Crime -- United States; Criminals -- United States
Largely because of such easily-misleading "tests," America has been at
meticulous pains to school the criminal to believe himself irresponsible
for his illegal acts; this, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the mark
of the true moron would rightly attach to him, did he fail to grind all of
such gratuitous grist coming to his mill.
If America elects to classify the criminal exactly as he would be
classified; and then to dispose of him exactly as he would be disposed of,
that's America's business. His business is to promote the calling of false
turns on him in favor of easy going at his chosen calling; and he attends
strictly to business, without care otherwise for what you tag him
mentally.
Ostensibly as opposed to the "business," he will play any card for a
consideration along any line you suggest; but not for a moment does he
lose sight of his cardinal aim, which is to be a crook hailed by crooks.
Lay gentlemen particularly state the case in words opposed to those which
precede; but just because they are lay gentlemen they do not, and they
cannot, by any possibility, state the case as it is.
Being a real criminologist presupposes long years of consecrated study of
and contact with criminals, in their midst. It also postulates a broad
culture, inclusive of the specific bearing of genetic parallels and the
reverse; and, as a matter of course, close study of such as the etiology
of crime, and of individual and race psychology.
Notwithstanding, lay gentlemen have written, during recent years, most of
the basic specifications for the social rehabilitation, by institutional
correction, of the habitual, predal felon. Result? Let a parallel case
give answer:
Before the discovery of the anti-toxin for diphtheria, suppose a
criminologist to have had a strong humanitarian leaning to be of active
service in the discovery and use of that anti-toxin. Assume further that
he conned a few chemical paragraphs, messed about in hospitals, tinkered
at synthesis and the reverse in the laboratory, and wrote copiously from
his treasured notebook: how far, think you, would he have gotten in his
quest?
The parallel is not perfect, to be sure, but it will serve to point these
vital facts: (1) The ninety-and-nine of puttering, basically uninformed,
amateur penologists have been primarily a nuisance, and the thousandth has
been useless in the work. (2) Secondarily, they have been much more than a
mere nuisance, in that they have made it their business to pull down the
framework of rational reformative régimes put up by actual criminologists.
(3) And in the stead of that deleted or destroyed, they have rung in
either puerile activities and inactivities, or sporting-monger activities
to the point of offense against God, against Nature, and against the
social exactions upon the criminal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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