Criminality and economic conditionsBonger, Willem Adriaan
General
Criminality and economic conditions
Bonger, Willem Adriaan
Crime -- Economic aspects
“In short, there remains nothing of the law laid down by this
distinguished writer, and all the statistics contradict him.
Delinquency, as Garofalo remarks, is so little proportional to
commercial activity that England, where crime is on the decrease, is
the nation most remarkable for the increase of its commerce, and that
Spain and Italy, where the criminality is greater than that of the
other principal states of Europe, are far behind them in business
development. We may add that in France the most hard-working class is
without any doubt the peasant class, and this shows the smallest
proportionate number of delinquents, notwithstanding unfavorable
conditions. We may conclude that work is in itself the adversary of
crime, that if it favors it it is by indirect, not necessary action,
and that its relation to crime is like that between two antagonistic
forms of work.” [146]
In the following section the author treats the influence of wealth and
of poverty upon the criminal. He mentions the different opinions of
Turati and of Colajanni on the one hand, and of Ferri and Garofalo on
the other. The former tried to prove that poverty is often a cause of a
poor man’s becoming a criminal. Garofalo tries to disprove it by
calling attention, among other things, to the fact that, according to
the criminal statistics of Italy for 1880, property owners committed as
many crimes in proportion as the proletariat did.
In opposition to this Professor Tarde points out that the French
criminal statistics in 1887 show that there were, out of 100,000 of
each class of the population, the following number of persons
arraigned: 20 out of the class of domestics, one of the poorest
classes; 12 from the liberal professions including persons of
independent income; 139 from the class of vagrants and persons without
occupation (the most necessitous class, therefore); 21 from commerce;
26 from manufacturing (a very high figure considering the profits of
that year); and 14 from the farming class (a very low figure
considering their relative poverty).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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