CRIMINOLOGY AND COMMON-SENSE.
ENGLISHMEN have been reproached with backwardness
in the study of what is known as criminal anthropology. But Englishmen shrink naturally from theories which explain too much, and we believe that on the whole we have gained rather than lost by a. temperamental =readiness to regard criminals as being predestined to crime because their oeciputs, sinciputs, or some other tell-tale physical feature are of a certain formation. Criminal anthropology is now being seriously studied in "England, and the best wish we have for it is that it should ensure distinction being made between the degenerates who are incapable of being other than habitual criminals and the criminals—the vast majority— who are capable of responding to deterring and reclaim- ing influences. Lombroso and his too ardent disciples have created a kind of Calvinism in fire study of -crime ; a man having what are regarded as the typical criminal features —the " sugar-loaf' head and so on—is held to be fulfilling his destiny by being a criminal, as though he were an absolutely helpless and unconscious agent. No one denies that there is a very important side to criminal anthropology ; it would be a long step forward, for instance, if it only fortified the already cogent reasons for a separate treatment of those criminals in whom the condition of " habituality " has been established, and who in the present circumstances are an enormous and unnecessary burden of expense to the State. But a real injury is done to any country in which criminal anthropology has the effect of lessening the belief in men's power to save themselves. We have before us a little book called "Young Gaol-Birda," by Mr_ Charles E. B. Russell (Macmillan. and Co., 3s. 6d. net), which ought to be read by any one who doubts that criminals are for the most part the product of their environment rather than the playthings of their inherited tendencies. If the conditions had been different, the young criminals Mr. Russell has studied probably would not have been criminals at all. In other society and under other influences they could have carried their occiputs and sinciputs, of whatever shape they may be, with credit to themselves and the State. Mr. Russell has innumerable criminals among his corre- spondents; he knows the devastating effects of tempering the wind to the shorn gaol-birds by undiscriminating presents and loans, and for the most part his treatment of them is a bracing assurance that their future is in their own hands, not in his. Work can generally be found for those who will do it. The young criminal in the making never wants work; yet those of the type who have come within the radius of Mr. Russell's influence all regard him as their friend. Many take his wholesome invective with composure—a fatal sign—but those who are stung into a genuine effort to run straight discover that they have fallen in with the best friend they ever had. We reviewed some time ago Mr. Russell's book on " Working Lads' Clubs," a masterly handbook; there is no one in England that we know of who is doing a better work in his spare moments than Mr. Russell, or doing it more wisely.
In his introduction Mr. Russell says :--- "The assumption that the young gaol-bird is a forbidding and hardly human type of character is so common that for truth's sake I am glad to draw attention to the sterling qualities often mixed with many that are bad in the characters of those who, owing to their early environment and evil associations, have almost inevitably found their way to prison while still in their 'teens. As might be expected, the large majority of youthful criminals are drawn from the ranks of the youths who spend idle and vicious days in the least reputable districts of great centres of population, and these youths again have commonly been reared by feckless parents in the very poorest circumstances. In case after case it is the homes that are no homes that are primarily responsible for their law-breaking tendencies, and there are some in whom, in spite of a wish to do well, good habits are so utterly wanting, that it would appear that little can be done in the way of reformative treatment pending considerable alterations of certain sections of the criminal law. The hopeful thing is that there are many—the greater number, in fact—who, with wise and careful and sympa- thetic supervision, and above all with removal from their early surroundings, are capable of becoming useful men."
The alterations in the criminal law which Mr. Russell postulates are to some extent promised in Mr. Churchill's scheme of penal reform; but Mr. Russell points out that the significance of sentences of reformative treatment must be understood by Judges and Magistrates if they are to be of the least use. Take the Borstal treatment, for example. It has worked most satisfactorily during the few years it has been employed in England ; but it is of the essence of the treatment that it should last long enough really to implant new habits. Habits are not reconstructed in a few months. Yet short Borstal sentences are often imposed by Judges under the curiously erroneous belief that the prisoner is being treated with humanity and enlightenment. Mr. Russell shows from Mr. Churchill's speech in the House of Commons on July 20th, 1910, that this fundamental mistake has the approval of the Home Office. We cannot refrain from referring here to the harm done by Mr. Lloyd George in speaking of detentive sentences—sentences which, though they are necessarily long, are in every sense humane—as though they were comparable with penal servitude, and were
inflicted by a revengeful and merciless State in order to break some poor fragment of humanity. Mr. Russell rightly con- demns the act of some Borstal Committee which set up a boy just out of prison in a shop, quite forgetting that they were thus proclaiming that the way to be helped is to commit crime. As for Mr. Churchill's scheme of defaulters' drill, Mr. Russell approves of it in principle on condition that the drill is done in the evenings so that the lads' work is not sacrificed; but he explains that it could hope to succeed only in the case of respectable youths living with their parents. He says :—
" It would be absolutely useless for the large number of lads of the wastrel class, who live from hand to month, flitting from one undesirable lodging-house to another. Yet it is these who form the majority of those who are again and again sent to prison to serve short sentences. They would not attend the drills regularly, and it would be impossible to find them, for with no personal belong- ings, no homes, no possessions of any kind to care for, they adopt the to them quite pleasant expedient of meandering from town to town when wanted in any one particular place. For such tenths, I must repeat, there is no remedy except committal to institu- tions in which their whole character might be moulded so that they could eventually become good citizens."
Every one who has studied criminals is familiar with their almost invariable protestations of innocence. This character- istic appears in the incipient stages of the criminal's career, and Mr. Russell has assured himself only by long experience that it is almost always necessary to disbelieve a lad's assertion that he is more sinned against than sinning and that he has "never had a chance." It must be admitted that when the young criminal analyses his own case the effect is subtle and disarming. When Mr. Russell is asked for money the method of approaching him varies little :—
" Ned's common appeal, Well, you surely won't let a poor lad go to prison for the sake of a shilling or two?' is one universally adopted by persons of his type, and has no meaning behind it : for such lads do not fear prison in the least, and are genet-Illy only endeavouring to obtain money to spend in dissipation. His com- plaint also of 'never havinghad a chance' was in truth thoroughly unfounded; for while it would be true to say that from the earliest years he had been cast amid an environment more likely to lead to the kind of life ho was leading than to any other, he had, as a matter of fact, had many chances, and had obtained decent employment time after time, only to lose it by gross inattention and misconduct, or quite as frequently had given it up at the end of the first week when he felt he had a few shillings in his pocket and the means of gratifying some of his idle tastes."
Even in cases where Mr. Russell has successfully helped a young criminal to run straight it is evident how strong is the belief that fate (which includes the law, and prisons, and such-like) is against the boy who would be honest. This appears in the following letters from a young man who is now leading an honest life and doing well :— " '1 carat make a living I have tried hard, and failed it seems I am a hopeless case I carat affourd to pay my rent I have took a room with my mother I dont know what to do I am broke through no fault of my- own. I am going to try once more to get on sad if I fail I will give it up and say I am hopeless for good and all and retire from any calling or profession I am upset and dont no what to do I am at times at loggerheads with everyone and fit to do anything crooked. I dont want to try it I have kept out of jail for two years and a half I should not like to go crook again. If things do not alter I am very much afraid I am done. But I would like to keep Strait.' A few weeks later the temptation to return to his old life had passed, and he wrote : I am trying to do well and have had bad Luck. I am not HOPELESS ALTOGETHER I have something left in me yet, I am trying to make a man of myself:"
In teaching lads that they really can win through to honesty and shake off the evil companionship which holds so many back, Mr. Russell finds that boxing is one of the best of his agencies. It gives a boy patience, resolution, and self- respect. And these things are sadly needed. Mr. Russell says •
"In itself the ability to box may be reckoned to Pete as a virtue, for the fact that a youth has the amount of physical energy necessary to stand up and box several hardly-contested rounds with an opponent possibly of greater size and weight is one entirely in his favour. If there is one quality more dis- tinctively lacking than another in the young criminalq of the day it is pluck or grit. Taken as a whole they are a singularly timid, cowardly set of youths, who rarely show any spirit apart from the occasions when, banded with many others of their class, they indulge in acts of hooliganism and ruffianism. The average hooligan by himself is quite a tame member of society."
Another point on which Mr. Russell insists is to make lads dress themselves better :—
" It is doubtful whether any one to whom soap and water and more or less tidy clothes are a matter of course can rightly estimate the extent to which this question of clothes and cleanli- ness bears upon the criminality of youths. Dirty, ragged garments, greasy caps and neck-scarves worn day after day -without the possibility of a change, are, I believe, responsible for much. Certain it is that the lad who is content with but one set of raiment invariably belongs to a very low stratum of society, and the absence of a desire for a Sunday suit and the unabashed wearing of the week-day suit on the Sunday is very frequently indeed the mark of one largely impervious to outside influences."
We cannot quote further, but must simply say that it is refreshing to read so much common-sense in the writings of one who might be tempted to evolve striking or fantastic theories out of his experience. He notes in young gaol-birds "a certain look about the eyes," but that is the nearest thing he mentions to the physical symptoms of criminal predestina- tion with which criminologists load their books, and, as we think, run their doctrines to death.
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