THE SCIENCE OF CRIME
By PROFESSOR P. H. WINFIELD*
ONE of the disastrous effects of the violent political changes in several European countries during recent years has been the denial of justice under the criminal law. The outbreak of the present war aggravated this, and the restoration of peace will necessitate wide reforms in this respect, for it is axiomatic that tendencies to lawlessness are much enhanced by the moral laxity that is inevitable during and after a long war. In anticipation of these needs, a scheme of international collaboration has recently been launched at Cambridge by the initiation of a survey of the penal systems of the leading European countries during the twenty- years' period preceding the war. The plan of this survey was pre- pared by a small committee which had been appointed by the Faculty Board of Law in the University to investigate the methods of promoting research and teaching in criminal science. The success of the work of this committee in this and other directions led subsequently to the creation by the University of the Depart- ment of Criminal Science, in which the committee has been merged.
In the preparation of the European survey the Department has been able to obtain the co-operation of eminent jurists of the countries concerned, and the support of their Governments has been accorded to the enterprise. The work thus begun rapidly opened up a wider field of collaboration, so that in November last the Vice-Chancellor (Dr. J. A. Venn) welcomed in Cambridge the representatives of nine Allied countries who had come for a conference with the Department of Criminal Science to make plans for the restoration of a proper system of criminal justice in Europe and for continued collaboration and development after
* The writer, the Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at Cambridge, is chairman of the Department of Criminal Science referred to in the first paragraph of the article.
the war. This Conference created an International Commission for Penal Reconstruction and Development. It was resolved that there should be a close association between the Commission and the University Department, one of the provisions to this effect being that the Chairman of the Department shall also be the Chairman of the Commission. Two members of the Commission are appointed by the Government of each member country, and the Department itself is represented by two of its members, one being the Chairman. The countries so far represented are: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Holland, Luxemburg, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia, and there is provision for further accessions.
The Commission has already appointed three special commit- tees to report on particular subjects (others are in course of preparation). One of these deals with the rights to be accorded to persons suspected or accused of crimes, another with the rules of penal law for recidivists and the third with rules and procedure to govern crimes against international public order. This last topic is involved with a reform urgently needed in International Law. It is necessary to formulate a well thought-out code of rules based on true principles of justice, whereby the responsi- bility for breaches of the Laws of War can be assessed and established, so that those guilty of atrocities may not escape just retribution for their misdeeds.
What originally led the Faculty Board of Law to undertake the promotion of criminal science was the realisation of the fact that, although in recent years England had taken a leading part in practical reform, very little scientific study of crime and of the administration of criminal law had been achieved here, and it was hoped to bridge the gulf between theory and practice. An immediate and widespread response was evoked both in the United Kingdom and abroad. Towards the end of 1940 a volume on Penal Reform in England was published, embodying essays by writers of practical experience in the administration of criminal justice. Besides this, several important investigations were initiated. Collaboration with workers in the United States and the oversea Dominions is being established. In particular, the Canadian Bar Association has kindly offered space in its journal, the Canadian Bar Review, for the publication of a series of monographs, the first of which has already appeared ; this relates to the conviction of offenders put on probation and it is also available in pamphlet form. Equally important contact has been made with continental experts.
Two of the other activities of the Department are worth men- tion. It is prosecuting research in the relation to crime of mental conditions like insanity, mental deficiency, psycho-neurosis and sexual aberrations. Fourteen British medical authorities are co-operating in this, on a plan prepared by the Department. The project is now near completion and it is hoped that its results will be published in a few months. Another task, quite as heavy as any other undertaken by the Department, is the examination of all material obtainable from English official publications relating to crime, from their commencement in the seventeenth century to the present day. This is the first attempt to examine compre- hensively some 3,000 reports and papers that are a storehouse of most valuable information. The aim of the Department is to make a survey of the experiments and developments in penal administration in England which have occurred during the last 25o years. This will assist the planning of reforms, for reform of the law without knowledge of its history is a perilous enterprise.
The administration of criminal law attracts the layman more than any other branch of the legal system, partly because of its connexion with human passions at their strongest and worst, partly because of its comparative simplicity and untechnicality. But, quite apart from those who regard crime as merely providing dramatic spectacles, there is a considerable section of the com- munity that takes a more serious interest in it than this. It comprises all those who realise how closely crime is implicated with imperfections in the structure of society as a whole, and not merely with the moral lapses of this or that individual in it. They feel that the aim of the law should be not only to prevent the commission of crime, but also to reform as well as to punish persons who have committed it and to supervise their welfare when they have completed their punishment. It is to these social reformers, whether they are laymen or professional lawyers, that the efforts of the promoters of the study of Criminal Science will appeal, and indeed they have already displayed a remarkable amount of sympathy with the movement.
There is no member of the Cambridge Department who has not had in one way or another practical experience of the administration of the law. The point is of some importance because scientific research in the field of crime is not likely to be of much practical value unless it takes account, first and last, of the intensely human aspect of the topic. The formulation of theories is not enough. As in other branches of science, the researcher requires both a library and a laboratory. In Criminal Science his laboratory is the world of human nature and society.
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