I have been in close contact with so-called criminals for a great many years. Yet nowhere have I found the alleged “criminal type,” nor have I ever discovered the “real criminal.” He does not exist. Crime is simply misdirected energy, effort applied wrongly. The average criminal is just the average man, generally speaking. If in any sense he may be considered a “variation,” it is only because of his frequently superior initiative, daring and intelligence. His often anti-social activity is conditioned by his unconventional vocation, not by any inherent criminal or anti-social tendencies. I am not speaking of congenital criminal degenerates whose number is infinitesimal, and who belong in the care of the alienist. The vast majority of the so-called criminal class are thoroughly normal human beings, if the term may be applied to the type of man produced by modern civilization. I have had scores and hundreds of professional criminals, young and old, tell me again and again, “The only hope and ambition of my life is just to get a little pile, so that I can feel secure from want. Then I’d take my family somewhere in the country and live a quiet and honest life.” My present space is limited. I can merely shadow forth here a skeleton outline of this big and very vital subject. In a forthcoming book I shall analyze more thoroughly the sources and the psychology of crime, and write of the unique and interesting prison types and characters I have met. For the present it is sufficient to emphasize that our whole social attitude toward the criminal is fundamentally wrong. It is the attitude of barbaric stupidity that seeks to hide its own shame and its mistakes behind prison bars. It has neither understanding of human motives nor sympathy with human weaknesses. This social attitude toward the criminal, representing the lowest human intelligence, is reflected in the management and discipline of the prisons. It is apparent that modern criminology has had a very negligible effect upon the popular mind within the last twenty-five years, for I have found the prisons of today in no essential way different from those of a quarter of a century back. Brutality is rampant; discipline is synonymous with the absolute suppression of individuality and the crushing of the prisoner’s spirit and will. The atmosphere of our penal institutions of today is that of violence and force, of force and violence. With very rare exceptions, the spirit of humanity, of understanding, and justice, is a stranger in prison. ALEXANDER BERKMAN THE STATE PRISON AT JEFFERSON CITY, MO. EMMA GOLDMAN