Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Psychology, Pathological
In prison this can easily be done, for in prison there is an abundance
of time, ample opportunity, and a sufficiency of means for this
interesting study. In one Continental prison this is done. There
the doctor, not the governor, is the most important personage. From
him I sometimes get very instructive communications. The author of
the “manual” quoted tells us “that it is his aim to present such a
psychology as will deal with all states of mind that might possibly be
involved in the determination and judgment of crime.” This is a large
order, for he promises an impossibility. I marvel at his temerity,
I am then struck by his audacity. But on consulting his index and
searching his five hundred pages I admire his prudence, for he never
attempts to keep his promise. I find no reference to the influence that
physical disease, affliction or deprivation exercises upon the mind.
Of epileptics he has nothing to say. He ignores afflictions! Of the
blind, the deaf and dumb he is apparently unaware; the cripple, the
hunchback, the maimed, the one-armed, the one-legged, the sufferers
from sunstroke, and the vast army whose lives have been spoiled through
physical accidents—of their psychology we are told nothing.
Yet every one knows, or might know, that their psychological condition
is absolutely dominated by their physical condition. In each of them
physical nature has been outraged, it has been assaulted; and Nature,
knowing no pity, hits back again with a vengeance.
We know, or we might if we cared to know, that these unfortunates,
having suffered loss, must receive compensation of some kind, and if
that compensation be not of a comforting and inspiring character,
including training, education, control and new favourable developments,
they become potential criminals. Their wits become sharpened to
deceive, their tempers violent, explosive and dangerous. Some one has
said, “I am my body.” While this may not be wholly true, there is still
a world of truth in the statement. So I again suggest that before we
try to grope in the dark recesses of the mind, we set to work to learn
more of the body, for that is an open book.
Believe me, it is given to very few to bear about with them a deformed,
mutilated or afflicted body without their minds becoming changed also.
Verily, the writers of our old fairy tales and our early novelists
were not very far wrong. Have any of my readers ever walked through
Parkhurst prison? It is a sort of convalescent home for criminals—a
sanatorium, if you will, in the Isle of Wight.
If you have not, then come with me in imagination! Never mind the
building, take no heed of the officials, let us concentrate our
attention on the prisoners, the criminals, for they are all undergoing
penal servitude.
You gasp! and well you may. You never saw such a strange, pitiful mass
of smitten humanity! Well! that is something to be thankful for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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