The Criminal & the Community. James Devon
in the footsteps of their parents. In these cases it is probable that the determining factor has been the influence of the mother. Her criminal acts and methods were more susceptible of imitation on the part of the daughters than on the part of the sons, and the girls, even though they had been willing to leave the house, would have had to face life outside under greater difficulties than the boys.
The practice of singling out heredity as the cause of certain things to the exclusion of others has no sanction in experience. Our forefathers recognised that all men showed imperfections. They saw that one man was given to envy; another to lust; another to covetousness; another to wrath; and so on through all the deadly sins. They attributed these defects to our heritage of Original Sin. The theologian has been displaced by the scientific man, and if heredity is a newer name for our ignorance it does not fit the facts any better.
We inherit all the faculties and powers which we possess, but what they are only the event shows. Nothing can be taken out of a man but what is in him, but there may be a good deal in him which is never taken out. We may develop certain faculties, but not unless they are first present; and the stimulus that they obey at one period in our lives may fail at another. We may estimate the capabilities of a man who is dead from observation of what he has done, but we cannot say that he might not have done better or worse had his life been prolonged. In the case of great men this is recognised, and we have laments over their early death and speculations as to what they might have done, or regrets that they lived too long for their fair fame. It is the same in the case of small men as of great.
Heredity is behind everything; not merely behind some things. If it explains a man’s disease, in the same sense it must also explain his antecedent health. It cannot account for one part of his life more than another. Even those who attribute disease or misconduct to heredity seek to cure the diseased person and to correct his bad habits. Any success with which they meet is not obtained by altering his heredity, but by changing the conditions under which he has been living in such a way and to such an extent that he reacts favourably to the change. We are not warranted in saying of anybody that he is doomed by heredity to a life of vice or of crime. The conditions that suit one person may not be suitable to the healthy development of another, and the problem with regard to those who transgress our laws is to ascertain under what conditions they would behave best and place them there. Though their family history may be of the blackest; though their ancestors may have been vicious, it by no means follows that it is impossible for them to be otherwise. When a man has done wrong it does not help him to be informed that he cannot do better. He is often more than willing to transfer the blame to the shoulders of others. It is more profitable to teach and help him to do well than to encourage him to curse his grandfather.
There is only one way of finding out why people commit crimes and that is by making a patient enquiry in each case. The causes in many cases may be similar, but the part they play may be different.
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 to say in support of their view save that they cannot understand how certain crimes could be committed by any sane person. This is to beg the whole question, which is, how many persons who are charged with committing offences are found on examination to be unsound mentally?
Insanity has never been satisfactorily defined, but it is a term which in the legal sense connotes irresponsibility. Yet if all insane persons had no sense of responsibility it is difficult to imagine how they could be suffered to live. Even in lunatic asylums the great majority of the inmates can be induced to behave in such a way as to make it unnecessary to tie them up. They have a very large amount of liberty conceded to them without serious inconvenience to their neighbours and greatly to their own advantage. If they simply did what any stray notion impelled them to do this would not be possible. Their affliction frees them from responsibility to the law for their actions; but in practice they have to show by their conduct that they can and will obey the rules of the institution in which they are placed before it is safe or reasonable to let them go freely about in it. The physician does not demand from them better conduct than their mental condition warrants him in expecting; but they learn, in so far as they are capable of learning, that their own actions will determine the degree to which they will be free from interference, and that the necessary result of misconduct will be increased restraint. Only in so far as they show a sense of responsibility is it safe to allow them to be free from supervision. A person may suffer from such a degree of mental unsoundness as will free him from responsibility for his actions in the eyes of the law, and yet be able to conform to the rules laid down for the guidance of his life by an asylum superintendent.
A very small proportion of prisoners are persons of unsound mind, and in most cases the mental unsoundness is the result of their own misconduct. In Scotland there is no difficulty in freeing insane persons from prison. By section 6 of the Criminal and Dangerous Lunatics (Scotland) Amendment Act, 1871, it is provided that “When in relation to any person confined in a local prison in terms of the Prisons (Scotland) Administration Act, 1860, it is certified on soul and conscience by two medical persons that they have visited and examined such prisoner, and that in their opinion he is insane, it shall be lawful for the sheriff, on summary application at the instance of the administrators of such Prison, by a warrant under his hand, to order such prisoner to be removed to a lunatic asylum.” The matter practically rests with the prison surgeon, for the prison commissioners on his report never raise any objection to the transfer of a convicted prisoner who is found to be insane. Yet the same persons return again and yet again.
The warrant for detention in an asylum expires with the period of the sentence of imprisonment, and the asylum authorities must obtain new certificates before they can continue to keep the patient. When the degree and kind of mental unsoundness is very marked there is no difficulty in getting the necessary documents; but when the patient has been benefited to the extent of being able to behave and speak no worse than many of his fellow-criminals, it is different. He is sent for examination to a man who is not acquainted with him. The doctor has to state facts observed by himself as a ground for certification; quite properly he is not permitted to ensure the detention of anybody on evidence that is second-hand. The patient is quiet and on his guard, and his examiner can make nothing of him. Accordingly he goes back to his haunts and his vices, impatient of restraint, and is soon in the hands of the police again. Clearly there is need of some modification in the law or its administration to permit of such persons being dealt with.
Insane offenders may be divided into two classes: those whose wrongdoing is the result of their insanity; and those who have been sound enough to begin with, but who have become insane, just as they have contracted physical diseases, as a result of vicious indulgence and its treatment. Of the first-named class there may be one in about a thousand admissions. The crimes charged are of all kinds and degrees of gravity, as the following examples will show:—
X 1.—A man is brought to prison for the first time charged with a series of petty thefts committed while under the influence of drink. He shows signs of alcoholism, and is too dazed to give any account of himself. In a day or two the alcoholic symptoms have passed off and his general condition suggests enquiry. He has signs of mental disease which cannot now be confused with drink. It is found that, until a year before, he had been in business in an industrial town; that he had been a reputable citizen, quiet, peaceable, and abstemious in his habits; that he began to take to drink, and sold off his business, which realised several thousand pounds; and that he had since been lost to the knowledge of his friends. What happened in the interval I do not know. He was taken in charge by the police for stealing glasses from a public-house, weights