Criminality and economic conditionsBonger, Willem Adriaan
General
Criminality and economic conditions
Bonger, Willem Adriaan
Crime -- Economic aspects
The work of Dr. Havelock Ellis, entitled “The Criminal”, contains only
one passage which is of importance for the question of criminality
considered from the economic point of view. Like most bio-sociologists
he considers the social factors as the most important. This is the
passage in question:
“The problem of criminality is not an isolated one that can be dealt
with by fixing our attention on that and that alone. It is a problem
that on closer view is found to merge itself very largely into all
those problems of our social life that are now pressing for solution,
and in settling them we shall to a great extent settle it. The rising
flood of criminality is not an argument for pessimism or despair. It is
merely an additional spur to that great task of social organization to
which during the coming century we are called.
“It is useless, or worse than useless, to occupy ourselves with methods
for improving the treatment of criminals, so long as the conditions of
life render the prison a welcome and desired shelter. So long as we
foster the growth of reckless classes we foster the growth of
criminality. So long as there are a large body of women in the East of
London, and in other large centers, who are prepared to say, ‘It’s Jack
the Ripper or the bridge with me. What’s the odds?’ there will be a
still larger number of persons who will willingly accept the risks of
prison. ‘What’s the odds?’ Liberty is dear to every man who is fed and
clothed and housed, and he will not usually enter a career of crime
unless he has carefully calculated the risks of losing his liberty, and
found them small; but food and shelter are even more precious than
liberty, and these may be secured in prison. As things are, the asylum
and the workhouse, against which there is a deep prejudice, ingrained
and irrational, would have a greater deterring effect than the prison.
There are every morning in Paris 50,000 persons who do not know how
they will eat or where they will sleep. It is the same in every great
city; for such the prison can be nothing but a home. It is well known
that the life of the convict, miserable as it is, with its dull routine
and perpetual surveillance, is yet easier, less laborious, and far more
healthy than that to which thousands of honest working-men are
condemned throughout Great Britain.” [201]
VI.
CARROLL D. WRIGHT.
The author of the brochure, “The Relation of Economic Conditions to the
Causes of Crime”, begins by declaring that there are two kinds of
criminals; persons who have become such from their psycho-physical
constitution, and others who have become such from circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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