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THE CRIMINAL & THE COMMUNITY
THE CRIMINAL & THE COMMUNITY
THE CRIMINAL & THE COMMUNITY BY JAMES DEVON MEDICAL OFFICER OF H.M. PRISON AT GLASGOW WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PROF. A. F. MURISON, LL.D. “GREAT MEN ARE NOT ALWAYS WISE: NEITHER DO THE AGED UNDERSTAND JUDGMENT. THEREFORE I SAID, HEARKEN UNTO ME; I ALSO WILL SHEW MINE OPINION.” Job XXXII. 10, 11. TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN LONDON: JOHN LANE MCMXII WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND TO MATTHEW G. KELSO AND SAMUEL GIBSON FRIENDS INDEED...
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The importance of the subjects handled in this volume requires no demonstration. Already, and for long, the treatment of them has naturally engaged the sympathetic study of philanthropists, and more recently it has attracted the earnest attention of scientific inquirers. Hitherto, however, the results have been far from satisfactory; and there is ample room for further discussion, especially from the standpoint of a thoroughly practical man with large experience both of criminals and of the soci
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
THE CRIMINAL AND THE CRIMINOLOGISTS Classification of criminals—The treatment of the criminal not a medical but a social question—Technical differences between crimes and offences—Changes in the law—Vice and crime—The beginner in crime—Common characters of the “criminal class”—Atrocious crimes exceptional—So-called scientific studies of the criminal—How figures mislead—Composite photographs and averages—Estimate of character from physical examination—Causal relationship to crime of these charact
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
HEREDITY AND CRIME Does heredity account for one quality more than another?—Impossibility of forecasting the conduct of others—Do criminals breed criminals?—The fit and the unfit—Unequal endowments—Ability and position—Inherited faculties and social pressure—Crime the result of wrongly directed powers—Original sin and heredity—Heredity behind everything. In the effort to assign a general cause for criminality an undue emphasis may easily be placed on any one factor. There are those who seem to t
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
INSANITY AND CRIME Insanity and responsibility—Removal of the insane from prison—Crime resulting from insanity—Case of theft—Of embezzlement—Of fire-raising—Insanity and murder charges—The result of an act not a guide to the nature of the act—Observation of prisoners charged with certain offences—Insanity as a result of misconduct—Cases—The mentally defective—Cases. There seems to be a widespread opinion that all criminals and offenders are more or less insane, but those who hold it have nothing
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
PHYSICAL DEFECTS AND CRIME Physical defects beget sympathy—Rarely induce crime—May cause mental degeneration—Case of jealousy and murder. Just as some degree of mental deficiency is not incompatible with the ability to live a peaceable and useful life, physical defects do not necessarily unfit a man to discharge his duties as a citizen. In either case the sphere of his usefulness is limited, but that is all that can be said. Much will depend on his social position. When a person who is physicall
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
THE STUDY OF THE CRIMINAL The reliability of prisoners’ statements—Deceit or misunderstanding?—Frankness and knowledge required on the part of the investigator—The prisoner’s statement should form the basis of enquiry—Information and help obtained from former friends—The diffusion of knowledge so obtained—The prevention of crime and the accumulation of knowledge. Any study of the criminal based on observations made when he is in prison must of necessity be partial and misleading. It is like writ
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
DRINK AND CRIME Drink commonly accredited with the production of crime—Minor offences usually committed under its influence—Drink a factor in the causation of most crimes against the person—Double personality caused by drink—Drunken cruelty—Drunken rage—Assaults on the drunken—Sexual offences—Child neglect—Mental defect behind the drunkenness of some offenders—Malicious mischief and theft—Drunken kleptomania—The professional criminal and drink—Thefts from the drunken—Amount of crime not in ratio
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
POVERTY, DESTITUTION, OVERCROWDING, AND CRIME The majority of persons in prison there because of their poverty—Poverty and drink—Poverty and petty offences—Poverty and thrift—Poverty and destitution—Case of theft from destitution—Poverty and vagrancy—Unemployment and beggary—Formation of professional offenders—The case of the old—The degradation of the unemployed to unemployability—No ratio between the amount of poverty alone and the amount of crime—A definite ratio between density of population
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
IMMIGRATION AND CRIME The stranger most likely to offend—The reaction to new surroundings—The difficulty of recovery—The attraction of the city—The Churches and the immigrant—Benevolent associations—The alien immigrants—Their tendency to hold themselves apart—Deportation—A language test required—The alien criminal—His dangerous character—The need for powers to deal with him. A majority of the prisoners dealt with in Glasgow police courts are not Glasgow-born; and this holds true of outlying town
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND CRIME The millionaire and the pauper—Ill-feeling and misunderstanding—Social ambitions—Case of embezzlement—Preaching and practice—Gambling—The desire to “get on”—The need to deal with those who profit by the helplessness of others—Political action—Its difficulty—Legislation and administration—The official and the public—Personal aid—Fellowship. Our social inequalities are the cause of much serious crime. That such inequalities always have existed is undeniable, and that th
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
AGE AND CRIME The inexperience of youth—The training of boys—Case of a truant—Another case—Intractability—The foolishness of parent and teacher—The absence of mutual understanding—Recreation—Malicious mischief and petty theft—The cause thereof—The need for instructing parents—Pernicious literature—The other kind—The modern Dick Turpin—The boy as he leaves school—Amusements—Repression—Blind-alley occupations—The Adolescent—Physical strain of many occupations—Unequal physical and mental developmen
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
SEX AND CRIME The position of woman—The posturing of men—Love and crime—Two cases of theft from sexual attraction—The female thief—Case—Blackmailing—Jealousy and crime—Two murder cases—Case of assault—Fewer women than men are criminals—Their greater difficulty in recovery—Young girls and sexual offences—Perils of girlhood—Wages and conduct—Exotic standards of dress—Ignorance and wrongdoing—The domestic servant—Her difficulties—Concealment of pregnancy cases—The culprit and the father—Morals—The
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
PUNISHMENT The universal cure-all—The public and the advertising healer—The essence of all quackery—The quackery of punishment—Rational treatment—Justice not bad temper—Retribution—Our fathers and ourselves—Their methods not necessarily suitable to our time—Capital punishment—The incurable and the incorrigible—Objections to capital punishment apply in degree to all punishment—The “cat”—The executioner and the surgeon—Whipping and its effect—The flogged offender—The act and the intention—Pain and
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
THE MACHINERY OF THE LAW The police and their duties—Divided control—Need for knowledge of local peculiarities—The fear of “corruption”—The police cell—Cleanliness and discomfort—Insufficient provision of diet, etc.—The casualty surgeon—The police court—The untrained magistrate—The assessor—Pleas of “guilty”—Case—Apathy of the public—Agents for the Poor—The prison van—The sheriff court—The procurator-fiscal—Procedure in the higher courts—The Scottish jury. To the majority of people the living re
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
THE PRISON SYSTEM Centralisation—The constitution of the Prison Commission—Parliamentary control—The Commissioners—The rules—The visiting committee—The governor and the matron—The chaplain—The medical officer—The staff. Before the year 1877 all the Scottish prisons, with the exception of the Penitentiary at Perth, were under the control and management of the local authorities. One result was that there were many standards of treatment, and Parliament decided that as the prevailing methods were u
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
THE PRISON AND ITS ROUTINE Reception of the prisoner—Cleanliness and order—The plan of the prison—The cells—Their furniture—The diet—The clothing—Work—The workshops—Separate confinement and association—Gratuities—Prison offences—Complaints—Punishment cells—Visits of the chaplain—Visits of representatives of the Churches—The gulf between visitor and visited—The Chapel—The Salvation Army—Rest—Recreation—The prison library—Lectures—The airing-yard—Physical drill. Once prisoners are within the priso
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
VARIATIONS IN ROUTINE The sick—Prison hospitals—The removal of the sick to outside hospitals—The wisdom of this course—The essential difference between a prison and other public institutions—The treatment of refractory prisoners—The folly of assuming that rules are more sacred than persons—The position of the medical officer in relation to the prisoner—The danger of divided responsibility—The untried prisoner—His privileges—Civil prisoners—Imprisonment for contempt of court—The convict—Short and
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
THE PRISONER ON LIBERATION His condition—His need—Alleged persecution of ex-prisoners—Discharged prisoners’ aid societies—Work—Temptations—The discharged female offender—The attitude of women towards her—“Homes”—The women’s objections to them—Pay—The religious atmosphere and the harmful associations—The effect of imprisonment. While in prison a man has been cut off from the life of the world. He has had no visits from his friends save once in three months, and as there is no newspaper which he i
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
THE INEBRIATE HOME The need to find out why people do wrong before attempting to cure them—Enquiries as to inebriety—The inebriates—Official utterances—Cost and results—The grievance of the unreformed—The time limit of cure—The causes of failure—The fostering of old associations—The prospect of the future spree—The institution habit. It cannot be seriously contended that our methods of dealing with offenders make for their reform. It may be that some of those who do not return to prison have bee
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT (1908) The Borstal experiment—Provisions for the “reformation of young offenders”—Is any diminution in the numbers of police expected?—Preventive detention—The implied confession that penal servitude does not reform, and the insistence on it as a preliminary to reform—The prisoner detained at the discretion of the prison officials—The powers of the Secretary of State—The change under the statute—The necessary ignorance of the Secretary of State by reason of his other
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
THE FAMILY AS MODEL The basis of the family not necessarily a blood tie—Adoption—The head and the centre of the family—The feeling of joint responsibility—The black sheep—Companionship and sympathy necessities in life—Reform only possible when these are found—“Conversion” only temporary in default of force of new interests—The one way in which reform is made permanent. One great mistake made by those who consider social problems is that they either regard man apart from his surroundings or as on
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
ALTERNATIVES TO IMPRISONMENT What is required—The case of the minor offenders—The incidence of fines—The prevention of drunkenness—Clubs—Probation of offenders—Its partial application—Defects in its administration—The false position of the probation officer—Guardians required—Case of young girl—The plea of want of power—Old and destitute offenders—Prison and poorhouse. If the present methods of treatment mainly result in the liberation of men and women from prison in a condition that makes it di
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
THE BETTER WAY The offender who has become reckless—If not killed they must be kept—The failure of the institution—Boarding out—At present they are boarded out on liberation, but without supervision—Guardians may be found when they are sought for—The result of boarding out children—The insane boarded out—Unconditional liberation has failed—Conditional liberation with suitable provision has not been tried—No system of dealing with men, but only a method—No necessity for the formation of the habit
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