A Plea for the Criminal Part 6

Dr Chapple says of defectives that they do live but that they must not.

Two arguments he brings forward. The first is that Nature has decreed that they should not. This must be a secret communication, for it is not universal knowledge, and the operation of Nature's laws certainly appears to contradict it. The second argument is that they are a burden.

The burden a.n.a.lysed amounts to this:--

(a). They are a misery to themselves.

(b). They are too costly.

(c). They hinder the progress of society.

(d). They threaten to overwhelm society.

(a). Who can tell whether the weak are absolutely a misery to themselves. Pain is a mystery which cannot be solved, although to the suffering its benefits are well known. If they would be better out of the way might they not be left to decide that matter for themselves?

They, knowing best, cry to us for help. If we were merely gregarious creatures like wolves or sharks we would tear or destroy them in their misery; but as social beings we are bound to answer their cry. To cry for help is instinctive with them, and to respond to the cry is instinctive with us. Surely this is the voice of Nature and this is the decree of Nature.

(b). If this argument be admitted then we are bound to declare that the one aim of both society and individual is to ama.s.s wealth. The idea is too sordid for further consideration.

(c). So far from hindering the social progress they most powerfully a.s.sist it. The mere bearing of one another's burdens has the most refining and deepening influence upon character. It is most active in creating and establis.h.i.+ng our relations one with another. Compa.s.sion for the suffering creates a tie between them and us. The intention to help requires our co-operation with others, and so the bond extends uniting first individuals then groups and then the whole of society. Nor must we forget the immense advance in surgery and medicine which is due entirely to the consideration of the lot of the apparently hopeless. Had these even been allowed to perish we should still have needed our surgeons and physicians in a well equipped society, if only to teach us how to prevent seizure by dangerous complaints.

A short time ago many died from ailments which surgery can to-day cure with but very little suffering on the part of the patient. Is not this a substantial gain which the bearing of the burden of the weak has brought to man? To mention other triumphs is but to enlarge. If therefore Nature has spoken there can be no doubt that it was to give a promise that she would reward diligent research by revealing the cure of all the ills our flesh inherits. Thus a.s.sured, scientific men are most zealously studying the most deadly and most obstinate diseases. Against plague, smallpox, and consumption they can at least give us an effective protection, and almost hourly we expect to hear the shout of triumph accompanying the announcement that the victory over cancer has been gained. When stricken with these diseases we immediately fall into the ranks of the unfit; but we will thank society for having borne its burden when the healing art is brought to such an excellence that, when so stricken, we may soon be restored to the ranks of the fit. The benefit which the past confers upon us declares imperatively our obligation to the future.

(d). Do they threaten to overwhelm? The power of disease is being overcome, and therefore the number of the diseased is being lessened. By being cured, instead of dying, these increase the proportion of the strong to the weak. The obstinacy of certain hereditary diseases but a.s.serts the necessity of prosecuting study more enthusiastically.

But if the strong limit their increase they cannot demand that exterminating methods should be applied to the weak in order to restore the proportion which they, the strong, have thus by their selfishness disturbed. Nature gives adequate protection so far as numerical increase is concerned, and no scientific man will dare to state that this protection may be disregarded and another demanded.

The Government of India has been charged with pursuing a suicidal policy in safeguarding the natives against plague and smallpox and in preventing human sacrifice. Their numbers will increase, food supplies will give out, or, worst of all, they may become so powerful as to wrest the supremacy from the European. Charity, however, demands that these measures shall be taken, and the terrors of the future are at best hypothetical. This is but another case in which consideration for the unknown future is apt to hinder us in the discharge of our known duties to the present. History a.s.sures us that the guarantee of the future lies in the fulfilment of these duties. The height of absurdity is reached when the attempt is made to establish the proportions of the future.

Such efforts defy man.

The burden of the weak is the burden of the strong, and in the bearing of it is brought into view the grand and true ideal of society--the good of all.

Man is endowed with natural powers for a.s.sisting his weaker brother, and, above all these powers he has, through supplication the means of engaging the Divine Influence, which simply defies all calculation against the possibility of reform or recovery.

Where charitable effort in the past has not succeeded it is because it has not gone far enough. Building inst.i.tutions is sometimes due to a craze and not charity. Thus evils are sometimes accentuated and not mitigated. Such failures must spur to redoubled effort. Hope was never larger than at present.

Chapter VII.

THE NEW PENOLOGY.

The old method of dealing with criminals was based entirely upon a doctrine of vengeance. The criminal was regarded as being in every way a normal man, a man who deliberately chose to be a criminal. The possibility of a criminal's moral sense being defective, of his not being able to bring his actions under the control of his will, or of some other sad handicap existing, was never contemplated. His crime was looked upon as a desperate act, for the committal of which he was absolutely without any excuse. The consequence was that an elaborate system of torture was devised in order to deal with him. Readers who are familiar with such books as Marcus Clark's "For the term of his natural life," and Charles Reade's "It is never too late to mend," will require no further description of the horrors of "the vengeance system" which was supposed to be the only rational method of dealing with criminals in the days of the convict settlements.

Since then, popular vengeance has considerably relaxed and the devising of painful forms of punishment has become almost a lost art. The new-born science, with its first powers of articulation, loudly repeat the words of Revelation, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." A system of vengeance inst.i.tuted by man against man is impossible. As has been stated in a previous chapter, the new penology repudiates all such systems. The amount of pain which an individual is to be called upon to suffer may well be left to the higher tribunal. The obvious duty of man to his fellow-man who is depraved, is to endeavour to recover him. There is no satisfaction in punis.h.i.+ng him, but there is every satisfaction in reforming him.

The new penology covers the investigation and study of every circ.u.mstance surrounding the criminal as such. No circ.u.mstance is so trifling as to be pa.s.sed by, every detail is carefully studied with the object of discovering what the criminal is and how he came to be such, what are his possibilities, and by what methods those possibilities may be reached.

Maconochie ventured upon the bold a.s.sumption that the criminal was a human being, and this a.s.sumption proved to be justified. In 1840 he was sent to Norfolk Island to take charge of 1400 double-convicted felons there. He describes them in these words:--"For the merest trifle they were flogged, ironed or confined in gaol for days on bread and water.

The offences most severely punished were chiefly conventional; those against morals being little regarded, compared with those against unreasonable discipline. Thus the horrid vices with acts of brutal violence, or of dexterity in theft and robbery, were detailed to me by the officers with little direct censure, and rather as anecdotes calculated to astonish and amuse a new-comer. While the possession of a pipe, a newspaper, a little tea, etc., or the omission of some mark of respect, a saucy look or word, or even an imputation of sullenness, were deemed unpardonable offences. They were fed more like hogs than like men; neither knives, forks, nor hardly any other conveniences were allowed at tables. They tore their food with their fingers and teeth, and drank out of water buckets. The men's countenances reflected faithfully this description of treatment. A more demoniacal looking a.s.semblage could not be imagined; and nearly the most formidable sight I ever beheld was the sea of faces upturned to me when I first addressed them. Yet three years after, I had the satisfaction of hearing Sir George Gipps ask me what I had done to make the men look so well?--he had seldom seen a better looking set."

Maconochie had invented the mark system (the principle of the indeterminate system) and made the prisoners' liberation depend upon their conduct and character and not upon the original offence.

Maconochie's experience led him to write in after years to a friend, "if you would try a social-moral one (prison system) you would soon get important results. If our punishments were first of all made REFORMATORY, and generally successful in this object the prejudices of society against the early criminal would abate." Inspired with this hope of reforming the criminal and restoring him to society as a useful member, philanthropists began the exhaustive study of the criminal. In prisons where the value of this science is recognized the criminal upon his entry is subject to a most thorough examination, every item of his family history is carefully enquired into. Information concerning the occupation, education, health and character of all who are nearly related to him is obtained, as also the moral and economic conditions of his home life, and the character of his a.s.sociates. He himself is studied for the existence or traces of disease; for abnormalities, arrested or exaggerated physical and mental development.

The strength of his various muscles, the vitality of his organs, his mental and nervous capacity, and his moral susceptibility are all estimated. His powers of self-control are determined. His disposition is carefully studied. His opportunities in life, his educational advantages, his early career, the nature of the crime, the immediate influencing circ.u.mstances, as provocation, hunger, cold, atmospheric disturbances are all noted.

Such is a brief outline of the examination, the object of which is to discover as far as possible the real cause which led to the crime, what, if any, were the social, physical, psychical and provocative elements contributing to the cause; what their value; and what are the most promising lines upon which the criminal's reform may be directed. He is by no means regarded as a pa.s.sive product of forces over which he has no control, nor his crime as the consequence of himself. It is essential to the success of all reformatory discipline that moral responsibility must be recognised and observed. In fact it may be said, that reformation is complete when moral responsibility, insisted upon by the discipline, becomes at last acknowledged by the man.

Perhaps it may be thought that it is not possible to conduct such a study with anything like accurate results, and that the greater part of it would be mere guess work, as e.g. the determining the capacity of a man's nervous system or his degree of moral susceptibility. This is quite a mistake. There is nothing whatever of a speculative quality in the results advanced by criminologists. Their methods are exact and compare equally with those for the investigation of other phenomena.

It is not claimed that the absolute or the relative value of the data collected is as yet determined, nor yet that any one investigation has been exhausted; but this much can be claimed, that the results obtained are of high practical worth and justify the a.s.surance that the solution of the problem concerning the criminal will soon be reached.

Chapter VIII.

THE PREVENTION OF CRIME.

The result of Criminological studies has indicated most clearly that no measures for the prevention or repression of crime will ever be adequate which are not based upon a scientific system of education. Whatever this system may prove to be, it must have one distinct aim, and that is to train all its members to love, and to work for, the social state. This aim must be accomplished most thoroughly no matter what the cost may be.

The decreasing birth-rate points to other conclusions than the obvious one that a large number of persons must be using preventive means. It points to a widespread selfishness which regards children as an intolerable burden, as in fact nothing less than a grievous misfortune.

It is obvious that where children are so regarded a blight has fallen upon the domestic life. Home cannot be the brightest spot on earth to them; neither can the father and mother be their sympathetic guides, counsellors, and protectors. Nor can those children be studied (by those who alone have the special faculty for studying them) in order that their secret aims and ambitions and the difficulties which obstruct these aims and ambitions, may be understood.

It follows then that from parental selfishness a great number (and close observation leads one to believe that by far the greater proportion) of the children of this generation and in this colony, are growing up with less care and attention being bestowed upon them than what their parents are prepared to bestow upon even their very horses or their dogs. This factor of parental selfishness cannot be ignored either academically or practically. It must in some way be overcome, or at least its influence for harm must be considerably reduced.

It would be interesting to discover how far this parental selfishness was a deviation from true parental pride. Possibly it may not be so very great as the vast difference in results may lead us to suppose, and if this be so the reorganisation of the child's educational system will not be insuperably difficult.

In many homes where there are more than two or three children, there is a total lack of domestic sympathy and pride. The children are not taught to love one another nor to understand and help one another. Adult influence is very seldom brought to bear upon them, and, worst of all, parental influence is either wanting, deficient or injurious. What children suffer from this want in the development in their natures must of necessity be, and it unquestionably is, sufficient to handicap them throughout their whole life. Parents profess that they have done their best with this or that child and that they have failed, but the fault largely lies in the parents undertaking the task with every expectation of failure, and the chief characteristics noticed by the child have been the parental irritability, impatience and incompetence. Having estimated these the child then knows exactly how to gain its own ends and has sufficient determination to persevere until it does. A certain amount of harsh treatment will suffice, until the child is old enough to rebel, in order to keep it in check, or, as is just as often the case, the child may be allowed to have its own way entirely. Under such circ.u.mstances it is not a matter of great wonderment that the child should be looked upon as a burden to be fed, clothed, and tolerated until it is old enough to "do something" for itself.

But our school system is also at fault, for by it our children are crammed with an amount of information the whole, or even the greater part, of which very few of them will ever use. Imagine the object, if one can, of spending the precious hours of a child's educational life in teaching it the names of every dozen or so of the different towns of each county in the United Kingdom, and at the same time entirely neglecting its moral training and giving very little attention to the physical.

If a child be bright he has every consideration from his teachers and receives from his companions the opprobious nickname of "Teacher's Pet."

He gains a reward, perhaps a medal, and at the annual distribution of prizes the speech-makers point to the coming legislators and successful men of business in a manner which conveys to this scholar the idea that the one thing to live for is to gain an exalted position in the world.

This would not be so bad in itself, were it not that the love for honest labour is not inculcated at the same time, and consequently the children imagine that they are going to be pitchforked into prominence. As an evidence, witness the speculative spirit so universal among our youth.

They hope to make their way in life simply by "striking it lucky."

Personally I have spoken to a large number of boys about the ages of from fourteen to sixteen years and I have never yet been able to find a boy who could tell me definitely what he would like to be. His father looks about for something for him to do without any knowledge of the boy's possibility of greatest success lying in one well marked direction. The boy remains in a billet only so long as he fails to get another with a greater wage attached to it, and when perhaps twenty years of age are reached he is conscious of where the true lines of his destiny lie; but it is then too late for him to begin the necessary education, and the consequence is that his life loses its inspiration.

Now it is quite possible that if our school system were so reorganised that parents saw as a result that their children developed a true love for labour and worked with definite purpose, that they would take a more intense pride in them and enter more sympathetically into their labours and ambitions. The education of the child would thus be brought to react upon the parent and tend immediately to reorganise the domestic life and bring it closer to the Hebrew conception, which conception when realised would most thoroughly solve the problem of the moral regeneration of the race. It is impossible for the State to have to commence to educate the parent except by reactionary methods and by compelling the observance of all legitimate obligations. That our present school system does not react favourably upon the parent must be obvious from what has already been said. In the past when only the fortunate few were able to secure the advantages of a good education, they, for the most part, recognised the greatness of their opportunity and prosecuted their studies with zeal. But to-day, with an universal educational system the value of these opportunities is, by the child and sometimes by the parent, very much lost sight of. The child needs now a stimulant, something to arouse and sustain his interest in his work. He should learn to regard his school work with pleasure and his home with affection.

The three princ.i.p.al standpoints from which education is regarded are:--(a) the utilitarian, (b) the disciplinarian, and (c) a compromise between the two.

The Utilitarians consider that an educational system should store the mind of the child with such knowledge only as shall be of direct value to it in its after life. The disciplinarians consider that a child's education should content itself with so developing the faculties that when matured they may be adequate for such mental tasks as the after life or vocation may provide. The middle course is held by those who endeavour to train the faculties of the child in the manner prescribed by the disciplinarians, but in so doing, they employ the mind upon exercises, the accomplishment of which, is of immediate and permanent value.

The education system in New Zealand is constructed upon the utilitarian basis. The children's minds are crammed with knowledge--USEFUL knowledge let it be called--and they are encouraged to be diligent because of the great benefit this knowledge will be to them when they become men and women--which development the child of eight expects will be attained sometime before the end of the world, and will then come by chance. The reward of the child's labour is thrown into the far distant future, and is so entirely lost sight of as an inspiring factor, that artificial rewards have to be provided and the child ponders over his lessons in the hope of winning one of Ballantyne's or Henty's "Books for Boys."

Now, the facts of a child's life demonstrate conclusively that the child is capable of having all its interests absorbed in its work. The diligence with which it will build up a doll's house out of a soap box, a jam tin, a few stones and any odds and ends that it can lay its hands on, is sufficient evidence of this. The child loves to make things for itself, and its affection for the rude creations of its own mind is far greater than that for its most gorgeous and expensive toys. Upon the recognition of these facts, the kindergarten system is based.

In Sweden a very successful attempt has been made to construct the whole of the primary system upon this basis, and for this purpose Sloyd has been introduced into the schools. Certain Sloyd exercises have made their appearance in our New Zealand schools and have met with somewhat severe criticism, the whole system being condemned as being ideal theoretically, but valueless practically. It took many years before the Swedish system was perfected, and it should follow obviously that a very partial experiment, such as the colonial one has been, gives no idea of what value the complete system may achieve.

By Sloyd, we understand a system of educational hand-work. The children are employed upon various kinds of hand craft with the object of developing their mental, moral, and physical powers. The object is NOT to make artisans of the children, although undoubtedly those children who afterwards become tradesmen find that the educational principles of their trade has already been grasped by the intellect, but the same will apply to those entering any legitimate vocation without exception.

Although there are many different kinds of Sloyd, woodwork has been discovered to be the most useful, and it alone survives the severe tests imposed. A glance at the accompanying table will explain what is meant.