The Criminal. By Havelock Ellis. Illustrated. (Walter Scott.)—In this volume
Mr. Havelock Ellis gives us a rather muddle-headed account of that mixture of doubtful observation and still more doubtful theory which goes to make up the new science of criminal anthropology. At the basis of the whole system is the rejection of the notion of moral responsibility. The criminal is not a bad man, but a being of abnormal development or peculiarities. He is a sick man, and the prison should be the hospital where he should be detained until cured, as at Elmira, in New York, by a "special dietary, baths, massage, gymnastics, and school-work." Instead of punishing crime, in fact, we should reward it with a first-class education. Who would not be a criminal under such conditions ? So far, at any rate, as Mr. Ellis is to be taken as an exponent of the new system, the deterrent effect of punishment upon the rest of the community is lost sight of altogether. It may be admitted that observation has shown that certain degraded types of humanity are more prone to crime than other men; but it has certainly not been shown that there are not numberless criminals who show none of these degraded character- istics, and numbers of these defectively constituted beings who manage, in spite of their defects, to steer clear of crime. Pran- zini and Lacenaire were both good-looking men, and Mr. Ellis gives so many varieties of the criminal type, that one wonders if any types at all are left for honest men. His nude tattooed criminal is rather like the proverbial Greek god.
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