Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Psychology, Pathological
Hundreds of young fellows who have served short sentences of
imprisonment find their way to my house or to my office. I rarely find
a full-sized and well-developed fellow amongst them, for, mostly, they
are of the class described by the Prison Commissioners.
Round shoulders, flat chests and flat feet, poor teeth, sore eyes, are
ever noticeable, while not a few point me to their maimed hands or
other limbs and tell me of their illnesses.
I am heartily tired of meeting with such afflicted humanity that I
cannot help or assist in any useful way.
But I want no specialist or professor to read me their minds, for their
bodies are their minds.
These young fellows are not particularly wicked; they have no great
passion that dominates their lives. They are not anxious to do ill;
they have no great aspirations for good. If they were free agents,
which they are not, they would prefer good to evil. But being good
does not happen to fill their stomachs, but doing evil does, either in
prison or in the lodging-houses.
Now, I myself will venture into psychology, and I will voice their
opinions. “We are poor, weak and afflicted, but we are not to blame; no
one will give us work, for we have had no training; we cannot do hard
work, we are not big or strong enough; we do not want to be dishonest,
but we must live somehow. If we are caught we go to prison, where we
have food and lodgings and no hard work to do; and they are good to us
in prison.” This, I contend, is a fair statement of the condition and
temperament of thousands that we call criminals!
Is it a wonder, then, I would ask, that many of them find their way
into convict prisons, Portland, Parkhurst or Dartmoor, as their health
permits?
What about Borstal! I hear some one say. The doors of Borstal are
closed against them, for they are neither big enough, strong enough
nor healthy enough for Borstal, which demands, and receives, strong,
healthy young fellows only—no others need apply!
I have no doubt that the psychology of these fellows changes with the
flight of years and frequent imprisonments, and probably when they
arrive at forty years of age they will provide an interesting study for
clever professors of psychology, though I am inclined to believe that
even at that age their bodies will still be indexes to their mind, for
their weaknesses and abnormalities will be the more pronounced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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