Crime -- Great Britain; Criminal anthropology; Punishment -- Great Britain
When a man has gone wrong it may be generally assumed that there is
something in him that has made him unfit to resist the temptations
incident to his position. If this assumption be correct it follows that we
are not warranted in expecting from him the same power of resistance as
others have shown. We are not justified in assuming that with proper
assistance his character and powers may not improve, but it is hardly
reasonable to expect conduct from him that would be more saintly than our
own; and a great many disappointments are suffered by earnest people who
seek to lift up the fallen, simply because they have expected too much.
When efforts to help a man result in failure it is a safe working rule to
assume that the fault is at least as much in the nature of the means
employed as in the man. They may have been very good means, but they have
not been applicable in the case; which is just to say that the result is
the test of their suitability. This is all so obvious that in practice it
is disregarded, and we persist in the foolish assumption that people on
whom our patent pills fail to act are incorrigible; though the fact is
that the offender is no more incorrigible than the reformer, and is
sometimes not so stupid.
The position of the man who has been in prison is not so bad as that of
the woman who has been there. There can be no question that women less
frequently break the laws than men. This may or may not be evidence of
superior virtue on the part of women, but the fact itself makes the
position of the woman who has fallen more difficult to retrieve. She is
more conspicuous than the male offender, if only because there are fewer
of her kind, and the attitude of women towards her is less tolerant than
the attitude of men, either towards her or towards those of their own sex
who have offended. Accordingly, when a woman once loses her reputation she
is more liable than a man to accept the position and to sink under her
disgrace; so that the fallen woman is regarded by many as the most
degraded of beings, and her rescue has a fascination for those who seek
to aid the worst. This conception is absurd, as everyone knows who has
studied the subject with open eyes, but the question is one that cannot be
faithfully dealt with here. The economic position of the woman who has
broken away from the standards set by the law need not be, and often is
not, worse than that she held before her revolt. It all depends on what
she was and how she has rebelled. Vice as little as virtue determines the
economic position of those who are subject to it. The transgressor by her
transgression is cut off from her class, and she is in danger of failing
to gain a footing in any other. She may, and in the majority of cases
does, glide out of her folly as she has slipped into it; but when she is
publicly branded her chances of recovery are less than those of a man. The
attitude of men towards her may be insolent, but it is rarely so brutal as
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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