CHAPTER VI

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CRIMINOLOGY

A whole science has developed based on the assumption of the existence of a biologically determined criminal type and upon the hereditary transmission of criminality. The Italian school of criminologists led by C. Lombroso has endeavored to define the type of the criminal and the physical characteristics of criminals addicted to various types of crimes. A number of stigmata have been established which, it was believed, characterized a person as a criminal. If this theory could be proved the treatment of criminals would have been much simplified, for it would have been possible to select all criminals before the commission of a crime and to protect society against them.

Unfortunately these extreme hopes have not been fulfilled. Our previous considerations make it plausible that they could not be fulfilled, because the interrelation between gross bodily form and mentality is not by any means close.

All that has been proved is that many criminals are defective, not only mentally but also physically. {121} It is, therefore, not surprising that anomalies that accompany various types of defectiveness should be found among them with greater frequency than among the socially normal; but it does not follow that the presence of any one of the stigmata described by the Italian school would prove that a person is a born criminal.

In many of the cases a careful statistical study has shown that the alleged stigmata, such as absence of the lobe of the ear and irregularities in the position of the teeth, are more frequent in local noncriminal groups than among the criminals, so that for this reason they cannot be considered as significant. Neither is there any clear physiological relation between the alleged stigmata and social or even physical defects.

A most careful examination of the criminal population has been made by C. Goring. His general results are worth quoting. He says: “For statistical evidence, one assertion can be dogmatically made: It is, that the criminal is differentiated by inferior stature, by defective intelligence and, to some extent, by his antisocial proclivities; but that, apart from these broad differences, there are no physical, mental or moral characteristics peculiar to the inmates of English prisons. The truths that have been overlooked are that these deviations, described as significant of criminality, are inevitable concomitants of inferior {122} stature and defective intelligence: both of which are the differentia of the types of persons who are selected for imprisonment.”

The conditions are the same as those previously described. As it is impossible to assign an individual according to his bodily form to a racial group, if the groups overlap, so it is impossible to recognize an individual by his bodily build as a criminal. We may say that it is more likely that a person physically and mentally defective will become a criminal than one who is normal, but we cannot say that he _must_ be a criminal.

The very definition of the term “crime” proves that no such intimate relation can exist. What was a crime in times past is no longer a crime now. Heresy was a crime punishable by death. Among heretics were included many who were mentally unbalanced and probably physically defective; but men like Huss or Giordano Bruno were criminals on account of their mental independence. George Washington would have been a criminal, if the English had caught him.

In foreign societies the concept of what constitutes a crime may be even more different than it has been at different periods among ourselves. Where food is shared by all and property consists solely of the necessities of life, such as clothing, weapons, household utensils, small pilfering is all but impossible, for the taking of food is not stealing, {123} food being freely shared by all. Where strict laws of endogamy exist, what we call incest may be proscribed. Where exogamy is found the laws of incest extend over wider, or curiously selected groups. Where vendetta is the law of the land certain types of murder are a virtue, not a crime. Where monogamy is the custom polygamy is a criminal offense, while in other societies the refusal to accept a number of mates may be so considered. Where sexual life is practically free sexual crimes do not occur.

Under these conditions the criminal must be defined as the person who habitually disregards the laws of conduct proscribed by the society to which he belongs. If we accept this definition we must except those cases in which conduct contrary to law is ceremonially permitted or proscribed. This happens, for instance, among the Pueblo Indians and in British Columbia in the case of certain semi-priestly groups who have the privilege of acting counter to the sacred rites of the people and who are accordingly feared by the profane crowd. The same is true in all cases of prerogatives of social classes--as in the relation between master and slave, when the slave is considered a chattel; or in prerogatives of feudal lords.

With the differentiation of what constitutes a crime the mental characteristics of the criminal {124} must also vary. The criminal who breaks through the inhibitions developed by the habitual behavior of the society to which he belongs is actuated by a variety of motives. The breaking point depends upon the drive that leads to action and the strength of inhibition. Among two persons with equal power of inhibition the starving pauper will be led to theft by hunger; the well-to-do who is deprived of his conveniences will succumb much more readily, because the strain which for the pauper would be insignificant is felt by him as suffering. Such conditions may account for the similar distribution of criminality in well-to-do and poor social groups.

The problem of the heritability of criminality as well as of other forms of social deficiency presents the same difficulties that are encountered in all attempts to discriminate between organic and environmental determination.

The definition of crime is so complex and so variable, so entirely dependent upon social conditions that criminality itself can hardly be considered as hereditary. It is, however, possible that certain dispositions may be hereditary that lead to acts that are in some cases considered as criminal. It has been proved that the criminal is, in many respects, defective. If the deficiency is hereditary, then a greater probability exists that {125} a defective individual belonging to a hereditary line of defectives may become a criminal.

The investigation of families like the Kallikaks has shown that there are strains in which criminality is very frequent. From a purely practical point of view these data allow us to say that when a person is a criminal or otherwise defective there is a greater likelihood of finding criminals or defectives in his family than among the relatives of a person who is not a criminal.

The reason for this is easily understood if we remember that the same is true for any trait that occurs comparatively rarely and with unequal frequency in different families. If in a preponderantly blond population a blonde is selected we exclude all those families in which no blondes occur and the average frequency of blondness in the population thus selected will be considerable. On the other hand, if we select a brunette individual the whole mass of families that contain brunette individuals will appear, and the average frequency of blondness in the series thus selected will be much lower. The same is true when we select exceptionally short individuals. Then all tall families will be eliminated the more the higher their average stature, and the series so selected will contain an inordinately large number of short individuals. Conversely in the series of families selected as relatives of a tall person the {126} relative frequency of short ones will be much less.

If all families were equal in regard to the relative frequency of criminality, defects, blondness or low stature--then the series selected as relatives of criminals, defectives, blondes or short individuals would be the same as the series of relatives of noncriminals, normals, brunette and tall individuals. The greater frequency of criminality among relatives of criminals does not allow us to deduce the laws of heredity of criminality, unless the frequency distribution of criminality of families is accurately known.

We have seen that the family lines constituting a population differ among themselves. They differ also in regard to criminality and frequency of defects. The questions to be answered are whether these are environmentally determined or hereditary and what the laws of heredity are.

The observations of Habit-Clinics for preschool children throw an interesting light upon this problem. Although the statistical results of these observations must be used with considerable caution, the psychological analysis elucidates the far-reaching influence of an unfavorable environment upon the behavior of physically weak subjects and the development of antisocial tendencies that may arise under stresses of a family situation that makes for revolt against tyrannical authority or creates in other ways serious antagonisms. {127}

No less instructive are the observations of psychoanalysis. While I am not inclined to follow the intricate and, as it seems to me, arbitrary reasonings of psychoanalysts, sufficient material has been accumulated showing that under severe stresses, particularly after a sudden “trauma,” weak individuals may develop abnormal mental habits of the most varied kind.

The general evidence points to the conclusion that the weak individual takes to antisocial acts when the environmental stress that brings about disregard of the laws of society is sufficiently acute. The stronger the individual the greater the stress that will be required.

C. Goring, in the investigation previously referred to, minimizes the environmental factor as a determinant of criminality. He tries to prove that all other social irregularities found among criminals, such as lack of schooling or irregular employment, or poverty are dependent upon lack of intelligence. His argument is based on the statistical interrelation between intelligence and the various social defects. He determines the average intelligence of a group by the relative frequency of mental defectives. He assumes that the greater their number the lower the average intelligence. This is a doubtful procedure, because the range of variation in the groups does {128} not need to be the same. If, for instance, the mentality of criminals were more variable than that of noncriminals, they would have a larger number of defectives even if they had the same average intelligence. Social irregularities combined with criminality are the more frequent the greater the relative number of mental defectives. The argument might also be reversed and we might say that mental defects combined with criminality are the more frequent the greater the relative number of social irregularities, such as lack of schooling or irregular employment. In order to prove that organically determined intelligence is the cause of both social irregularities and criminality it would be necessary to show that groups of individuals of the same intelligence, taken at random from the total population, would have the same relative frequency of criminality regardless of other social defects, such as poverty, lack of schooling or irregularity of employment. Since we do not know the distribution of intelligence in the total population the ratio of criminality cannot be determined and it cannot be claimed that hereditary intelligence is the decisive factor.

I believe, therefore, that the irrelevancy of environment as a factor producing criminality has not been proved.

Many authors have tried to deduce from the {129} distribution of cases of criminality in family lines that the tendency is inherited in a simple Mendelian ratio. The infinite complexity of conditions that bring an individual into the class of convicted criminals does not make such a conclusion likely and the number of cases that have been brought forward is entirely insufficient for a conclusive proof. The actual statistical data indicate only that in the population family lines differ in their degree of criminality.

The assumption of a simple form of Mendelian heredity, and that of the occurrence of much more complex forms which include environmental factors lead to quite distinct practical results. In the former case the occurrence of a single case of criminality in a family and a knowledge of the simple rules of hereditary transmission would enable us to foretell how many individuals in various family lines would be affected. In the latter case prediction would be well-nigh impossible, because the rules of heredity, although following fundamentally the same laws, would be so varied that the hereditary characteristics of a single family would not be known.

More important than this is the difficulty of differentiation between environmental and hereditary causes, for if a whole family is exposed to the same deleterious conditions and a sufficient {130} organic weakness exists, the whole family may become criminal, while under more fortunate conditions it could withstand the social pressure to which it is exposed.

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