THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS. By Carl Muechison. Miami
University.
The
writer, while serving in the dual capacity of Camp Morale Camp Psychological Examiner at Camp Sherman, Ohio, asked to appear before a joint session of the House and Senate
Officer and was
Finance Committee of the State of Ohio and present certain data in his possession bearing on the prevalence of feeble-mindedness in that state. In spite of a war-time budget already unprecedented in size, the members of the committee were so impressed with the seriousness of certain plain facts that they both branches of the legislature to appropriate
tragic
immediate construction of It
a new
easily persuaded $650,000 for the
institution for the feeble-minded.
experience, together with certain conferences with Doctor Goddard, that determined the writer to gather still further data and attempt a contribution of the statistics of psychology to the problem of the causes of crime. The writer has given a mental test to the prisoners in the Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus, the Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield, the Ohio State Farm at London, the Ohio Penitentiary for Women at Marysville, the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet, the Illinois State Reformatory at Pontiac, the Indiana State Penitentiary at Michigan City, the Indiana State Reformatory at Jeffersonville, and to hundreds of prostitutes and military prisoners in and around Camp Sherman. Data were also gathered on hundreds of insane criminals. In addition to the exact mental grade, the writer learned concerning each criminal his race, age, trade, previous economic condition, education, crime, sentence being served, and criminal history; while in the States of Illinois and Indiana each crimwas
that
H. H.
inal
was
asked to
name
the three worst crimes and the least crime
from the moral
point of view. In gathering these data, the writer received invaluable assistance from the War Department, from the Commanding General at Camp Sherman, from Doctor H. H. Goddard, from Doctors Adler and Rowley, from the Board of Control of Ohio and from the many highly efficient wardens and superintendents of prisons. The results of the investigation will be published as rapidly as possible, this being the first paper to appear. This paper is not concerned with negro criminals, with women, or with insane criminals, as those (66)
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS.
67
three groups will be taken up in later papers. This paper will deal with the classification of criminals in so far as such criminals are men and are white. The total number of white criminal men to be classified in this paper is 3,328. Many scientific men have met with sad experience in the presentation of their most far-reaching discoveries, because they wandered so far away from their own literature that their presentation lost its
significance for the scholarly and conservative. So the writer will risk being didactic while he constructs rapidly what to some will be the very familiar history of attempts at criminal classification. Polemon classifies criminals en masse as those who have narrow foreheads and are left-handed.1 There is recorded for us by Valerio the very interesting edict of the Middle Ages to the effect that in the case of two suspccts the one showing the most deformity is to be found guilty and tortured. A certain Medici, having reserved his judgment till after the physical examination, exclaimed to the prisoner: "Having seen your face and examined your head, we do 2 not send you to Traces of these early prison but to the gallows." forms of superstition and stupid ignorance are still alive in the far
outskirts of the scientific world.
There are pretentious books on last ten years that exude from their the criminology published within of the pages nauseous winds out graveyards of dead centuries. The first scientific theory of criminality was formulated by Morel in his treatise, "Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Degeneration of the Human Species," published in Paris in 1857. This theory of
degeneration as the cause of crime was a meritorious attempt and would have exerted greater influence if Morel had not "played politics" with the religious world to the extent of explaining degeneration as the culminating effect in the individual of the original fall of Adam.
The second influential theory of criminality was advanced by Despine in his "Natural Psychology" published at Paris in 1868. According to Despine the outstanding characteristic of the criminal is the total absence of remorse. But this theory of moral insanity was developed to far greater significance by Maudsley in his "Mental Responsibility," published at London in 1873. Maudsley must have had a remarkable insight into human nature. According to him, there is a twilight zone between crime and insanity, and that zone is peopled with criminals. A given individual might be entirely
insane and very little with 1 !
perfectly
sound
criminal, he might be a complete criminal intelligence, or he might occupy any point a
De Quiros, "Modern Theories of Criminality," 1912, Ibid., p. 5,
p. 4.
68
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
between the two extremes. Just how true this insight is will become clearer in the course of this and succeeding papers. Maudsley and Garofalo
are
criminology,
the two most remarkable men in all the literature of no one who fails to appreciate their contribution,
and
for many years to come, will go very far in the causes of crime.
solving
the
problem
of
But it remained for Quetelet to discover that peculiar group of criminals known as recidivists. Quetelet was the first social and criminologist anticipated Compt by his statistical method. He Thermal Law of Delinquency, tracing the influence of the developed climate on types of crime thus anticipating the form of the principle that is being worked out at the present time by Ellsworth Huntington at Yale. Quetelet also recognized that the man who commits a crime against property is essentially influenced by different factors than is the man who commits a crime against the person anticipating the later contribution of Garofalo. At this point in the development of
criminology appeared the three great school-founders, Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri and Raffaelle Garofalo. Lombroso was the founder of modern criminal anthropology and was the first to formulate a classification of criminals as well as a theory of the causes of crime. He found the factors that cause crime to be atavism, moral insanity, and epilepsy. Only the first of these three factors was largely discussed by him, as the last two were discovered as by accident late in his life. Atavism is the tendency of living beings to return to a distant type that has been deviated from for many generations. The criminal is
merely an early type of man, stripped of all the accumulations of further generations of worldly experience and wisdom, a "reproduction of the rude morphology of the savage." And as these factors are present in lessorgreater degree, each criminal falls naturally into one of the following five classes: 1. Occasional criminal; 2. Emotional criminal; 3. Born criminal; 4. Moral insane; 5. Masked epileptic. Crime is from the Sanskrit word karman, which also means action, to do, to execute. The study of root words in Sanskrit tends
point to murder and robbery as the early methods of acquiring property. The criminal of today, because of atavism, is one of these early types in every respect, having the narrow forehead, abnormal development of the cranial vault, disproportionate development of the mandibles and cheek-bones, obtuse sensibility, absence of vascular reactions, left-handedness, moral insensibility, absence of remorse, and tattooing. The writer can only say that he would to God Lombroso were to
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS.
69
If every criminal bore the stigmata of Cain, if the stars in thus fought against Sisera, criminology would cease to be a science and would become an art of training dog-catchers to catch men. However, the devil does not roam the earth shaking his forked tail and showing his cloven hoof but disguised in fine raiment and wearing the face of piety. The writer, in many prisons,
right. their
courses
has passed along lines of fine-looking fellows, men of superior education and social advantages. Old experienced wardens have told of
crimes, have wept bitterly to talked kindly for a few' minutes. One being warden trusts the care of his entire family of little children to the group of murderers who comprise his household servants. A visitor in that home is dumfounded at the courtesy, gentleness, thought-
men, with
who, having
remorse
fulness,
committed the worst
after
and kindness of those servants.
Enrico Ferri also designated five categories of criminals:1 1. Criminal insane; 2. Criminal born; 3. Habitual criminals; 4. Chance
criminals;
This classification differs from is allowed for the "chance criminal" who may be a mere accident or creature of circumstances. This kind of criminal is made possible by Ferri's theory of crime, which is one of the best ever formulated. "Crime," says he, "is a phenomenon of complex origin and the result of biological, physical, and social 5. Criminals
Lombroso's
in that
conditions."
by passion.
room
theory very few criminals need necessarily criminals, as the biological, physical, and social conditions are ever changing. Raffaelle Garofalo completed the trinity of great criminologists, he being a jurisconsult while Lombroso was an anthropologist and Ferri a sociologist. Garofalo falls back upon a kind of common-law classification of crime and criminals and speaks of natural crime. According
to
this
be called confirmed
Natural crime is that group of offenses that has been considered
worthy
of
punishment in all places and by all peoples since the of beginning social activity. All other crimes are the result of statutory enactments. But in the last analysis, there are only two natural laws: "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal." As a result there can be only two groups of criminals, viz., the offenders against person and the offenders against property.2 In spite of the criticisms that have been hurled at this classification there is something about its simplicity that strikes one with conviction. The cause of crime Garofalo finds
to be an anomaly of the moral sense which has degenerated through retrogressive selection. One would do well to become well acquainted with the work of Garofalo as the statistics of present1 Enrico s
Ferri, "Criminal Sociology." 1917, p. 139. De Quiros, "Modern Theories of Criminality," 1912, p. 30.
70
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
day psychology support cation
so
it
more
than any other
theory
or
classifi-
far considered.
Up to this point biological, sociological
the various theories of causation have been or a combination of the two. However, the
classifications of criminals have been neither biological, sociological combination of the two, but rather a mixture of psychological
or any
groups and numerical characteristics:
"emotional," "chance," etc. earthly relation there is between any of the theories and its accompanying classification is not clear. Gustav Aschaffenburg criticises Lombroso unmercifully for this seeming bungling and then gives as his own classification:1 1. Chance criminals; 2. Criminals of passion; 3. Criminals of opportunity; 4. Deliberate criminals; 5. Recidivists; 6. Habitual criminals; 7. Professional criminals. A mere changing of the laws might make all of his criminals recidivists. Yet Aschaffenburg was a psychiatrist and worked with Kraepelin. In the sociological school Tarde feels that the old classifications are rather fictitious and proceeds to group criminals according to the trade they worked at.2 Thus a "bootblack murderer" would be quite a different proposition from a "ribbon-counter murderer." And Saleilles distinguishes those delinquents who are not tainted with criminality at all, those who are tainted to a certain extent, and those who are saturated with criminality.3 The trouble with the latter classification is the fact that it can be increased indefinitely simply by decreasing the size of the unit on the scale. On the continent of Europe the classification of criminals and the theory of causation began in childish absurdity and seems about to end in a nai've gesture. No theory of crime and no classification of criminals can have enduring practical value unless the laws of biology and of causation are considered. The anthropological criminologists have given us many data showing the uniform presence of certain stigmata among criminals. But not a single one has thus far compared that proportion of stigmata with the proportion of an equal unselected number of private citizens from the same strata of society. The anthropological school is on the right road in so far as it uses the data of biology in a biological manner. But when it ignores all the laws of causality, it can only leave the entire field unoccupied for the forces of the sociological school. The data of the sociological school can be true or have serious existence only in so far as certain biological laws are already true. Ferri's saturation What
1 Gustav
Aschaffenburg, "Crime and Its Repression," 1913, p. 207. 'Gabriel Tarde, "Penal Philosophy," 1912, p. 267. ?Raymond Saleilles, "The Individualization of Punishment," 1911, p. 282.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS.
71
theory is taken over from the very heart of the present tendency 111 biology?to find a chemical basis for biological laws. Yet Ferri belongs more to the sociological than to the anthropological school. Simply because the anthropological school is nearer the truth than is the sociological school, the causes of crime by necessity being biological and chemical, is reason enough for blushing with shame that the sociologists should break through the firing-line thus and steal the biological thunder. In the opinion of the writer it is time for the anthropological school to brush up in Maudsley and Garofalo, take a stiff course in logic and find out something about psychobiology and physical chemistry. In this country the attempt to formulate a theory of crime and a classification of criminals is organized at the present time into four very definite tendencies: the followers of Lombroso, as represented by the authorities of the Elmira Reformatory in the State of New York; the tendency to regard feeble-mindedness as the chief cause of delinquency, ably represented by Doctor H. H. Goddard; those who hold that no classification is yet possible, represented by Doctor William Healey; and the eugenics experts, represented by Doctor Charles B. Davenport. The brilliant genius> ol Doctor Goddard is well known to all of us. He has ably shown us that feeble-mindedness is a thoroughgoing recessive factor in the operation of the Mendelian law of heredity. No sane scientific man at
the present time doubts Doctor Goddard's contribution.1 But Doctor Goddard is now attempting to explain crime as a phenomenon of feeble-mindedness. "Although we cannot determine at
just
present
what the proportion is, probably from 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the people in our prisons are mentally defective." 2 The writer is well acquainted with the work which Doctor Goddard is doing
now as
Director of Juvenile Research for the State of Ohio and the meeting with. When it is shown that his figures published five years ago are somewhat large Doctor Goddard will know exactly where his mistake was.
success and obstacles he is
Doctor Healey has studied one thousand young recidivists at the Psychopathic Institute in Chicago. He denies the possibility of classification.3 The whole effort of his office is to gather data, and the data are exceedingly valuable. But that same method was adopted by Bacon many centuries ago. That method of gathering knowledge can never discover any new law, for in the last analysis it is nothing but interpretation. The world of nature is dumb 1 The Editor of the Psychological Clinic will have to be put in the category of the insane if this remark be tnif.?The Editor. 3 H. H. Goddard, "Feeble-Mindedness," 1914, p. 7. * William Healey, "The Individual Delinquent," 1915, p. 160.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
72 and tells
story. For example, the world is neither intrinsicallyintrinsically bad, bearing within it as much death as life and as much pleasure as pain. Only the unifying principle of interpretation makes it possible to attend only to the pleasure and laugh at the pain. However meritorious the data that Doctor Healey has gathered, the method by which they were gathered would never formulate a theory or construct a classification even though the universe were filed safely away into pigeon-holes. Science cannot be made too objective or all value and meaning vanish. But the sane scientific spirit rings true when Doctor Healey says, "the elders, who spoke so glibly of 'the criminal' as a born type, had not the means of investigating whether he was not rather a born defective and a criminal through accident of environment." 1 Doctor Charles B. Davenport is with the Carnegie Institution of Washington and is one of the best physiologists in the country. Yet his proof that crime has its roots in heredity is based on the statistics of seven cases,2 and he speaks of criminality as being equally a physical thing as the color of the eyes. According to Doctor Davenport's theory, from one's grandmother one might inherit blue eyes, from one's grandfather a shock of auburn hair, while from some great-grandfather one might at the same time inherit a kind of pink criminality. Doctor Davenport surely was jesting. Now this is the field just as it was when the writer undertook to do his bit. How could one hope to succeed where so many eminent men have been able merely to start in the right direction? The criminals were given the Alpha Group Examination?the same test that was used in the army. The test was given only to the criminals who could read and write English and under the same conditions used in the army testing. The papers were afterwards sorted into groups according to crime, the criminals of each state separately. It was then found that the states did not vary to any great extent, so the criminals of the three states were thrown together. The negroes were then separated from the whites and the women from the men. This paper is concerned only with the white men. Then the papers of each crime were arranged in order of psychological numerical grade, which offers a possible range of 0 to 212. The median grade of each crime-group was then found. Finally, the various crimes were arranged on a scale according to the median grades, with the following result:
good
1 William 1
no
nor
Heaiy, "The Individual Delinquent," 1915, p. 17. Charles B. Davenport, "Heredity in Relation to Eugenics," 1911, p. 89.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS. Crime
Number of Criminals 8
Larceny Obtaining property under false pretense Confidence game Assault and battery to rob
Forgery
Robbery
525
Issuing fraudulent check Burglary of inhabited dwelling Entering to commit felony
15 41 42
773 60
Burglary
22 46
9
25 25 78 98 51
16
91
84 81
Embezzlement
19
725 6 25 35 178
221 108 48 18 102
Median Psychological Grade
Having burglar tools Conspiracy
9
v
73
Vehicle taking Horse stealing Pocket picking Murder, first degree Assault and battery to kill Abandonment
or
rob
80
79 79 73 69 68 66 64 63 62 62 61 61 58 55 51
51
Bigamy Rape
50
Indecent liberty with child
46
Sodomy
42
Incest
41
Manslaughter
36
Murder, second degree Cut, stab, or shoot to kill Vagrancy
or
wound
34 34 11
Even the casual reader will observe that the first sixteen crimes the scale are crimes against property and that all the others are crimes against person, recalling the convictions of Garofalo. Similar
on
crimes occur near
Maudsley.
each other on the scale, recalling the insight of The various crimes arrange themselves on the scale in
as orderly a manner as the alphabet of a language. The only force that determines is intelligence, and intelligence is the world of mystery described as the ease with which connections in the synapses are formed and maintained.
Deception
is the one factor necessary in all crime against propIt will be noticed in the group of property-crimes that the crimes requiring the greatest skill in deception occur at the top of the list, while crimes requiring the least skill in deception occur near the bottom.
erty.
Premeditation is the
one factor present in crimes against the It will be noticed that the crimes requiring the most premeditation occur at the top of the person-group, while the crimes requiring the least premeditation occur at the bottom of that group.
person.
74
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
The location of any crime in either group is in proportion to the The latter phenomenon necessary presence of the required factor.
merely proves that the classification is a normal and natural one. parallel variation of intelligence is the significant phenomenon. But the mere presence or absence of intelligence to a degree will not of necessity result in crime any more than it would result in Method-
The
ism
or
is the in
so
Prohibition. same
far
as
The force that drives men to success and honor force that drives others to failure and disgrace. Only the science of criminology can succeed in learning some-
thing about the factors of intelligence can it hope to solve the problem of crime. Criminality is not a gnome that dances attendance upon the moral world. It is rather the purgatory where are gathered the blasted ambitions, blighted hopes and broken hearts from that land that lies just along the border of the The next chapter will tell that story.
"promised
land" of
success
University.
The
writer, while serving in the dual capacity of Camp Morale Camp Psychological Examiner at Camp Sherman, Ohio, asked to appear before a joint session of the House and Senate
Officer and was
Finance Committee of the State of Ohio and present certain data in his possession bearing on the prevalence of feeble-mindedness in that state. In spite of a war-time budget already unprecedented in size, the members of the committee were so impressed with the seriousness of certain plain facts that they both branches of the legislature to appropriate
tragic
immediate construction of It
a new
easily persuaded $650,000 for the
institution for the feeble-minded.
experience, together with certain conferences with Doctor Goddard, that determined the writer to gather still further data and attempt a contribution of the statistics of psychology to the problem of the causes of crime. The writer has given a mental test to the prisoners in the Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus, the Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield, the Ohio State Farm at London, the Ohio Penitentiary for Women at Marysville, the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet, the Illinois State Reformatory at Pontiac, the Indiana State Penitentiary at Michigan City, the Indiana State Reformatory at Jeffersonville, and to hundreds of prostitutes and military prisoners in and around Camp Sherman. Data were also gathered on hundreds of insane criminals. In addition to the exact mental grade, the writer learned concerning each criminal his race, age, trade, previous economic condition, education, crime, sentence being served, and criminal history; while in the States of Illinois and Indiana each crimwas
that
H. H.
inal
was
asked to
name
the three worst crimes and the least crime
from the moral
point of view. In gathering these data, the writer received invaluable assistance from the War Department, from the Commanding General at Camp Sherman, from Doctor H. H. Goddard, from Doctors Adler and Rowley, from the Board of Control of Ohio and from the many highly efficient wardens and superintendents of prisons. The results of the investigation will be published as rapidly as possible, this being the first paper to appear. This paper is not concerned with negro criminals, with women, or with insane criminals, as those (66)
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS.
67
three groups will be taken up in later papers. This paper will deal with the classification of criminals in so far as such criminals are men and are white. The total number of white criminal men to be classified in this paper is 3,328. Many scientific men have met with sad experience in the presentation of their most far-reaching discoveries, because they wandered so far away from their own literature that their presentation lost its
significance for the scholarly and conservative. So the writer will risk being didactic while he constructs rapidly what to some will be the very familiar history of attempts at criminal classification. Polemon classifies criminals en masse as those who have narrow foreheads and are left-handed.1 There is recorded for us by Valerio the very interesting edict of the Middle Ages to the effect that in the case of two suspccts the one showing the most deformity is to be found guilty and tortured. A certain Medici, having reserved his judgment till after the physical examination, exclaimed to the prisoner: "Having seen your face and examined your head, we do 2 not send you to Traces of these early prison but to the gallows." forms of superstition and stupid ignorance are still alive in the far
outskirts of the scientific world.
There are pretentious books on last ten years that exude from their the criminology published within of the pages nauseous winds out graveyards of dead centuries. The first scientific theory of criminality was formulated by Morel in his treatise, "Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Degeneration of the Human Species," published in Paris in 1857. This theory of
degeneration as the cause of crime was a meritorious attempt and would have exerted greater influence if Morel had not "played politics" with the religious world to the extent of explaining degeneration as the culminating effect in the individual of the original fall of Adam.
The second influential theory of criminality was advanced by Despine in his "Natural Psychology" published at Paris in 1868. According to Despine the outstanding characteristic of the criminal is the total absence of remorse. But this theory of moral insanity was developed to far greater significance by Maudsley in his "Mental Responsibility," published at London in 1873. Maudsley must have had a remarkable insight into human nature. According to him, there is a twilight zone between crime and insanity, and that zone is peopled with criminals. A given individual might be entirely
insane and very little with 1 !
perfectly
sound
criminal, he might be a complete criminal intelligence, or he might occupy any point a
De Quiros, "Modern Theories of Criminality," 1912, Ibid., p. 5,
p. 4.
68
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
between the two extremes. Just how true this insight is will become clearer in the course of this and succeeding papers. Maudsley and Garofalo
are
criminology,
the two most remarkable men in all the literature of no one who fails to appreciate their contribution,
and
for many years to come, will go very far in the causes of crime.
solving
the
problem
of
But it remained for Quetelet to discover that peculiar group of criminals known as recidivists. Quetelet was the first social and criminologist anticipated Compt by his statistical method. He Thermal Law of Delinquency, tracing the influence of the developed climate on types of crime thus anticipating the form of the principle that is being worked out at the present time by Ellsworth Huntington at Yale. Quetelet also recognized that the man who commits a crime against property is essentially influenced by different factors than is the man who commits a crime against the person anticipating the later contribution of Garofalo. At this point in the development of
criminology appeared the three great school-founders, Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri and Raffaelle Garofalo. Lombroso was the founder of modern criminal anthropology and was the first to formulate a classification of criminals as well as a theory of the causes of crime. He found the factors that cause crime to be atavism, moral insanity, and epilepsy. Only the first of these three factors was largely discussed by him, as the last two were discovered as by accident late in his life. Atavism is the tendency of living beings to return to a distant type that has been deviated from for many generations. The criminal is
merely an early type of man, stripped of all the accumulations of further generations of worldly experience and wisdom, a "reproduction of the rude morphology of the savage." And as these factors are present in lessorgreater degree, each criminal falls naturally into one of the following five classes: 1. Occasional criminal; 2. Emotional criminal; 3. Born criminal; 4. Moral insane; 5. Masked epileptic. Crime is from the Sanskrit word karman, which also means action, to do, to execute. The study of root words in Sanskrit tends
point to murder and robbery as the early methods of acquiring property. The criminal of today, because of atavism, is one of these early types in every respect, having the narrow forehead, abnormal development of the cranial vault, disproportionate development of the mandibles and cheek-bones, obtuse sensibility, absence of vascular reactions, left-handedness, moral insensibility, absence of remorse, and tattooing. The writer can only say that he would to God Lombroso were to
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS.
69
If every criminal bore the stigmata of Cain, if the stars in thus fought against Sisera, criminology would cease to be a science and would become an art of training dog-catchers to catch men. However, the devil does not roam the earth shaking his forked tail and showing his cloven hoof but disguised in fine raiment and wearing the face of piety. The writer, in many prisons,
right. their
courses
has passed along lines of fine-looking fellows, men of superior education and social advantages. Old experienced wardens have told of
crimes, have wept bitterly to talked kindly for a few' minutes. One being warden trusts the care of his entire family of little children to the group of murderers who comprise his household servants. A visitor in that home is dumfounded at the courtesy, gentleness, thought-
men, with
who, having
remorse
fulness,
committed the worst
after
and kindness of those servants.
Enrico Ferri also designated five categories of criminals:1 1. Criminal insane; 2. Criminal born; 3. Habitual criminals; 4. Chance
criminals;
This classification differs from is allowed for the "chance criminal" who may be a mere accident or creature of circumstances. This kind of criminal is made possible by Ferri's theory of crime, which is one of the best ever formulated. "Crime," says he, "is a phenomenon of complex origin and the result of biological, physical, and social 5. Criminals
Lombroso's
in that
conditions."
by passion.
room
theory very few criminals need necessarily criminals, as the biological, physical, and social conditions are ever changing. Raffaelle Garofalo completed the trinity of great criminologists, he being a jurisconsult while Lombroso was an anthropologist and Ferri a sociologist. Garofalo falls back upon a kind of common-law classification of crime and criminals and speaks of natural crime. According
to
this
be called confirmed
Natural crime is that group of offenses that has been considered
worthy
of
punishment in all places and by all peoples since the of beginning social activity. All other crimes are the result of statutory enactments. But in the last analysis, there are only two natural laws: "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal." As a result there can be only two groups of criminals, viz., the offenders against person and the offenders against property.2 In spite of the criticisms that have been hurled at this classification there is something about its simplicity that strikes one with conviction. The cause of crime Garofalo finds
to be an anomaly of the moral sense which has degenerated through retrogressive selection. One would do well to become well acquainted with the work of Garofalo as the statistics of present1 Enrico s
Ferri, "Criminal Sociology." 1917, p. 139. De Quiros, "Modern Theories of Criminality," 1912, p. 30.
70
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
day psychology support cation
so
it
more
than any other
theory
or
classifi-
far considered.
Up to this point biological, sociological
the various theories of causation have been or a combination of the two. However, the
classifications of criminals have been neither biological, sociological combination of the two, but rather a mixture of psychological
or any
groups and numerical characteristics:
"emotional," "chance," etc. earthly relation there is between any of the theories and its accompanying classification is not clear. Gustav Aschaffenburg criticises Lombroso unmercifully for this seeming bungling and then gives as his own classification:1 1. Chance criminals; 2. Criminals of passion; 3. Criminals of opportunity; 4. Deliberate criminals; 5. Recidivists; 6. Habitual criminals; 7. Professional criminals. A mere changing of the laws might make all of his criminals recidivists. Yet Aschaffenburg was a psychiatrist and worked with Kraepelin. In the sociological school Tarde feels that the old classifications are rather fictitious and proceeds to group criminals according to the trade they worked at.2 Thus a "bootblack murderer" would be quite a different proposition from a "ribbon-counter murderer." And Saleilles distinguishes those delinquents who are not tainted with criminality at all, those who are tainted to a certain extent, and those who are saturated with criminality.3 The trouble with the latter classification is the fact that it can be increased indefinitely simply by decreasing the size of the unit on the scale. On the continent of Europe the classification of criminals and the theory of causation began in childish absurdity and seems about to end in a nai've gesture. No theory of crime and no classification of criminals can have enduring practical value unless the laws of biology and of causation are considered. The anthropological criminologists have given us many data showing the uniform presence of certain stigmata among criminals. But not a single one has thus far compared that proportion of stigmata with the proportion of an equal unselected number of private citizens from the same strata of society. The anthropological school is on the right road in so far as it uses the data of biology in a biological manner. But when it ignores all the laws of causality, it can only leave the entire field unoccupied for the forces of the sociological school. The data of the sociological school can be true or have serious existence only in so far as certain biological laws are already true. Ferri's saturation What
1 Gustav
Aschaffenburg, "Crime and Its Repression," 1913, p. 207. 'Gabriel Tarde, "Penal Philosophy," 1912, p. 267. ?Raymond Saleilles, "The Individualization of Punishment," 1911, p. 282.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS.
71
theory is taken over from the very heart of the present tendency 111 biology?to find a chemical basis for biological laws. Yet Ferri belongs more to the sociological than to the anthropological school. Simply because the anthropological school is nearer the truth than is the sociological school, the causes of crime by necessity being biological and chemical, is reason enough for blushing with shame that the sociologists should break through the firing-line thus and steal the biological thunder. In the opinion of the writer it is time for the anthropological school to brush up in Maudsley and Garofalo, take a stiff course in logic and find out something about psychobiology and physical chemistry. In this country the attempt to formulate a theory of crime and a classification of criminals is organized at the present time into four very definite tendencies: the followers of Lombroso, as represented by the authorities of the Elmira Reformatory in the State of New York; the tendency to regard feeble-mindedness as the chief cause of delinquency, ably represented by Doctor H. H. Goddard; those who hold that no classification is yet possible, represented by Doctor William Healey; and the eugenics experts, represented by Doctor Charles B. Davenport. The brilliant genius> ol Doctor Goddard is well known to all of us. He has ably shown us that feeble-mindedness is a thoroughgoing recessive factor in the operation of the Mendelian law of heredity. No sane scientific man at
the present time doubts Doctor Goddard's contribution.1 But Doctor Goddard is now attempting to explain crime as a phenomenon of feeble-mindedness. "Although we cannot determine at
just
present
what the proportion is, probably from 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the people in our prisons are mentally defective." 2 The writer is well acquainted with the work which Doctor Goddard is doing
now as
Director of Juvenile Research for the State of Ohio and the meeting with. When it is shown that his figures published five years ago are somewhat large Doctor Goddard will know exactly where his mistake was.
success and obstacles he is
Doctor Healey has studied one thousand young recidivists at the Psychopathic Institute in Chicago. He denies the possibility of classification.3 The whole effort of his office is to gather data, and the data are exceedingly valuable. But that same method was adopted by Bacon many centuries ago. That method of gathering knowledge can never discover any new law, for in the last analysis it is nothing but interpretation. The world of nature is dumb 1 The Editor of the Psychological Clinic will have to be put in the category of the insane if this remark be tnif.?The Editor. 3 H. H. Goddard, "Feeble-Mindedness," 1914, p. 7. * William Healey, "The Individual Delinquent," 1915, p. 160.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
72 and tells
story. For example, the world is neither intrinsicallyintrinsically bad, bearing within it as much death as life and as much pleasure as pain. Only the unifying principle of interpretation makes it possible to attend only to the pleasure and laugh at the pain. However meritorious the data that Doctor Healey has gathered, the method by which they were gathered would never formulate a theory or construct a classification even though the universe were filed safely away into pigeon-holes. Science cannot be made too objective or all value and meaning vanish. But the sane scientific spirit rings true when Doctor Healey says, "the elders, who spoke so glibly of 'the criminal' as a born type, had not the means of investigating whether he was not rather a born defective and a criminal through accident of environment." 1 Doctor Charles B. Davenport is with the Carnegie Institution of Washington and is one of the best physiologists in the country. Yet his proof that crime has its roots in heredity is based on the statistics of seven cases,2 and he speaks of criminality as being equally a physical thing as the color of the eyes. According to Doctor Davenport's theory, from one's grandmother one might inherit blue eyes, from one's grandfather a shock of auburn hair, while from some great-grandfather one might at the same time inherit a kind of pink criminality. Doctor Davenport surely was jesting. Now this is the field just as it was when the writer undertook to do his bit. How could one hope to succeed where so many eminent men have been able merely to start in the right direction? The criminals were given the Alpha Group Examination?the same test that was used in the army. The test was given only to the criminals who could read and write English and under the same conditions used in the army testing. The papers were afterwards sorted into groups according to crime, the criminals of each state separately. It was then found that the states did not vary to any great extent, so the criminals of the three states were thrown together. The negroes were then separated from the whites and the women from the men. This paper is concerned only with the white men. Then the papers of each crime were arranged in order of psychological numerical grade, which offers a possible range of 0 to 212. The median grade of each crime-group was then found. Finally, the various crimes were arranged on a scale according to the median grades, with the following result:
good
1 William 1
no
nor
Heaiy, "The Individual Delinquent," 1915, p. 17. Charles B. Davenport, "Heredity in Relation to Eugenics," 1911, p. 89.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMINALS. Crime
Number of Criminals 8
Larceny Obtaining property under false pretense Confidence game Assault and battery to rob
Forgery
Robbery
525
Issuing fraudulent check Burglary of inhabited dwelling Entering to commit felony
15 41 42
773 60
Burglary
22 46
9
25 25 78 98 51
16
91
84 81
Embezzlement
19
725 6 25 35 178
221 108 48 18 102
Median Psychological Grade
Having burglar tools Conspiracy
9
v
73
Vehicle taking Horse stealing Pocket picking Murder, first degree Assault and battery to kill Abandonment
or
rob
80
79 79 73 69 68 66 64 63 62 62 61 61 58 55 51
51
Bigamy Rape
50
Indecent liberty with child
46
Sodomy
42
Incest
41
Manslaughter
36
Murder, second degree Cut, stab, or shoot to kill Vagrancy
or
wound
34 34 11
Even the casual reader will observe that the first sixteen crimes the scale are crimes against property and that all the others are crimes against person, recalling the convictions of Garofalo. Similar
on
crimes occur near
Maudsley.
each other on the scale, recalling the insight of The various crimes arrange themselves on the scale in
as orderly a manner as the alphabet of a language. The only force that determines is intelligence, and intelligence is the world of mystery described as the ease with which connections in the synapses are formed and maintained.
Deception
is the one factor necessary in all crime against propIt will be noticed in the group of property-crimes that the crimes requiring the greatest skill in deception occur at the top of the list, while crimes requiring the least skill in deception occur near the bottom.
erty.
Premeditation is the
one factor present in crimes against the It will be noticed that the crimes requiring the most premeditation occur at the top of the person-group, while the crimes requiring the least premeditation occur at the bottom of that group.
person.
74
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
The location of any crime in either group is in proportion to the The latter phenomenon necessary presence of the required factor.
merely proves that the classification is a normal and natural one. parallel variation of intelligence is the significant phenomenon. But the mere presence or absence of intelligence to a degree will not of necessity result in crime any more than it would result in Method-
The
ism
or
is the in
so
Prohibition. same
far
as
The force that drives men to success and honor force that drives others to failure and disgrace. Only the science of criminology can succeed in learning some-
thing about the factors of intelligence can it hope to solve the problem of crime. Criminality is not a gnome that dances attendance upon the moral world. It is rather the purgatory where are gathered the blasted ambitions, blighted hopes and broken hearts from that land that lies just along the border of the The next chapter will tell that story.
"promised
land" of
success
