Crime and Its Causes

Crime and Its Causes

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Title: Crime and Its Causes
Author: William Douglas Morrison
Release Date: May 9, 2005 [EBook #15803]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CRIME AND ITS CAUSES

BY
WILLIAM DOUGLAS MORRISON
OF H.M. PRISON, WANDSWORTH

LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM. NEW YORK :
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1902

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
"The science of criminology is pursued vigorously among the Italians,
but this is one of the first English books to make the phenomena of
crime the subject of a strictly scientific investigation."--Daily
Chronicle.
"The book is an important addition to the Social Science Series. It
throws light upon some of the most complex problems with which
society has to deal, and incidentally affords much interesting
reading."--Manchester Examiner.
"This is a work which, considering its limits and modest pretensions, it
is difficult to over praise. It is a calm and thoughtful study by a writer
in whom the deliberate determination to look on things as they are has
not extinguished a reasoned faith in the possibility of their amelioration.
The work is conceived throughout in a genuinely philosophical
spirit."--International Journal of Ethics.
"A thoughtful and thought suggesting book--well worthy of
consideration by penologists, whether specialists or amateurs."--Annals
of the American Academy.
"Mr. Morrison's book is especially valuable, because, without
attempting to enforce this or that conclusion, it furnishes the authentic
data on which all sound conclusions must be based."--Times.
"Cramful of suggestive facts and solid arguments on the great questions
how criminals are made, and how crime is best to be dealt with. Many
cherished superstitions and fallacies are exploded in Mr. Morrison's
pages."--Star.
First Edition, _February 1891_.
Second Edition, _February 1902_.

CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. THE STATISTICS OF CRIME
II. CLIMATE AND CRIME
III. THE SEASONS AND CRIME
IV. DESTITUTION AND CRIME
V. POVERTY AND CRIME
VI. SEX, AGE, AND CRIME
VII. THE CRIMINAL IN BODY AND MIND

VIII. THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME
APPENDICES

PREFACE.
This volume, as its title indicates, is occupied with an examination of
some of the principal causes of crime, and is designed as an
introduction to the study of criminal questions in general. In spite of all
the attention these questions have hitherto received and are now
receiving, crime still remains one of the most perplexing and obstinate
of social problems. It is much more formidable than pauperism, and
almost as costly. A social system which has to try hundreds of
thousands of offenders annually before the criminal courts is in a very
imperfect condition; the causes which lead to this state of things
deserve careful consideration from all who take an interest in social
welfare.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to show that crime is a more
complicated phenomenon than is generally supposed. When society
will be able to stamp it out is a question it would be extremely hard to
answer. If it ever does so, it will not be the work of one generation but
of many, and it will not be effected by the application of any single
specific.
Punishment alone will never succeed in putting an end to crime.
Punishment will and does hold crime to a certain extent in check, but it
will never transform the delinquent population into honest citizens, for
the simple reason that it can only strike at the full-fledged criminal and
not at the causes which have made him so. Economic prosperity,
however widely diffused, will not extinguish crime. Many people
imagine that all the evils afflicting society spring from want, but this is
only partially true. A small number of crimes are probably due to sheer
lack of food, but it has to be borne in mind that crime would still
remain an evil of enormous magnitude even if there were no such
calamities as destitution and distress. As a matter of fact easy
circumstances have less influence on conduct than is generally believed;
prosperity generates criminal inclinations as well as adversity, and on
the whole the rich are just as much addicted to crime as the poor. The
progress of civilisation will not destroy crime. Many savage tribes
living under the most primitive forms of social life present a far more

edifying spectacle of respect for person and property than the most
cultivated classes in Europe and America. All that civilisation has
hitherto done is to change