Criminal Sociology Part 10

The positive school, precisely because it aims at an equilibrium between individual and social rights, is not content with taking the part of society against the individual. It also takes the part of the individual against society.

In the first place, the very reforms which we propose for the indemnification of the victims of crime, regarded as a social function, as well as the operation of the punishment, have an individualist character. The individualism of the cla.s.sical school was not even complete as a matter of fact; for the guarantees which it proposed took account of the individual criminal only, and did not touch his victims, who are also individuals, and far more worthy of sympathy and protection.

But, beyond this, we may point to three reforms as an instance of the positive and reasonable guarantees of the individual against the abuse or the defects of social authority. Of these reforms two have been put forward by the cla.s.sical school also, but, like criminal lunatic asylums, alternatives for short terms of imprisonment, and so on, they have generally remained inoperative, for they are not in harmony with the bulk of traditional theory, and only in a positive system have they any organic and efficacious connection with the data of criminal sociology. I refer to the exercise of popular opinion, the correction of judicial mistakes, and the transfer of sundry punishable offences to the category of civil contraventions.

The inst.i.tution of a Ministry of Justice corresponds to the demands of general sociology, which exacts division of labour even in collective organisms, and to those of criminal sociology, which requires a special and distinct organ for the social function of defence against crime. Indeed it has become indispensable as a necessary judicial organ, even in nations like England which have not yet formally established it. So that, far from confounding the Public Prosecutor with the judicial body, we see the necessity of giving to this office a more elevated character and a distinct personality, with ampler guarantees of independence of the executive power.

Nevertheless the action of the Ministry of Justice, as now commonly organised, may be inadequate for the protection of the victims of crime, either indirectly through the insufficient number of its functionaries, or directly, through the functional defect insisted on by M. Gneist, "party spirit or prejudice in favour of the governing powers." The latter, indeed, notwithstanding M. Glaser's objection that government pressure is impossible, have no need to give special instructions, of a more or less compromising character, in order to exercise a special influence in any particular case. There is no necessity for anything beyond the conservative spirit natural to every inst.i.tution of the State, or the principle of authority which is a special form of it, apart from the less respectable motives of interested subservience to such as are in office and dispense promotion.

Hence it will be useful, in initiating criminal proceedings, to add to the action of a Public Prosecutor (but not to subst.i.tute for him) the action of private persons.

Criminal proceedings by citizens may take two forms, according as they are put in operation only by the injured person or by any individual.

The first mode, already allowed in every civilised nation, needs amendment in various ways, especially in regard to the subordination of the penal action to the plaint of the injured person, which ought to be restrained, and even abolished. In fact, whereas this right has. .h.i.therto been regulated by law only in view of the legal and material gravity of the offence, it should in future be made to depend on the perversity of the offender; for society has a much greater interest in defending itself against the author of a slight offence if he is a born criminal or a criminal lunatic, than in defending itself against the author of a more serious crime, if he is an occasional criminal or a criminal of pa.s.sion. And the necessity of bringing a private action in regard to certain offences is only a source of abuses, and of demoralising bargains between offenders and injured persons.

On the other hand, this prosecution by a citizen who has been injured by a crime or an offence ought to have more efficacious guarantees, either for the exercise of the rights of the injured person, or against the possible neglect or abuse of the Public Prosecutor. If, indeed, he is obliged to take up every charge and action, he is also (in Italy and France, but not in Austria or Germany, for instance) the only authority as to penal actions, and consequently as to penal judgments.

In Italy, out of 264,038 cases which came before the Public Prosecutor in 1880, six per cent., or 16,058, were "entered on the records," or, in other words, they were not followed up; and in 1889, out of a total of 271,279, the number of unprosecuted cases was 27,086, or ten per cent. That is, the number had almost doubled in ten years.

In France the annual average of plaints, charges, and trials with which the Public Prosecutor was concerned stood at 114,181 in the years 1831-5; at 371,910 in 1876-80; and at 459,319 in 1887. And the cases not proceeded with were 34,643, or thirty per cent., in 1831-5; 181,511, or forty-eight per cent., in 1876-80; and 239,061, or fifty-two per cent., in 1887. That is to say, their actual and relative numbers mere nearly doubled in fifty years.

Is it possible that in ten, or even in fifty years, the moral conditions of a nation, and its inclination to bring criminal charges, should be so modified that the number of cases devoid of foundation should have been almost doubled? It is certain that in different nations and different provinces there are varying degrees of readiness to bring charges against lawbreakers rather than to take personal vengeance. But in one and the same nation this vindictive spirit and this readiness to bring charges cannot vary so greatly and rapidly, especially within ten years, as in Italy; for the persistence of popular sentiment is a well- known fact. It is rather in the disposition of the functionaries of the Ministry of Justice, which is far more variable, that we must look for an explanation of this fact, which is also accounted for by the tendency to diminish the statistical records of crime.

Now, why must the citizen who lodges a complaint of what he considers a crime or offence submit to the decision of the Public Prosecutor, who has allowed his action to drop? This consideration has led to the subsidiary penal action, already allowed in Germany and Austria, and introduced in the draft codes of procedure in Hungary, Belgium, and France, which is a genuine guarantee of the individual as against the social authority. We must not, however, deceive ourselves as to the efficacy or frequency of its operation, especially in the Latin nations, which have none too much individual initiative.

The second form of private prosecution is that of the "popular punitive action," which existed in the Roman penal law-which, it may be said in pa.s.sing, is not so insignificant as the cla.s.sical school has supposed. The statement of M. Carrara, too often repeated, that "The Romans, who were giants in civil law, are pigmies in penal law," is not in my opinion correct. It is true that the Roman penal law was not organised in a philosophical system; but it exhibits throughout the wonderfully practical judgment of the Roman jurisconsults; and indeed one cannot see why they should have lost this sense when dealing with crimes and punishments. On the other hand, I am inclined to think that the importance of the Roman civil law has been exaggerated, and that the spirit of the corpus juris springs from social and economic conditions so different from our own that we can no longer feel bound to submit to its tyranny. The penal law of the Romans, however, contains several maxims based on unquestionable common sense, which deserve to be rescued from the oblivion to which they have been condemned by the dogmatism of the cla.s.sical school. Examples of these are the popular punitive action; the distinction between dolus bonus and dolus malus, which belongs to the theory of motives; the stress laid upon intentions rather than upon their actual outcome; the law of exceptio veritatis in cases of slander, which under the pharisaism of the cla.s.sical theory serves only to give immunity to knaves; the penalty of twofold or threefold rest.i.tution for theft, in place of a few days or weeks in prison; the condemnation of the most hardened criminals to the mines, instead of providing them with cells, as comfortable as they are ineffectual-apart from the consideration that the firedamp in mines and the unhealthiness of penal settlements would be less mischievous if their victims were the most dangerous criminals rather than honest miners and husbandmen.

To return to the popular penal action, it is so commonly advocated, even by the cla.s.sical school, that it is necessary to say another word on the subject.

Gneist, from his special point of view, proposed that this action should be introduced into penal procedure, as against electoral and press offences, offences against the law of public meetings and a.s.sociations, and the abuse of public authority. But I consider that this action would be a necessary guarantee, in the case of all crimes and offences, for a reasonable and definite adjustment of the rights of the individual and of society.

Another reform, tending to a more effective guarantee of individual rights, is the revision of judicial errors in the interests of all who are unjustly condemned or prosecuted. Such a reform has been advocated also by several members of the cla.s.sical school; but it seemed only too likely to remain with them a mere benevolent expression of opinion; for it can only be carried into effect by curtailing imprisonment, and by a more frequent and stringent infliction of fines, as advocated by the positive school.

Sanctioned in some special cases, as an exceptional measure-as, for instance, in the last century by the Parliament of Toulouse, and in our age by the English Parliament-compensation for judicial errors was rendered necessary in France at the end of the eighteenth century, after a series of unjust condemnations, even death sentences, which led Voltaire and Beccaria to demand the abolition of capital punishment. In 1781 the Society of Art and Literature at Chalonssur-Marne offered a prize for an essay on the subject, and awarded it to Brissot de Warville, for his work, "Le Sang Innocent Venge." In the records of the Etats Generaux there were many votes in favour of this reform, which Louis XVI. caused to be introduced on May 8, 1788. In 1790 Duport brought in a measure in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly; but it was rejected after a short discussion in February, 1791, during which the same practical objections were urged as have been repeated up to the present time. Nevertheless, the Convention decreed special indemnities, as, for instance. a thousand francs in 1793 for one Busset, "for arbitrary imprisonment and prosecution." In 1823 the above-named Society at Chalonssur- Marne proposed the same subject for an essay; and it has been the object of sundry proposals, all rejected, as in 1867 during the discussion on criminal appeals, on amendments moved by Jules Favre, Richard, and Ollivier; and again in 1883 by Depute Pieyre, and in 1890 by Depute Reinach.

This reform has been advocated by Necker, amongst other writers, in his memoir on "Financial Administration in France," and by Pastoret, Voltaire, Bentham, Merlin, Legraverend, Helie, Tissot, and more comprehensively by Marsangy in his "Reform of the Criminal Law" (1864). Marsangy advocated many other practical reforms which have since been adopted, in subst.i.tution for the objectionable short terms of imprisonment. More recently the subject has been treated in France by the magistrates Bernard, Pascaud, Nicolas, Giacobbi, and by the Attorney-Generals Molines, Jourdan, Houssard, Dupry, Bujard, in their inaugural addresses.

In Italy there was a notable precedent for this reform in the Treasury of Fines, established for Tuscany in 1786, and for the kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the penal code of 1819, for the purpose of creating a fund for compensation in cases of judicial error. In 1886 Deputy Pavesi brought in a measure which was not discussed; and this indemnification, which had already been proposed in 1873 by De Falco, keeper of the seals, in his draft of an Italian penal code, was not included in subsequent Bills, mainly on account of the financial difficulties. Amongst writers on criminology, it was advocated in Italy by Carrara, Pessina, and Brusa; in Germany by Geyer and Schwarze; in Belgium by Prins and others, and more recently by M. Garofalo, in his report to the third National Congress on Law, at Florence, in September, 1891.

Amongst existing laws, indemnification for judicial errors, whether limited to cases in which the innocence of condemned persons can be proved, or extended to persons wrongfully prosecuted, is included in the penal codes of Hungary and Mexico, and by special laws in Portugal (1884), Sweden (1886), Denmark (1888), and especially in Switzerland, in the cantons of Fribourg, Vaud, Neuchatel, Geneva, Bale, and Berne.

The legal principle that the State ought to indemnify material and moral injury inflicted by its functionaries, through malice or negligence, on a citizen who has done nothing to subject himself to prosecution or condemnation, cannot be seriously contested. But the whole difficulty is reduced to deciding in what cases the right to indemnification ought to be recognised, and then to providing a fund out of which the State can discharge this duty.

For the latter purpose it would be necessary to include an adequate sum in the Budget. This was done in Bavaria, in 1888, by setting apart 5,000 marks annually; and the first who profited by this provision received a pension of 300 marks per annum, after being rendered incapable of work by seven years' imprisonment for a crime which he had not committed. But if the policy of retrenchment imposed on the European States by their insane military expenditure and their chronic wars prevents the carrying out of this proposal, there is the Italian precedent of the Treasury of Fines, which, with the fines inflicted, or which ought to be inflicted on convicted persons, and the product of prison labour, would provide the necessary amount for the indemnities which the State ought to pay to innocent persons who have been condemned or prosecuted, as well as to the victims of offences.

As for the cases in which a right to indemnification for judicial errors ought to be acknowledged, it seems to me evident in the first place that we must include those of convicted persons found to be innocent on a revision of the sentence. Amongst persons wrongfully prosecuted, I think an indemnity is due to those who have been acquitted because their action was neither a crime nor an offence, or because they had no part in the action (whence also follows the necessity of verdicts of Not Proven, so as to distinguish cases of acquittal on the ground of proved innocence)-always provided that the prosecuted persons have not given a reasonable pretext for their trial by their own conduct, or their previous relapse, or their habitual criminality.

The third proposition of the positive school in regard to individual guarantees, which was also advanced by M. Puglia, is connected with reform of the penal code, and especially with the more effectual indemnification of the victims of crime. The object is to prune the long and constantly increasing list of crimes, offences, and contraventions of all acts which result in slight injury, committed by occasional offenders, or "pseudo- criminals"-that is, by normal persons acting merely with negligence or imprudence.

In these cases the personal and social injury is not caused maliciously, and the agent is not dangerous, so that imprisonment is more than ever inappropriate, unjust, and even dangerous in its consequences. Deeds of this kind ought to be eliminated from the penal code, and to be regarded merely as civil offences, as SIMPLE theft was by the Romans; for a strict indemnification will be for the authors of these deeds a more effectual and at the same time a less demoralising and dangerous vindication of the law than the grotesque condemnation to a few days or weeks in prison.

It will be understood that the cla.s.sical theory of absolute and eternal justice cannot concern itself with these trifles, which, nevertheless, const.i.tute two-thirds of our daily social and judicial existence; for, according to this theory, there is always an offence to be visited with a proportionate punishment, just as with a murder, or a highway robbery, or a slanderous word. But for the positive school, which realises the actual and practical conditions of social and punitive justice, there is on the other hand an evident need of relieving the codes, tribunals, and prisons from these microbes of the criminal world, by excluding all punishments by imprisonment for what Venturi and Turati happily describe as the atomic particles of crime, and by relaxing in some degree that monstrous network of prohibitions and punishments which is so inflexible for petty transgressors and offenders, but so elastic for serious evil-doers.

II.

The reforms which we propose in punitive law are based on the fundamental principle already established on the data of anthropology and criminal statistics.

If the ethical idea of punishment as a retribution for crime be excluded from the repressive function of society, and if we regard this function simply as a defensive power acting through law, penal justice can no longer be squared with a minute computation of the moral responsibility or culpability of the criminal. It can have no other end than to prove, first, that the person under trial is the author of the crime, and, then, to which type of criminals he belongs, and, as a consequence, what degree of anti-social depravity and re-adaptability is indicated by his physical and mental qualities.

The first and fundamental inquiry in every criminal trial will always be the verification of the crime and the identification of the criminal.

But when the connection of the accused and the crime is once established, either the accused produces evidence of his honesty, or of the uprightness of his motives-the only case in which his acquittal can be demanded or taken into consideration-or else it is proved that his motives were anti-social and unlawful, and then there is no place for those grotesque and often insincere contests between the prosecution and the defence to prevent or to secure an acquittal, which will be impossible whatever may be the psychological conditions of the criminal. The one and only possible issue between the prosecution and the defence will be to determine, by the character-of the accused and of his action, to what anthropological cla.s.s he belongs, whether he is a born criminal, or mad, or an habitual or occasional criminal, or a criminal of pa.s.sion.

In this case we shall have no more of those combats of craft, manipulations, declamations, and legal devices, which make every criminal trial a game of chance, destroying public confidence in the administration of justice, a sort of spider's web which catches flies and lets the wasps escape.

The crime will always be the object of punitive law, even under the positive system of procedure; but, instead of being the exclusive concern of the judge it will only be the ground of procedure, and one symptom amongst others of the depravation and re-adaptability of the criminal, who will himself be the true and living subject of the trial. As it is, the whole trial is developed from the material fact; and the whole concern of the judge is to give it a legal definition, so that the criminal is always in the background, regarded merely as the ultimate billet for a legal decision, in accordance with some particular article in the penal code-except that the actual observance of this article is at the mercy of a thousand accidents of which the judge knows nothing, and which are all foreign to the crime, and to the criminal.

If we rid ourselves of the a.s.sumption that we can measure the moral culpability of the accused, the whole process of a criminal trial consists in the a.s.semblage of facts, the discussion, and the decision upon the evidence. For the cla.s.sical school, on the other hand, such a trial has been regarded as a succession of guarantees for the individual against society, and, by a sort of reaction against the methods of legal proof, has been made to turn upon the private conviction, not to say the intuition, of the judge and counsel.

A criminal trial ought to retrace the path of the crime itself, pa.s.sing backward from the criminal action (a violation of the law), in order to discover the criminal, and, in the psychological domain, to establish the determining motives and the anthropological type. Hence arises the necessity for the positive school of reconsidering the testimony in a criminal case, so as to give it its full importance, and to reinforce it with the data and inferences not only of ordinary psychology, as the cla.s.sical school has always done (Pagano for instance, and Bentham, Mittermaier, Ellero, and others), but also, and above all, with the data and inferences of criminal anthropology and psychology.

In the evolution of the theory of evidence we may distinguish four characteristic stages, as M. Tarde observed-the religious stage, with its ordeals and combats; the legal stage, accompanied by torture; the political stage, with private conviction and the jury; and the scientific stage, with expert knowledge of experimental results, systematically collected and studied, which is the new task of positive procedure.

We must glance at each of the three elements of the criminal trial: collection of evidence (police and preliminary inquiry); discussion of evidence (prosecution and defence), and decision upon evidence (judges and juries).

It is evident in the first place, as I remarked in the first edition of this work, and as Righini, Garofalo, Lombroso, Alongi, and Rossi have confirmed, that a study of the anthropological factors of crime provides the guardians and administrators of the law with new and more certain methods in the detection of the guilty. Tattooing, anthropometry, physiognomy, physical and mental conditions, records of sensibility, reflex activity, vaso- motor reactions, the range of sight, the data of criminal statistics, facilitate and complete the ama.s.sing of evidence, personal identification, and hints as to the capacity to commit any particular crime; and they will frequently suffice to give police agents and examining magistrates a scientific guidance in their inquiries, which now depend entirely on their individual acuteness and mental sagacity.

And when we remember the enormous number of crimes and offences which are not punished, for lack or inadequacy of evidence, and the frequency of trials which are based solely on circ.u.mstantial hints, it is easy to see the practical utility of the primary connection between criminal sociology and penal procedure.

The practical application of anthropometry to the identification of criminals, and to the question of recidivism, which was begun in Paris by M. Bertillon, and subsequently adopted by almost all the states of Europe and America, is too familiar to need description. It will be sufficient to recall the modifications of Bertillon's system by Anfosso, with the actual collection of anthropometric data, and their inclusion in the ordinary records of justice.

Thus the sphygmographic data on the circulation of the blood, which reveal the inner emotions, in spite of an outward appearance of calm or indifference, have already served to show that a person accused of theft was not guilty of it, but that he was on the contrary guilty of another theft, of which he had not been so much as suspected. On another occasion they established the innocence of a man condemned to death. We shall have more speaking and frequent ill.u.s.trations when these inquiries have been placed regularly at the service of criminal justice.

The sphygmograph may also be useful in the diagnosis of simulated disease, after the example set M. Voisin in the case of a sham epileptic in Paris, "whose sphygmographic lines have no resemblance to those of true epileptics before and after a fit, and only resemble those produced by normal persons after a violent gesticulation."

As for the possible utilisation of hypnotism, we must be cautious before we draw any legal conclusions from it; but it cannot be questioned that this is a valuable source of scientific aid in the systematic collection of criminal evidence.

But, for the present, the most certain and profitable aids in the collection of evidence are those afforded by the organic and psychical characteristics of criminals. In my study on homicide I reckoned up many psychological and psycho-pathological symptoms which characterise the murderer, the homicidal madman, and the homicide through pa.s.sion. And in my professional practice I have often found by experience that there is a great suggestive efficacy in these psychological symptoms in regard to the conduct of a criminal, before, during, and after a crime; and it is important to bring this knowledge scientifically before detectives and judges.

These data are not applicable to accused persons exclusively. When we remember the enormous importance of oral evidence in the chain of criminal proof, and the rough traditional empiricism of the criteria of credibility, which are daily applied in all trials to all kinds of witnesses, by men who regard them, like the prisoners, as an average abstract type-excluding only the definite cases of inability to give evidence, which are defined beforehand with as much method as the cases of irresponsibility- the necessity of calling in the aid of scientific psychology and psycho-pathology is manifest.

For instance, not to dwell on the absurd violation of these traditional criteria of credibility, when police officers are admitted as witnesses (often the only witnesses) of resistance to authority or violence, wherein they are doubly interested parties, how often in our courts do we give a thought to the casual imaginations or credulity of children, women, weak-nerved or hysterical persons, and so on? Counsel for defence or prosecution who desired to know if any particular witness is or is not hysterical would bring a smile to the face of the judge, very learned, no doubt, in Roman law or legal precedents, but certainly ignorant in physiology, psychology, and psycho-pathology. Yet the tendency to slander in hysterical cases, which M. Ceneri urged so eloquently in a celebrated trial or the tendency to untruth in children, which M. Motet has ably ill.u.s.trated, are but manifest and simple examples of this applicability of normal, criminal, and pathological psychology to the credibility of witnesses. And, under its influence, how much of the clear atmosphere of humanity will stimulate our courts of justice, which are still too much isolated from the world and from human life, where, nevertheless, prisoners and witnesses come, and too often come again, living phantoms whom the judges know not, and only see confusedly through the thick mist of legal maxims, and articles of the code, and criminal procedure.

Apart from these examples, which prove the importance of what M. Sarraute justly called "judicial applications of criminal sociology," the fundamental reform needed in the scientific preparation of criminal evidence is the creation of magisterial experts in every court of preliminary inquiry. In a question of forgery, poisoning, or abortion, the judge has recourse to experts in handwriting, chemistry, or obstetrics; but beyond these technical, special, and less frequent cases, in every criminal trial the basis of inquiry is or ought to be formed by the data of criminal biology, psychology, and psycho-pathology. So that, over and above the knowledge of these sciences which is necessary to judges, magistrates, and police officers, it is most important that an expert, or several experts in criminal anthropology should be attached to every court of criminal inquiry.

This would provide us with an anthropological cla.s.sification, certain and speedy, of every convicted person, as well as a legal cla.s.sification of the material fact, and we should avoid the scandal of what are known as experts for the prosecution and experts for the defence. There should be but one finding of experts, either by agreement between them or by a scientific reference to arbitration, as in the German, Austrian, and Russian system; and over this finding the judges and the litigants should have no other power than to call for explanations from the chief of the experts.

In this way we should further avoid the scandal of judges entirely ignorant of the elementary ideas of criminal biology, psychology, and psycho-pathology, like the president of an a.s.size court whom I heard telling a jury that he was unable to say why an expert "wanted to examine the feet of a prisoner in order to come to a decision about his head." This president, who was an excellent magistrate and a learned jurist was wholly unacquainted with the elements of the theory of degeneracy, like one of his colleagues whom I heard saying, when the expert spoke of the abnormal shape of the ears of a prisoner (in accord with the inquiries of Morel and Lombroso), "That depends on how the hat is worn."