The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1889-01-03
THE ORIGIN OF CRIME.
Is the faint in the Blood or i'm Society
at large?


and prison matters in general. lew are more
conversant with the subject it seems to me-
than DR.. ScOuller of the Illinois reform
school; but as it is human to err. / am of
the opinion that he is wrong in his hypOth-
esis that crime is hereditary and that the
only way to prevent crime is to stop
breeding" criminals. If the Imagination of
mans heart is evil, it applies as well to the
human race as to the criminal element, and
the only way to stop the tendency to evil
would be to stop breeding the human race
Take two men of ordinary honesty and in
telligence; give the first opportunities to
rise in the world and he is likely to rise;
and everything leads us to look. and rightly
for the descendants to follow in the progen-
tors footsteps. Take the second man. and
not only not give him the same OppOrtun
ties. but prevent him from obtaining them;
force him dOwn-dOwn-until hunger gnaws
at his vitals; then the law of nature asserts
itself, and comes-crime. 1t is impossible
to tell the exact pressure that must be
brought to bear. before mans desperate
fortunes incites to crime. but certain it is,
that wherever the future holds out
nothing but gloom and hopeIessness, the
mind is easily converted from virtue to
crime: and the affluent and middle classes,
who are far removed from the temptations
of the poverty stricken. cannot tell how far
the bitterness of want. the contempt OF
those same rich, the ranking memory of
better fortunes. or even the fierceness which
absolute hunger produces in the human
body; they cannot tell, l say, how these
things madden and plead in irresistible eX-
cuse for crime, which they. in their self
righteousness. stamp with lofty reprObatiOn.
This second man, living in the hot beds of
crime and poverty-dO we look for his
children to be anything but thieves and
beggars? Reverse the conditions of the
two men at the outset, and you reverse the
conditions of the children in after years. Is
it in the blood that man is Catholic or a
PrOtestant-a Democrat or Republican?
Yet how many are Protestants. Catholics.
Democrats or Republicans. for no better rea-
son than that their fathers were such. If
crime is hereditary. from whence came it:
from our first parents? That would simply
prove that the whole race have the faint
l do not think that DR.. ScOuller believes the
whole race to be tainted. yet, it Is only the
legitimate conclusion we can come to from
the hypothesis set forth. for the seed could
not have originated nearer. | believe the
mind of man to be less evil than is generally
given out by SageS OF DID, its great charac-
teristic is imitation and it will initiate the
good as well as the bad, if there is only
some one to set the example. What does the
history of the luke family prove? That
crime was in the blood? Does it not rather
prove that their SURROUNDINGS were such as
to keep them in the slough of vice; that the
education of this family from the outset,
tended to lower instead OF raise? Send the
babes of our so called blue blOOded' fami-
lies into the slumS of the great cities; let
them stay there from the age of three. until
they are twenty. Will we look for them to
become doctors of divinity. of medicine, of
law; or will we not rather look for them to
become what their environments tend to
make them-in spite of their blue blood
pauperS and thieves
An English inspector of police says that
Poverty is very seldom separate from
crime" He does not say that crime is sell
dom separate from poverty. No! we have
no rich criminals. and in view of this sup
posed blood faint does it not seem strange
that we do not find rich and refined crmi-
nails? When member of a highly con-
nected family steals, he is kleptomaniac;
his family are not kleptomaniacs; he, the
individual. is alone responsible. But who
ever heard of a poor man being a kleptO-
maniac? When he steals. it is the ''taint in
the family blood"
In the Elmira refOrmatOry they have a
record of about three thousand young crimi-
mails whose ages average 2312 years. Of
the ancestors of the men only per cent.
were actual paupers. and nearly 80 per cent.
lived from hand to mouth. OF 2,713 crimi-
mails. 1904 were homeless of which number
40 per cent. were common tramps OF
2.713. % per cent. had obtained common
school education or trife higher; 90 per
cent were absolutely illiterate. and so per