Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-04-24
TIABITUAL CRIMINAL WRITING
AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO. AID SCIENCE
Patient at St. Elizabeth's, Seeking to Get
Causes, Offers Self as Psychiatric
Specimen

he is certain he never Will violate the
law Intentionally again.
"Of course, 1 dislike policemen" ne
said. 1T would hardly be possible fol
man who has been through what
have to like them. I dislike them as
class. Thoroughly realizing that there
are good and bad policemen. But II
had gone for long time without
cigarette and a policeman had some
and 1 knew he would give me one,
wouldn't ask him.
"Of course policemen are necessary
with the world as it is. 1t will be
Utopia when we don't have to have
them, with fellows such as l nave
been. But fortunately my dislike
always has been rather passive and
has never developed into an active
hate. I've never killed anybody, al
though sometimes it would have been
greatly to my advantage to do SO. But
I don't claim any credit for that"
Holds Habitual Criminal Hopeless.
has, he says, merely a
scientific interest in why some crimi-
mails kill policemen and some do not. In
this connection he now is reading the
confidential autobiography OF FRED
Panzram, written down by guard at
the District Jail two years ago. Panz-
ram COI1IeSSeS W dpOuI II hAoA uSAo'
was at Leavenworth when
this man strang,ed one of the guards
in a fit of rage, crime for which
Panzram was sentenced to death.
II don't know" - says, why
I have been a criminal One thing I'm
sure of is that the habitual criminal
can't be reformed, as they have tried
to reform him in the past. Neither
beating him nor appealing to him is of
much use. The only thing is to get at
the bottom OF the trouble when he is
young.
Take myself, for instance. The only
kind of crime that I ever felt any re-
greet for was the crime Of being caught.
That, I think, is the way most habitual
criminals look at their offenses. When
a crime is done, it is part of the past.
Allowing themselves to get caught is a
new crime. The crimes of which am
bit proud of are the ones in which
never was caught.
When I have gone to jail I have
taken it as matter OF course-Just q
part of life. I have escaped an active
hatred of those who sent me there and
the Jail guards by building up world
of my own phantasies. That's why I
am here. A fellow like Panzram, with
a different sort of personality, does the
same thing by expressing his hatred in
murder.
Tells of Prison Riots.
ST have been through three prison
riots and think / know something of
how they start. They talk of plots
among the prisoners, but I never knew
of one and those have taken part in
seem to have arisen spontaneously. In
each case there has been a growing
dissatisfaction among the inmates over
food which everybody feels at the same
time, They do not have to commune
cate it to each other. Then somebody
starts something and nobody needs a
cue to join in. Things simply come
to a climax for everybody. The last
prison riot I was in came to a head
when they served dried raisips full OF
grit for supper. Everybody seemed to
start throwing dishes all at once. A
guard saw me throwing them but didn't
report me-"
- is described at st. Eliza
beth's as "a rather bright fellow and
not crazy in the usual sense of the
word" His eagerness to help in the
scientific study of crime to get at causes
rather than to reform by emotional APP
peal has created a favorable impress
sion And his autobiography is ex-
pected to form an important document
in the new study of crininology from
the standpoint of the mental processes
of the criminal himself rather than
the mental processes of other persons.