Produced by David Widger
By Charles Dudley Warner
The problem of dealing with the criminal class seems insolvable, and itundoubtedly is with present methods. It has never been attempted on afully scientific basis, with due regard to the protection of society andto the interests of the criminal.
It is purely an economic and educational problem, and must rest upon thesame principles that govern in any successful industry, or in education,and that we recognize in the conduct of life. That little progress hasbeen made is due to public indifference to a vital question and to theaction of sentimentalists, who, in their philanthropic zeal; fancy that aradical reform can come without radical discipline. We are largelywasting our energies in petty contrivances instead of striking at theroot of the evil.
What do we mean by the criminal class? It is necessary to define thiswith some precision, in order to discuss intelligently the means ofdestroying this class. A criminal is one who violates a statute law, or,as we say, commits a crime. The human law takes cognizance of crime andnot of sin. But all men who commit crime are not necessarily in thecriminal class. Speaking technically, we put in that class those whosesole occupation is crime, who live by it as a profession, and who have noother permanent industry. They prey upon society. They are by their actsat war upon it, and are outlaws.
The State is to a certain extent responsible for this class, for it hastrained most of them, from youth up, through successive detentions inlock-ups, city prisons, county jails, and in State prisons, andpenitentiaries on relatively short sentences, under influences which tendto educate them as criminals and confirm them in a bad life. That is tosay, if a man once violates the law and is caught, he is put into amachine from which it is very difficult for him to escape without furtherdeterioration. It is not simply that the State puts a brand on him in theeyes of the community, but it takes away his self-respect without givinghim an opportunity to recover it. Once recognized as in the criminalclass, he has no further concern about the State than that of evading itspenalties so far as is consistent with pursuing his occupation of crime.
To avoid misunderstanding as to the subject of this paper, it isnecessary to say that it is not dealing with the question of prisonreform in its whole extent. It attempts to consider only a pretty welldefined class. But in doing this it does not say that other aspects ofour public peril from crime are not as important as this. We cannot relaxour efforts in regard to the relations of poverty, drink, and unsanitaryconditions, as leading to crime. We have still to take care of theexposed children, of those with parentage and surroundings inclining tocrime, of the degenerate and the unfortunate. We have to keep up thewarfare all along the line against the demoralization of society. But wehave hereto deal with a specific manifestation; we have to capture astronghold, the possession of which will put us in much better positionto treat in detail the general evil.
Why should we tolerate any longer a professional criminal class? It isnot large. It is contemptibly small compared with our seventy millions ofpeople. If I am not mistaken, a late estimate gave us less than fiftythousand persons in our State prisons and penitentiaries. If we add tothem those at large who have served one or two terms, and are generallyknown to the police, we shall not have probably more than eighty thousandof the criminal class. But call it a hundred thousand. It is a body