Robbery and burglary are generally counted as crimes of violence, but
they should be properly classed under property crimes. Every motive that
leads to getting property in illegal ways applies to these crimes. There
is added to the regular causes of property crimes the element of danger
and adventure which makes a strong appeal to boys and men. I am inclined
to think that few mature men have committed one of these crimes, unless
they began criminal careers as boys. Such crimes especially appeal to
the activity and love of adventure which inhere in every boy. They are
committed for the most part by youths who have had almost no chance to
get the needed sport and physical experience incident to boyhood. The
foot-ball, base-ball, polo or golf player very seldom becomes a robber
or a burglar. Almost no rich man or rich man's son becomes a robber or a
burglar. Those who fall under this lure are mainly the denizens of the
streets, the railroad yards, the vacant lots, the casual workers who are
stimulated by a variety of conditions to get property unlawfully. Added
to this are almost invariably a defective heredity, vicious environment,
little education, and a total want of direction in the building up of
habits and inhibitions.
The robber or burglar who kills in the commission of crime is more
dangerous and harder to cure than the one who kills from passion or
malice. There is always the element of an occupation, for getting
property, and generally a love of adventure that is difficult to
overcome, except by a substantial change of social relations which makes
acquiring property easier for the class from which all these criminals
develop. The murder that comes from passion and feeling implies
situations and circumstances that are rarely strong enough to overcome
the restrictions against killing.
XIII
MAN AS A PREDATORY ANIMAL
Not less than eighty per cent of all crimes are property crimes, and it
seems probable that, of the rest, most arise from the same motives. If
we look at civilization as the result of that seesaw trend of the race
from "Naturalism to Artificialism," we may get a flexible view of life
that will be in accordance with the facts, and will help us to get rid
of the arbitrary division of man's history into the three periods termed
Savagery, Barbarism and Civilization. However desirable this division
may be for historic purposes in general, it is only confusing in an
effort to study the nature of man.
In the life and origin of the race, the fact is always evidenced that
the Ego through its growth and persistence is always drawing to itself
from the current of environment all things which it feels desirable to
its life and growth. This must be a necessary condition of survival. In
the long journey from amoeba to man, any circumstance causing a complete
halt for even a brief period meant extinction, while even a persistent
interference produced a weakened organism, if not an arrest of
development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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