. Ferri has shown to be closely connected with crime, is frequently passed on from generation to genera- lion. The diagrammatic history of eight families given by Dr. Strahan in his book on Marriage Olid Disease illustrates the degenerate tendencies transmitted from father to children throughout several generations. Similarly. Dugdale. in his book on the Jukes, has traced the posterity of a criminal and found that the great majority of his descendants possessed vicious or criminal in- stincts. Lombroso and his disciples attribute crimi- nality to anatomical, physiological, and psychi- cal peculiarities of the individual, and have in- augurated the study of the criminal as a being separate and difTerent from normal man and woman. The biological peculiarities of the criminal are so marked that Lombroso speaks of a 'criminal type,' and enumerates the character- istics which constitute this type: height and weight above the average ; as^^nmetry of the skull, brain, and face: brain lighter in weight than the normal; light hair; scant beard; re- treating forehead: projecting eyebrows and ears; long arms: insensibility to physical pain; pointed skulls: heavy lower jaws; defective lungs; tendency to diseases of the heart and of the sexual organs, etc. Criminal anthropolo- gists, however, are far from agreeing upon these anomalies, and often reach conclusions divergent