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WHAT IS
ECONOMICS?
C h a p t e r
1
The Big Picture
Where we are going:
After completing Chapter 1, the student will have a good sense
for the range of questions that economics addresses and will be
on the path towards an economic way of thinking. The students
will begin to think of cost as a forgone alternative—an
opportunity cost—and also about making choices by balancing
marginal costs and marginal benefits.
Chapter 2 reinforces the central themes of Chapter 1 by laying
out a core economic model, the production possibilities frontier
(PPF), and using it to illustrate the concepts of tradeoff and
opportunity cost. Chapter 2 also provides a deeper explanation,
again with a model, of the concepts of marginal cost and marginal
benefit, beginning with the concept of efficiency, and concluding
with a review of the source of the gains from specialization and
exchange.

New in the Thirteenth Edition

A significant change to this chapter that you probably want to spend
some time on is a new section that presents data about the economics
major and how well it ranks in the income spectrum of all majors.
Most of the other content of this chapter remains the same short of
updates to date sensitive items. There a minor reworking in the
beginning of the math appendix that added clarity to the topics
discussed.

© 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

2 CHAPTER 1

This important chapter is not one to gloss over as it lays down an

important foundation that can be drawn from as you move through more
specific applications later. Students relate well to the section on
self and social interest which calls out issues of both efficiency
and fairness and is great for class discussion. Economics in the
News covers some current issues with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s
vision to have the Internet available to the whole world.

© 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

 WHAT IS ECONOMICS? 3

Lecture Notes
What Is Economics?
I. Definition of Economics
 Economic questions arise because we always want more than we can get,
so we face scarcity, the inability to satisfy all our wants. Everyone
faces scarcity because no one can satisfy all of his or her wants.
 Scarcity forces us to make choices over the available alternative. The
choices we make depend on incentives, a reward that encourages a choice
or a penalty that discourages a choice.

Forbes lists Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among some of the wealthiest
Americans. Do these two men face scarcity? According to The Wall Street
Journal, both men are ardent bridge players, yet they have never won one of
the many national bridge tournaments they have entered as a team. These two
men can easily afford the best bridge coaches in the world and but other
duties keep them from practicing as much as they would need to in order to
win. So even the wealthiest two Americans face scarcity (of time) and must
choose how to spend their time.

Economics
 Economics is the social science that studies the choices that
individuals, businesses, governments and entire societies make when
they cope with scarcity and the incentives that influence and
reconcile those choices.
 Economists work to understand when the pursuit of self-interest
advances the social interest
 Economics is divided into microeconomics and macroeconomics:
 Microeconomics is the study of the choices that individuals and
businesses make, the way these choices interact in markets, and the
influence of governments.
 Macroeconomics is the study of the performance of the national
economy and the global economy.

On the first day do a “pop quiz.” Have your students write on paper the
answer to “What is Economics?” Reassure them that this is their opinion
since it is the first day. You will find most of the answers focused around
money and/or business. Stress that Economics is a social science, a study
of human behavior given the scarcity problem. All too often first-time
students (especially business students) think that Economics is just about
making money. Certainly, the discipline can and does outline reasons why
workers work longer hours to increase their wage earnings, or why firms
seek profit as their incentive. But Economics also explains why a
terminally ill cancer patient might opt for pain medication as opposed to
continued chemotherapy/radiation, or why someone no longer in the workforce
wants to go to college and attain a Bachelor’s degree, in their sheer
pleasure of learning and understanding. Stressing the social part of our
science now will help later when relating details to the overall bigger
picture (especially when time later in the semester seems scarce, no pun
intended!).

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4 CHAPTER 1

The definition in the text: “Economics is the social science that studies
the choices that individuals, businesses, governments, and societies make
as they cope with scarcity and the incentives that influence and reconcile
these choices,” is a modern language version of Lionel Robbins famous
definition, “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a
relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternative uses.”
Other definitions include those of Keynes and Marshall:
John Maynard Keynes: “The theory of economics does not furnish a body of
settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather
than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking, which
helps it possessors to draw correct conclusions.”
Alfred Marshall: “Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary
business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action
which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the
material requisites of wellbeing.”
A “shorthand” definition that resonates with students is: “Economics is
the study of trying to satisfy unlimited wants with limited resources.”
Students can—and do—easily abbreviate this definition to “unlimited wants
and limited resources,” which captures an essential economic insight.

II. Two Big Economic Questions

How do choices wind up determining what, how, and for whom goods and services are
produced?
What, How and For Whom?
 Goods and services are the objects that people value and produce to
satisfy human wants. What we produce changes over time—today we
produce more MP3s and CDs than 5 years ago.
 Goods and services are produced using the productive resources called
factors of production. These are land (the “gifts of nature”, natural
resources), labor (the work time and work effort people devote to
production), capital (the tools, instruments, machines, buildings, and
other constructions now used to produce goods and services), and
entrepreneurship (the human resource that organizes labor, land, and
capital).
 The quality of labor depends on human capital, which is the knowledge
and skill that people obtain from education, work experience, and on-
the-job training.
 Owners of the factors of production earn income by selling the
services of their factors. Land earns rent, labor earns wages, capital
earns interest, and entrepreneurship earns profit.

Do Choices Made in the Pursuit of Self-Interest also promote the social interest?
 You make a choice in your self-interest if you think that choice is
the best one available for you.
 An outcome is in the social interest if it is best for society as a
whole.
 A major question economists explore is “Could it be possible that when
each of us makes choices in our self-interest, these choices are in
the social interest?’

© 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

 WHAT IS ECONOMICS? 5

The Two Big Economic Questions

Don’t skip the questions in a rush to get to the economic way of thinking.
Open your students’ eyes to economic in the world around them. Ask them to
bring a newspaper to class and to identify headlines that deal with stories
about What, How, and For Whom. Use Economics in the News Today on your
Parkin Web site for a current news item and for an archive of past items
(with questions). Pose questions but hold off on the answers letting them
know that “we can have a much more fruitful discussion when our toolbox is
full.” Remind them that this course is about learning simple economic
models that provide tools to seek answers to complex issues.

Students (and others!) often take the answers to the what, how, and for
whom questions for granted. For instance, most of the time we do not bother
to wonder “How does our economy determine how many light bulbs,
automobiles, and pizzas to produce?” (what), or “Why does harvesting wheat
from a plot of land in India occur with hundreds of laborers toiling with
oxen pulling threshing machines, while in the United States, a single
farmer listening to a Garth Brooks CD and sitting in an air-conditioned cab
of a $500,000 machine harvests the same quantity of wheat from the same
sized plot of land?” (how), or “Why is the annual income of an inspiring
and effective grade school teacher much less than that of an average major-
league baseball player?” (for whom). Explaining the answers to these types
of questions and determining whether the answers are in the social interest
is a major part of microeconomics.

Figure 1.1 in the textbook “What Three Countries Produce” ties in nicely
with Chapter 2’s later discussion on the PPF. Figure 1.1 also links the
three questions of what, how and for whom nicely to the component parts of
those questions: goods and services, factors of production (land, labor,
capital, entrepreneurship), and incomes economic agents earn (rent, wages,
interest and profit).

 We can examine whether the self-interested choices serve the social

interest for a variety topics:
 Globalization: Buying an iPod allows workers overseas to earn a wage
and provide for family
 Information-Age Monopolies: A firm producing popular software leads to
format standards
 Climate Change: Carbon dioxide emissions led to higher global
temperatures and climate change
 Financial Instability: Bank bailouts with the intent of social interest
may cause more risky loans to be made in the future by banks
serving their own self-interests.

III. Economic Way of Thinking

Scarcity requires choices and choices create tradeoffs.

What is the difference between scarcity and poverty?

Ask the students why they haven’t yet attained all of their personal goals.
One reason will be that they lack sufficient money. Ask them if they could
attain all of their goals if they were as rich as Bill Gates. They quickly
realize that time is a big constraint—and the great leveler: we all have

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6 CHAPTER 1

only 24 hours in a day. They have stumbled on the fact that scarcity, which
even Bill Gates faces, is not poverty.

A Choice is a Tradeoff
 A tradeoff is an exchange—giving up one thing to get another.
 Whatever choice you make, you could have chosen something else.
Virtually every choice that can be thought of involves a tradeoff.
Presenting a few of the following as examples can help your class better
appreciate this key point:
 Consumption and savings: If someone decides to save more of his or her
income, savings can be funneled through the financial system to finance
businesses new capital purchases. As a society, we trade off current
consumption for economic growth and higher future consumption.
 Education and training: A student remaining in school for another two
years to complete a degree will need to forgo a significant amount of
leisure time. But by doing so, he or she will be better educated and
will be more productive. As a society, we trade off current production
for greater future production.
 Research and development: Factory automation brings greater productivity
in the future, but means smaller current production. As a society, we
trade off current production for greater future production.

Making a Rational Choice

 A rational choice is one that compares costs and benefits and achieves
the greatest benefit over cost for the person making the choice.
 But how do people choose rationally? Why do more people choose an
iPhone rather than a Windows phone? Why has the U.S. government chosen
to build an interstate highway system and not an interstate high-speed
railroad system? The answers turn on comparing benefits and costs.

Benefit: What you Gain

 The benefit of something is the gain or pleasure that it brings and is
determined by preferences—by what a person likes and dislikes and the
intensity of those feelings.
 Some benefits are large and easy to identify, such as the benefit that
you get from being in school. Much of that benefit is the additional
goods and services that you will be able to enjoy with the boost to
your earning power when you graduate.
 Some benefits are small, such as the benefit you get from a slice of
pizza. That benefit is just the pleasure and nutrition that you get
from your pizza.

Cost: What You Must Give Up

Seeing choices as tradeoffs shows there is an opportunity cost of a choice.
The opportunity cost of something is the highest-valued alternative that must
be given up to get it. So, for instance, the opportunity cost of being in
school is all the good things that you can’t afford and don’t have the spare
time to enjoy.
Students like the “Dr. Suess Version”: Opportunity cost is the thing you
would have done if you did not do what you did.

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 WHAT IS ECONOMICS? 7

What is the Opportunity Cost of Getting a College Degree?

When the students calculate their opportunity cost of being in school, be
sure they place a value on their leisure time lost to studying on weekends
and evenings. Most students are shaken when they realize that when lost
leisure time and income is included in their calculations, the opportunity
cost of a college degree approaches $200,000 or more. Don’t leave them
hanging here though. Mention that a college education does yield a high
rate of financial return over.

To ensure that people do not die of any serious side effects, the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) requires all drug companies to thoroughly test
newly developed medicines before allowing them to be sold in the United
States. However, it takes many years to perform these tests and many people
suffering from the terminal diseases these new medicines are designed to
cure will die before good new medicines are eventually approved for use.
Yet, if the FDA were to abandon this testing process, many others would die
from the serious side effects of those bad medicines that made it to
market. People’s lives will be at risk under either policy alternative.
This stark example of a tradeoff reveals the idea that choices have
opportunity costs.

How Much? Choosing at the Margin

 Making choices at the margin means looking at the trade-offs that
arise from making small changes in an activity. People make choices at
the margin by comparing the benefit from a small change in an activity
(which is the marginal benefit) to the cost of making a small change in
an activity (which is the marginal cost).
 Changes in marginal benefits and marginal costs alter the incentives
that we face when making choices. When incentives change, people’s
decisions change.
 For example, if homework assignments are weighed more heavily in a
class’s final grade, the marginal benefit of completing homework
assignments has increased and more students will do the homework.

Choices Respond to Incentives

 Economists take human nature as given and view people acting in their
self-interest.
 Self-interest actions are not necessarily selfish actions.

Self interest can be said to be in the eye of the beholder. Thus, covering
the next portion on positive versus normative analysis can be crucial to
the student’s understanding how economic agents act in their own self-
interests, but perhaps not (and often not) in other’s self-interest.

IV. Economics as Social Science and Policy Tool

Economist as Social Scientist
 Economists distinguish between positive statements and normative
statements. A positive statement is about “what is” and is testable. A
normative statement is about “what ought to be” and is an opinion and
so is inherently not testable. A positive statement is “Raising the
tax on a gallon of gasoline will raise the price of gasoline and lead

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8 CHAPTER 1

more people to buy smaller cars” while a normative statement is “The

tax on a gallon of gasoline should be raised.”
 Economists tend to agree on positive statements, though they might
disagree on normative statements.
 An economic model describes some aspect of the economic world that
includes only those features needed for the purpose at hand. Economic
models describe the economic world in the same way that a road map
explains the road system: Both focus on only what is important and
both are abstract depictions of the real world.
 Testing an economic model can be difficult, given we observe the
outcomes of the simultaneous operation of many factors. So, economists
use the following to copy with the problem:
 Natural experiment: A situation that arises in the ordinary course
of economic life in which the one factor of interest is different
and other things are equal or similar.
 Statistical Investigation: A statistical investigation might look
for the correlation of two variables, to see if there is some
tendency for the two variables to move in a predictable and related
way (e.g. cigarette smoking and lung cancer).
 Economic Experiment: Putting people in a decision-making situation
and varying the influence of one factor at a time to see how they
respond.
Economic Model vs. the General Lee Car Model
When I was a kid, I had a plastic model car that I put together that was
from Dukes of Hazard television show (you can insert your own “model” as
you’d like). Tell the students, “Even though we all know the model car is
not a “real” car, it does give us insights into what the real car is like.
You have number on the door, the confederate flag on top, the proportions
are correct and if you lift the little hood you can see what a V8 engine
looks like”. An economic model is similar in that it gives us a glimpse of
reality under some certain assumptions and although it is not reality it
gives us insights about reality.

Economist as Policy Adviser

 Economics is useful. It is a toolkit for advising governments and
businesses and for making personal decisions.
 For a given goal, economics provides a method of evaluating
alternative solutions— comparing marginal benefits and marginal costs
and finding the solution that makes the best use of the available
resources.

The success of a model is judged by its ability to predict. Help your

student’s appreciate that no matter how appealing or “realistic looking” a
model appears to be, it is useless if it fails to predict. And the
converse, no matter how abstract or far removed from reality a model
appears to be, if it predicts well, it is valuable.
Milton Friedman’s Pool Hall example illustrates the point nicely. Imagine a
physicist’s model that predicts where a carefully placed shot of a pool
shark would go as he tries to sink the eight ball into the corner pocket.
The model would be a complex, trigonometric equation involving a plethora
of Greek symbols that no ordinary person would even recognize as
representing a pool shot. It certainly wouldn’t depict what we actually
see—a pool stick striking a pool cue on a rectangular patch of green felt.

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 WHAT IS ECONOMICS? 9

It wouldn’t even reflect the thought processes of the pool shark that
relies on years of experience and the right “touch.” Yet, constructed
correctly, this mathematical model would predict exactly where the cue ball
would strike the eight ball, hit opposite the bank, and fall into the
corner pocket. (You can easily invent analogous examples from any sport.)

V. Economists in the Economy

Jobs for an Economics Major
 Economists work for private firms, governments, and international
organizations. Some have a bachelor’s degree, while others have a
master’s degree or a PhD.
 On their jobs, economists often collect and analyze data on production
and use of resources, goods, and services in order to predict future
trends or devise ways to use resources more efficiently.
 Economists have jobs as market research analysts, financial analysts,
and, less often, budget analysts. There were about 850,000 of these
jobs in the United States in 2014.

Will Jobs for Economics Majors Grow?

 The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has forecast that from 2014 to
2024, jobs for PhD economists will grow 6 percent; jobs for budget
analysts will grow by only 2 percent; but jobs for financial analysts
will grow by 12 percent; and jobs for market research analysts will
grow by 19 percent.

© 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

10 CHAPTER 1

Additional Problems
1. You plan a major adventure trip for the summer. You won’t be able
to take your usual summer job that pays $6,000, and you won’t be
able to live at home for free. The cost of your travel
accomodations on the trip will be $3,000, gasoline will cost you
$200, and your food will cost $1,400. What is the opportunity
cost of taking this trip?
2. The university has built a new parking garage. There is always an
available parking spot, but it costs $1 per day. Before the new
garage was built, it usually took 15 minutes of cruising to find
a parking space. Compare the opportunity cost of parking in the
new garage with that in the old parking lot. Which is less costly
and by how much?

Solutions to Additional Problems

1. The opportunity cost of taking this trip is $10,600. The opportunity
cost of taking the trip is the highest-valued activity that you will
give up so that you can go on the trip. In taking the trip, you will
forgo all the goods and services that you could have bought with the
income from your summer job ($6,000) plus the expenditure on travel
accommodations ($3,000), gasoline ($200), and food ($1,400).
2. The opportunity cost of parking before the building of the new parking
garage is the highest-valued activity that you forgo by spending 15
minutes parking your car. The opportunity cost of parking in the new
parking garage is $1 that you could have spent elsewhere. If the
opportunity cost of 15 minutes spent parking your car is greater than
the opportunity cost of $1, then the new parking garage is less costly.

Additional Discussion Questions

1. Why are economists so concerned about the material aspects of
life? Explain that this is a myth! Economists are often
criticized for focusing on material well-being because of the
general public’s view that economics is about money. Explain that
there are economists that research social and emotional (or
spiritual) aspects of life. You may also add that these parts of
life often depend heavily on attaining material well-being. You
may want to reference the Economic Freedom Index
(www.freetheworld.com) and its explanatory power on issues of
world hunger and poverty. Ask them to consider the need for life-
enhancing goods and services such as health care or education to
support spiritual or emotional well-being. Ask how protestors
would be able to voice their opinions without low-cost air travel
and the power of the Internet to coordinate the activities of
hundreds of protesters. (Be careful not to seem to be either
condoning or condemning these activities.) Most students will
begin to see that the more efficient we are at producing material

© 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

 WHAT IS ECONOMICS? 11

prosperity, the more time and opportunity everyone has to promote

emotional (or spiritual) goals.
2. Mini Case Study Illustrating How Economists Use Modeling:
Women are unfairly underpaid when compared to men. Ask your
students whether this statement is positive or normative. Mention
that the media frequently reports that the average woman gets
paid only 3/4 the wages of the average man. Is this “fact” a
sufficient test of the positive statement?
If women were paid more than men in one or two professions (like
professional modeling or elementary teaching) is that sufficient
evidence to conclude that women in general are not underpaid when
compared to men? Ask the students to think about how to properly
test the model. Are these counter examples enough to discard the
idea that women are underpaid?
What would you take into account when you collected data to
compare women’s salaries versus men’s salaries? Remind the
students that any model directly comparing men’s and women’s
wages should control for any differences in wage-relevant
characteristics between working men and women. You can discuss
many different reasons why a gender wage gap can occur,
including:
 Women are underrepresented in higher paid occupations and are
overrepresented in lower paid occupations (the problem may not
be unequal pay but instead it may be unequal access to high
paying jobs (glass ceiling?);
 Women are underrepresented among those earning advanced
degrees, though mostly among older age cohorts (U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, Vol. 45, January,
1998). Here the problem here might not be unequal pay but
unequal access to higher education;
 Women have relatively less occupational-specific work
experience and have relatively less unbroken work experience,
as many women struggle between pursuing a career and raising a
family. For example, one study found that women who were not
mothers earned 90 percent of men’s salaries, whereas those who
were mothers earned only 77 percent (Waldfogel, “Understanding
the ‘Family Gap’ in Pay for Women with Children,” Journal of
Economic Perspectives, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1998).
Does it further the public interest (and the interests of women
workers specifically) to propagate normative statements about
wage inequality based on statistics without taking account of all
relevant factors? Summarize the discussion by noting that
economic studies have indeed found evidence that a gender gap in
wages exists in the United States, even after controlling for all
known relevant factors. However, the gender wage gap is much less
than the 1/3 number often quoted by the media, and has been
decreasing significantly over the last few decades (Blau, “Trends
in the Well Being of American Women, 1970-1995,” Journal of

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12 CHAPTER 1

Economic Literature, Vol. 36, No.1, March 1998). Get the students
to see how properly applying the science of economics to social
issues helps us strip away inflammatory rhetoric and examine the
problem carefully and objectively.

© 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

 WHAT IS ECONOMICS? 13

Chapter 1 Appendix, Graphs in Economics

Lecture Notes
Goggle Theory
Explain to students that you are going to ask them to use three sets of
goggles to view math in the course. I have found this to be a great tool
for students to understand why we present data in different ways.
1. Equation Goggles: Write an equation in slope-intercept form and explain
that this is one way to show relationships between two variables. I like
to use X and Y for this one and then quickly explain that economics is
much more fun than math because we may be talking about X-rays and Yo-
Yo’s. This helps some students break the barrier early on what
“variable” means.
2. Graphing Goggles: Work through a graph of the equation you wrote
highlighting slope and intercept. Indicate that this may be a Demand or
Supply curve for instance.
3. Now you can explain that they will see all three of these forms of math
at different times during the course and it is important for them to
understand that you can move between all three anytime. We usually have
it shown just one way for convenience. It is also fun during lecture to
say, “I need you to pull out your graphing goggles.”

I. Graphing Data
 Graphs are valuable tools that clarify what otherwise might be obscure
relationships.
 Graphs represent “quantity” as a distance. Two-variable graphs use two
perpendicular scale lines. The vertical line is the y-axis. The
horizontal line is the x-axis. The zero point in common to both axes
is the origin.
 Scatter diagram—a graph that plots the value of one variable on the x-
axis and the value of the associated variable on the y-axis. A scatter
diagram can make clear the relationship between two variables.

II. Graphs Used in Economic Models

 Graphs are used to show the relationship between variables. Graphs can
immediately convey the relationship between the variables:
 A positive relationship (or direct relationship)—when the variable on the x-
axis increases the variable on the y-axis increases. A straight
line is a linear relationship.
 A negative relationship (or inverse relationship)—when the variable on the
x-axis increases, the variable on the y-axis decreases.
 A maximum or a minimum—when the variable has a highest or lowest
value.

III. The Slope of a Relationship

 The slope of a curve equals the change in the value of the variable on
the vertical axis at the point where the slope is being calculated
divided by the change in the value of the variable on the horizontal
axis at the relevant point.

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14 CHAPTER 1

 In terms of symbols, the slope equals y/x, with  standing for

“change in.”
 The slope of a straight line is constant. The slope is positive if the
variables are positively related and negative if the variables are
negatively related.
 The slope of a curved line at a point equals the slope of the straight
line that is tangent to the curved line at the point.
 The slope of a curved line across an arc equals the slope of a straight
line between the two points on the curved line.

IV. Graphing Relationships Among More Than Two Variables

 A. When a relationship involves more than two variables, we can
plot the relationship between two of the variables by holding
other variables constant.

© 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

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very significant fact that Marro found among his women criminals, in
marked contrast to the men, a very large proportion (35 out of 41)
who possessed some more or less honourable occupation; a large
proportion of the women also were possessed of some property. It
may not be out of place to observe that the growing criminality of
women is but the inevitable accident of a beneficial transition.
Criminality, we must remember, is a natural element of life, regulated
by natural laws, and as women come to touch life at more various
points and to feel more of its stress, they will naturally develop the
same tendency to criminality as exists among men, just as they are
developing the same diseases, such as general paralysis. Our efforts
must be directed, not to the vain attempt to repress the energies of
women, but to the larger task of improving the conditions of life, and
so diminishing the tendency to criminality among both sexes alike.
Prostitution exerts an undoubted influence in diminishing the
criminality of women, in spite of the fact that the prostitute generally
lives on the borderland of crime. If, however, it were not for
prostitution there would be no alternative but crime for the large
numbers of women who are always falling out of the social ranks. As
it is, in those families in which the brothers become criminals, the
sisters with considerable regularity join the less outcast class of
prostitutes; sometimes in league with their criminal brothers, but yet
possessing a more recognised means of livelihood. There will be
something more to say on this point a little later on.
The strongest barrier of all against criminality in women is maternity.
The proportion of criminals among young women with children is
very small. Among men criminals the celibates are in a very large
majority, but among women maternity acts as a still greater
deterrent. Not only are young married women comparatively free
from crime, but among married women, as Bertillon pointed out,
those with children are distinctly less criminal than those without
children. Of Marro’s 41 criminal women, although all but one (who
was undeveloped and ugly) confessed to having had sexual
relationships, 12 had never been married, 10 were widows, 14 were
married, but of these 7 (50 per cent.) were separated from their
husbands. There is some significance, doubtless, also in the fact that
while in men the maximum of criminality falls at about the age of 25,
in women this is not so. That is the age of maximum child-bearing;
the age of maximum criminality in women is delayed until nearly the
age of 35. In the 130 women condemned for premeditated murder,
and studied by Salsotto, the average age was 34. Marro found that
for nearly every class of criminals the average age of the women
was much higher than that of the men. It is clear that the woman
without children is heavily handicapped in the race of life; the stress
that is upon her is written largely in these facts concerning
criminality.[83] One might suspect this beforehand. Crime is simply a
word to signify the extreme anti-social instincts of human beings;
the life led most closely in harmony with the social ends of existence
must be the most free from crime.
It may be said—to sum up our brief discussion of this large question
of women’s criminality—that certain great barriers, partly artificial,
partly natural, have everywhere served to protect women from
crime. It is not possible absolutely to prove this conclusion, because
women cannot be put strictly under the same conditions as men; a
woman who lived under the same conditions as men, it need
scarcely be said, would no longer be a woman. But it is made
probable by the considerations here brought forward, and by
statistics. Thus let us take the statistics for one year in a country
where crime is so largely developed, and so carefully studied as
Italy; an average year, 1886, may be selected. It will be found that a
hundred condemned persons of each sex may be arranged according
to age as follows:—

Men. Women.
Below 14 1.29 per cent. 1.41 per cent.
From 14 to 18 6.04 " 6.02 "
" 18 " 21 13.39 " 10.65 "
" 21 " 35 46.91 " 39.38 "
" 35 " 50 23.29 " 30.94 "
 " 50 " 70 8.40 " 11.63 "
Above 70 0.68 " 0.57 "

Thus below puberty the relative criminality of girls is rather greater

than that of boys, to become about equal at puberty; then during
the earlier and chief period of child-bearing the criminality of women
falls suddenly, becoming level with that of men at about the time of
the cessation of the child-bearing period; after this the criminality of
women becomes relatively much greater than that of men, becoming
again about the same, and in some years exceeding it, at the age of
70.
(d) One is inclined on first approaching the subject to make the clear
line of demarcation between crime and vice, which is necessary in
practical life. From the anthropological point of view, however, it
appears on closer examination impossible to draw this clear line.
In the course of Lombroso’s investigations he was surprised to find
in the examination of supposed normal persons certain individuals
who presented in a marked form those anthropologic signs of a low
and degenerate type which he had usually found among criminals.
On further inquiry it appeared that those individuals were of vicious
character. Again, it is a remarkable fact that prostitutes exhibit the
physical and psychic signs associated usually with criminality in more
marked degree than even criminal women. While criminal women
correspond on the whole to the class of occasional criminals, in
whom the brand of criminality is but faintly seen, prostitutes
correspond much more closely to the class of instinctive criminals.
Thus their sensory obtuseness has been shown to be extreme, and it
is scarcely necessary to show that their psychical sensitiveness is
equally obtuse. Several valuable series of observations recently
made on prostitutes in Italy and elsewhere have brought out
interesting results in this respect. Thus, for example, Dr. Praskovia
Tarnovskaia examined at St. Petersburg fifty prostitutes who had
been inmates of a brothel for not less than two years, and she also
examined, for the sake of comparison, fifty peasant women of so far
as possible the same age and intellectual development. She found
(1) that the prostitutes presented a shortening, amounting to half a
centimetre, of the anterior, posterior, and transverse diameters of
skull; (2) 84 per cent. showed various signs of physical degeneration
—irregular skull, asymmetry of face, anomalies of hard palate, teeth,
ears, etc.; (3) 82 per cent. had parents who were habitual
drunkards; (4) 18 per cent. were the last survivors of a large family
of eight to thirteen children who had died early. Prostitutes may
fairly be compared to the great class of vagabonds among men, who
also live on the borderlands of criminality, and who also present a
larger proportion of abnormalities than even criminals. Dugdale, in
his valuable and thorough study of the “Jukes” family of criminals in
America, shows that while the eldest sons in a criminal family carry
on the criminal tradition, the younger sons become paupers or
vagabonds, and the sisters become prostitutes. Of 250 recidivists
condemned five times at Paris nearly all have begun by
vagabondage. Mendel has examined 58 vagabonds in the workhouse
at Berlin. He found 6 absolutely mad; 5 weak-minded; 8 epileptics;
14 with serious chronic disease; in the remaining 25 there was
without exception pronounced mental weakness. We see here the
organic root of the hopelessly idle, vicious character of the vagabond
class. A philanthropic gentleman at Paris offered employment of
various kinds, with payment at four francs a day, to all those who
came to him complaining that they were dying of hunger and could
get no work. 545, out of 727, did not even present themselves;
some came and disappeared after the first half-day, having claimed
their two francs; only 18, or 1 in 40, continued to work. It is not
sufficiently known that these poor creatures, who form such an
extensive recruiting field for crime, are already, by the facts of their
physical organisation, cut off from the great body of humanity. They
need much more intelligent treatment than the antiquated
workhouse is able to supply.
We must be careful not to confuse vice and crime. At the same time
we have to recognise that they both spring from the same root. The
criminal is simply a person who is, by his organisation, directly anti-
social; the vicious person is not directly anti-social, but he is
indirectly so. The criminal directly injures the persons or property of
the community to which he belongs; the vicious person (in any
rational definition of vice) indirectly injures these. They are both
anti-social because they are both more or less unfitted for
harmonious social action, both, from organic reasons, more or less
lazy. Criminals and prostitutes, as Féré remarks, have this common
character, that they are both unproductive. This is true also of
vagabonds, and of the vicious and idle generally, to whatever class
they belong. They are all members of the same family.
(e) We saw in Chapter I. that there is a fairly well-marked class of
professional criminals. They are the élite of the criminal groups; they
present a comparatively small proportion of abnormalities; their
crimes are skilfully laid plots, directed primarily against property and
on a large scale; they never commit purposeless crimes, and in their
private life are often of fairly estimable character. They flourish
greatly in a civilisation of rapidly progressing material character,
where wild and unprincipled speculation is rife, as in the United
States; their own schemes have much of the character of
speculations, with this difference, that they are not merely
unprincipled but are against the letter of the law; notwithstanding
the ability and daring they require, they are a relatively unskilled
kind of speculation.
Tarde, and perhaps one or two writers following him, have
endeavoured to show that all crime is professional, and that every
physical and psychic characteristic of the criminal may be explained
by the influence of profession. Tarde’s always alert and intelligent
advocacy makes it necessary to take note of this position, although
in this unqualified shape it has not met with much adhesion at the
hands of scientific investigators. I am persuaded, he says, that every
large social class has its own characteristics. “If one examined
hundreds or thousands of judges, lawyers, labourers, musicians,
taken at random and in various countries, noting their different
characters, craniometric, algometric, sphygmographic, graphologic,
photographic, etc., as Lombroso has examined hundreds and
thousands of criminals, it is extremely probable that we should
ascertain facts not less surprising; thus, for instance, we might
succeed in finding instinctive lawyers—born to defend instinctive
criminals.... I should like to see the instinctive criminal opposed to
the instinctive man of science, or the religious man, or the artist. It
would be curious to see him compared to the moral man, and to
learn if the latter is the antipodes of the criminal physically as well as
morally.”[84]
Tarde has again more recently stated his position: “One knows that
at the first glance at a woman a skilful observer infallibly divines her
habits of prostitution.... Among the innumerable varieties of human
nature which appear at the surface of a race and proceed perhaps
from its lowest depths (for the variations of a theme are, I believe,
its true raison d’être, and not vice versâ), every social or anti-social
profession operates a selection to its own profit; it attracts the
organisms most adapted to the kind of life which it leads, and to the
end which it pursues, so that if one submitted to anthropometric
measurement lawyers, doctors, priests, merchants, especially those
who have the most decided vocation for their profession, we should
not fail to find for each category the proportional preponderance of a
certain number of peculiarities, morphologic or physiologic,
elsewhere in less proportion. It must inevitably be so whether a
career is open to every one or shut up as a caste, for in the latter
case hereditary accumulation of acquired aptitudes from the use of
the same functions transmitted from generation to generation
produces an analogous effect, even with superior intensity.”[85] The
recent investigations of Bertillon at the Paris Prefecture of Police
have shown that by large photographs of the hand it is possible to
detect the worker at a large number of crafts. By such acquirement
as this, as well as by a process of natural selection, the men of every
class develop a special set of psychic and physical peculiarities; thus
Tolstoï, in his Death of Ivan Ilyitch, has admirably described the
special attitude and manner common to professional men generally,
and in this general professional class there are subdivisions, so that
every professional man instinctively recognises his fellows. It is so
among criminals. Mr. Davitt sketches, for instance, the special class
of “hooks,” or professional pickpockets, “so well outlined in gait,
constant use of slang, furtive looks, almost total want of tact in their
ordinary conduct, with an instinctively suspicious manner in almost
all their actions, that they are as easily distinguishable from the
other criminals of a prison as they are recognisable to their constant
pursuers, the police, when abroad in the world.”
If we were to look at the matter in a rather more thorough and
scientific manner, there can be no doubt that the previsions of Tarde
would be justified, and that men would fall into certain natural
anthropologic groups, according to their habitual modes of feeling
and thinking and acting, the nature of each person, to some extent,
“subdued to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.” In each class
there would be different degrees in sensory perception, in cranial
shape and size, in muscular development. Such investigations will no
doubt be systematically carried out in time. At present, owing to the
extraordinary apathy of anthropologists, and consequently the
general indifference to the importance of studies connected with the
development and varieties of men, scarcely anything is known
regarding the matter.
But important as professional selection is, it cannot account for
everything. Indeed no serious attempt has been made to
substantiate it by reference to the details of criminal anthropology.
M. Tarde is a magistrate; no scientific man would have attempted to
account for all the facts that have now accumulated by professional
selection and acquired habits.
It is interesting to note that Topinard, the distinguished
anthropologist, who has bestowed some severe and not unmerited
criticism on portions of Lombroso’s work,[86] while accepting the
professional theory of crime, by no means considers that it is
sufficient to explain the whole of the facts; remembering the
teaching of Lélut and Baillarger, under whom he had studied mental
disease, he calls in the aid of the morbid element:—“Criminals
constitute a special professional category in society, in the same way
as men of letters, men of science, artists, priests, the labouring
classes, etc., but a complex category in which the most diverse
elements enter: the insane or those predisposed to insanity,
epileptics and those predisposed to epilepsy, the alcoholic, the
microcephalic, the macrocephalic, those predisposed by some vice of
organisation or of development, anterior or posterior to birth,
betraying itself sometimes by very evident anatomical anomalies,
those who are predisposed by family traditions and inclinations,
those whose moral instincts are perverted by individual education
and social environment, and finally those who are criminals by
accident, without preparation or predisposition.”[87] Professional
characters will carry us a long way when we are seeking to account
for natural social groups. But in the anti-social groups another and
more morbid element enters. It is indeed largely the presence of
morbid elements which gives these groups their anti-social character.
(f) The morbid element in criminality has sometimes been too
strongly emphasised, but it would be idle to attempt to deny its
importance. The frequency with which insanity appears among
criminals, even when the influence of imprisonment may with
considerable certainty be excluded, is well ascertained. Of recent
years also the close connection between criminality and epilepsy and
general paralysis has often been shown. I have several times pointed
out that the resemblances between criminals considered as a class
and the insane so considered are by no means great; at many points
they are strongly contrasted. The resemblances with epileptics, on
the other hand, are anthropologically very marked, as Lombroso was
the first to point out in detail. He has also observed that those
regions of Italy which produce most epileptics produce also most
criminals. Epilepsy has a certain relationship to insanity; it tends
naturally to weak-mindedness, although some of the world’s greatest
men have been epileptics; and there is in epilepsy a tendency to the
development of brutal, unnatural, and bloodthirsty instincts. The
slighter and more concealed forms of epilepsy offer also a very
fruitful field for investigation in this respect.[88]
But the roots of criminality are not only deeper than professionalism,
they are deeper also than any merely acquired disease. I have
frequently had occasion to note the remarkable resemblances
between criminals and idiots. There is the same tendency to
anatomical abnormalities of the muscles, arteries, bones, etc.; in
both the muscular system is weak; there is the same tendency also
to small and weak hearts, with valvular defects. There is, again, the
same sensory obtuseness, with the same exception in the case of
sight, which is remarkably good, with rarity, it seems, of colour-
blindness. Criminality, like idiocy, tends to run in the line of the
eldest sons, and in both the hereditary influences are frequently bad.
Cranial asymmetry is common in idiots as well as among criminals;
and while meningitis is a common cause of idiocy, such evidence as
we possess shows that it is also common in criminals. Tubercular
disease is again common in both. Epilepsy, to which so much
importance has of late been attached in connection with criminality,
is notoriously common among idiots, being found among nearly 25
per cent.[89] The relations of criminality to idiocy have not yet been
sufficiently studied.
The criminal is, however, by no means an idiot. He is not even a
merely weak-minded person. The idiot and the feeble-minded, as we
know them in asylums, rarely have any criminal or dangerous
instincts. Another term is frequently used to denote vicious or
criminal instincts in a person who is, mentally, little if at all defective;
he is said to be “morally insane.”
The term “moral insanity” was originated nearly half a century ago
by an Englishman, Dr. Prichard, who in his Treatise on Insanity
declared that insanity exists sometimes with an apparently
unimpaired state of the intellectual faculties; and the conception has
been developed by Krafft-Ebing, Maudsley, and many others. The
term itself is an unfortunate one; the condition described by no
means falls in easily as a subdivision of insanity, and it is moreover
frequently of a congenital character. There is now a very general
tendency to drop the expression “moral insanity,” and to speak
instead of “moral imbecility.”
The condition in question, by whatever name it is called, is described
by alienists as an incapacity to feel, or to act in accordance with, the
moral conditions of social life. Such persons, it has been said, are
morally blind; the psychic retina has become anæsthetic. The
egoistic impulses have become supreme; the moral imbecile is
indifferent to the misfortunes of others, and to the opinions of
others; with cold logic he calmly goes on his way, satisfying his
personal interests and treading under foot the rights of others. If he
comes in contact with the law then his indifference changes into
hate, revenge, ferocity, and he is persuaded that he is in the right.
Although so defective on the moral side, these persons are well able
to make use of the abstracted intellectual conceptions of honour,
morality, philanthropy; such words are indeed frequently on their
lips, and it is quite impossible to convince them of the unusual
character of their acts. They are absolutely and congenitally
incapable of social education, systematically hostile to every
moralising influence. Being themselves morally blind, it is their firm
conviction that all others are in the same condition; they disbelieve
in the possibility of virtue, and being often possessed of considerable
intellectual ability, maintain anti-social theories with much skill.
“Moral insanity” does not probably stand for any definite morbid
condition. It is used as a convenient term to describe a certain group
of psychic symptoms which are not found in a developed condition in
the normal man. It is obvious that these symptoms closely resemble
those we have already described as characterising the criminal in his
most clearly-marked form—the instinctive criminal. The morally
insane person has been identified with the instinctive criminal by
Lombroso, Marro, Ferri, Benedikt, Colajanni, and many others. The
fusion has, however, been rejected by some—by Binswanger and
Kraepelin, for instance. There can, however, be little doubt that the
two groups overlap in very large part.
The group of instinctive criminals therefore still stands fairly apart
among the other groups of criminals, approximating, but not fusing
with, these various morbid and atypical groups. The outlines blend,
but each group is distinct at the centre. It will be the work of the
future to arrange, and if necessary to re-form, these various groups.
It is much to be able to see, even so clearly as we do to-day, the
human classes of arrested or perverted development who lie in the
dark pool at the foot of our social ascent. Even our present
knowledge is sufficient to serve as the justification for a certain
amount of social action. We owe this to the labours of a succession
of physiologists, alienists, anthropologists, and criminologists during
the past century.
Up to recent times the criminal has been regarded as a kind of
algebraic formula, to use Professor Ferri’s expression; the
punishment has been proportioned not to the criminal but to the
crime. We are now learning to regard the criminal as a natural
phenomenon, the resultant of manifold natural causes. We are
striving to attain to scientific justice. We are seeking in every
direction to ascertain what is the reasonable treatment of the
eccentric and abnormal members of society, in their interest, and in
the still higher interests of the society to which we belong.
To seek for light in the fields of biology and psychology, of
anthropology and sociology, has seemed to many a discouraging
task. The results are sometimes so obscure; sometimes, it even
seems, contradictory. In practice, it is said, such considerations
count for nothing. Law must only concern itself with absolute
certainties, with abstract formulæ, with geometrical routine. But
human nature will not fit in with formulæ; when men and women
are geometrical figures, an abstract legal system will answer all their
needs. If the path lies through a jungle, what is the use of the best
and straightest of roads that leads astray? If a critic were to point
out to a biologist—to take another illustration from Ferri—the
limitations of the microscope, he would be entitled to reply—But
excuse me, however imperfect the microscope may be, would it be
better to dispense with the microscope? Much less when we are
dealing with criminals, whether in the court of justice or in the
prison, or in society generally, can we afford to dispense with such
science of human nature as we may succeed in attaining.
 CHAPTER VI.
THE TREATMENT OF THE CRIMINAL.
If, as now scarcely admits of question, every truly criminal act
proceeds from a person who is, temporarily or permanently, in a
more or less abnormal condition, the notion of “punishment” loses
much of its foundation. We cannot punish a monstrosity for acting
according to its monstrous nature. Moreover, who among us is
perfectly normal, and what tribunal is entitled to punish? The verdict
of science is one with that of Christianity—“Judge not.”
Some such argument as this has weighed with those thinkers and
investigators who have of late shown a disinclination to talk of
punishment, and have instead spoken of the “social reaction against
crime.” The old conception of punishment was founded on the
assumption of the normality of the criminal; he was a normal person
who had chosen to act as though he were not a normal person—a
vine, as it were, that had chosen to bring forth thorns—and it was
the business of the penologist to apportion the exact amount of
retribution due to this extraordinary offence, with little or no regard
to the varying nature of the offender; he was regarded as a constant
factor. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, not many years ago, “when
addressing,” says the Rev. J. W. Horsley, “in our hearing, an
assemblage of those who had all belonged to the criminal class,
expatiated, somewhat to their astonishment and much to their
gratification, on the iniquity of giving a severe punishment for a theft
that was petty, even though it had been preceded by many thefts
and convictions.” Obviously the punishment was directed at the
offence; it was not necessary to consider the offender at all. This
conception, formulated by theorists who delighted in abstract
notions, has been shown to lead directly into devious paths of
metaphysics and ethics; it has, consequently, been fertile of much
vain disquisition. On the whole, the results of this have not
contributed to confirm the credit of the notion, and it has seemed
better—at once sounder theoretically and more convenient
practically—to dispense with this antiquated conception of
punishment. Whenever one person trespasses on the rights of
another person, or of the community to which he belongs, there is
an inevitable social reaction against the person who has committed
the anti-social deed. Society says to the individual who has violated
its social feelings—Here, my fine fellow, we are not going to stand
this conduct of yours; we must have an end of this: and it proceeds
to act in accordance with the varying measure of its wisdom. This is
the basis of all legal action against the criminal; in its crudest form it
is Lynch law; in its highly developed form it shows itself in the
elaborate training bestowed on the criminal at Elmira. Such social
action is a solid and permanent fact, independent of all metaphysical
theories; and it is this we are concerned with when we approach the
question of the treatment of the criminal.
At a very early period in the development of every barbarous race
there arise two institutions for dealing with the criminal—the prison
and another, still more decisive, appearing in various forms, the
cross, the stake, the gallows, the axe.
I do not propose to give more than a few words to the question of
capital punishment, because it does not seem to be any longer a
question of much magnitude or importance. A century, even three-
quarters of a century, ago it was a different matter. In England
especially capital punishment seems to have flourished luxuriantly. A
writer in Elizabeth’s reign says that in Henry VIII.’s time seventy-two
thousand thieves and vagabonds were hanged. The statement is set
down on hearsay evidence only, but is sufficient to show that the
number must have been very large. About a century ago more
criminals, it is said, were put to death in England than in any other
part of Europe; many persons still living remember the days of
wholesale hanging, and even the execution of a child of twelve for
rioting. It is less than half a century since a child of nine was
condemned to death for stealing paint, value twopence-halfpenny,
and since men were hanged for stealing sheep and postoffice letters.
There can be little doubt that capital punishment is dying out. In
Switzerland, in England, in Italy, for example, the tendency is very
clearly marked. Whether its complete extinction is altogether a
matter for rejoicing is a question concerning which there is not
complete unanimity among those whose opinions carry most weight.
An impressive body of opinion is in favour of putting instinctive
criminals to death, not out of revenge, but in the spirit in which
Galen and Seneca advocated the destruction of incorrigible offenders
against social life, regarding them as diseased members to be
removed for the advantage of the whole social body. Garofalo, the
distinguished Neapolitan lawyer, is perhaps the chief advocate of
capital punishment among those who are working for legal reform.
He points out that the death penalty is the only one the criminal
really dreads, and tells of offenders who committed their crimes
under the impression that capital punishment had been abolished,
and that they were to be provided with food and shelter for the rest
of their lives. On the other hand, it has also been shown that the
éclat and public interest involved in a trial for life or death serves as
an incentive to the morbid vanity of criminals. Such a penalty as
burning “for example of others, as hath been accustomed,”
according to the phrasing of Henry VIII.’s statute, has been an
example often enough in another sense than the statute intended.
On the whole, we may perhaps be well satisfied that capital
punishment—“the shameful practice,” as it has been
epigrammatically styled, “of hiring for a guinea an assassin to
accomplish a sentence which the judge would not have the courage
to carry out himself”—is threatened with extinction in civilised
countries. It has the disadvantage of being irrevocable. There would
be little chance of mistake if it were only applied to recidivists; but
these are a class to whom it is rarely applied. It is certain that
mistakes have occurred when in the opinion of the judge the
evidence of guilt was absolutely convincing. It is true that the chief
cause of this extinction in democratic countries is not the benefit of
the criminal, or even the welfare of society; it is a tender regard for
the sentiments of the general public. “To punish murder by lifelong
imprisonment,” as Sir Robert Rawlinson observed, “is a far severer
fate than sudden death, but it is not so revolting.” We have to see to
it that our substitutes for the death penalty are of a humane and
rational character, and that they afford an equal protection to
society. It should never be possible to address to society the words
which the daring Duc de Montausier addressed to Louis XIV.
concerning a criminal who was finally executed after committing
twenty murders: “This man has only committed one murder, the
first, and it is you who, by letting him live, have committed the other
nineteen.” But, as Benedikt well observes, to kill the criminal is never
satisfactory, because we do not kill his accomplices, bad social
conditions and defective institutions; we leave untouched the false
social sentiments that urged the unmarried girl to kill her own child,
or the rigid marriage system that made it easier for the man to kill
his wife than to leave her or to allow of her leaving him. Moreover, it
must be said that murderers, whom alone it is considered justifiable
to eliminate by death, are not usually the most degraded of criminals
or the most dangerous to society. In Russia, where capital
punishment for common-law offences was abolished more than a
century ago, murderers are condemned to hard labour for a period
of years, after which they are settled in Siberia. “Eastern Siberia is
full of liberated assassins,” remarks Prince Krapotkine, “and,
nevertheless, there is hardly another country where you could travel
and stay with greater security; while the unceasing robberies and
murders of which Siberia complains now, take place precisely in
Tomsk and throughout Western Siberia, whereto no murderers and
only minor offenders are exiled. In the earlier part of this century it
was not uncommon to find at an official’s house that the coachman
was a liberated murderer, or that the nurse who bestowed such
motherly care upon the children bore imperfectly obliterated marks
of the branding-iron.”[90] Mr. Davitt, speaking from an extensive
acquaintance with criminals, says:—“The really hardened,
irreclaimable criminal will never commit a murder.... The most
heinous of all offences—murder deliberately intended and planned
before commission—is, ordinarily, the offspring of the passions of
revenge and jealousy, or the outcome of social or political wrongs;
and is more frequently the result of some derangement of the nobler
instincts of human nature than traceable to its more debased orders
or appetites.”[91] Again, Miss Carpenter, in her Female Life in Prison,
wrote:—“Some women are less easy to tame than the creatures of
the jungle.... And yet these women are not always in for the worst
crimes: there are few, if any, murderers amongst them; they have
been chiefly convicted of theft after theft, accompanied by violence.”
These observations are entirely in accord with the results of criminal
anthropology; the murderer belongs very frequently to the class of
criminals by passion, the least anti-social of all, and is at other times
frequently the subject of some morbid impulse, epileptic or insane.
Perhaps the most powerful reason in favour of the probable
disappearance of capital punishment is the humanising influence
that would be exerted on the community generally. The unreasoning
outbursts of ferocity in which, especially among young and
emotional democracies, some morbid and distracted creature who
fires at a political personage is hurried with glee to the scaffold, or
some half-witted human thing who commits a rape is perhaps
actually torn to pieces, are not wholesome manifestations of the
social spirit. They are far less excusable than the deeds by which
they are aroused, for the reason that they arise in more normally
constituted persons. So long as capital punishment is legitimate
there is, however, at least the appearance of an excuse for the
development of these brutalising outbursts. All that is finest in
civilisation is bound up with a self-restraint and humanity, as well as
a more intelligent insight, which, while admitting a more chastened
social reaction, makes ferocity impossible.
Let us turn to the prison. During the last century a vast amount of
care and enthusiasm, philanthropic and administrative, have been
expended on the elaboration and development of prisons. It is
needless to sketch the history of this development, which seems
now to have come to a standstill; it has often been done, and is
easily accessible. It is however very interesting and instructive to
take note of the deliberate opinions expressed during the last few
years, from various points of view, by those who have had the
opportunity of studying most intimately the modern developed
prison.
A curious fate has befallen this ancient institution. In its more
primitive form it now arouses universal disgust and horror. The
Russian prisons of Siberia are, for instance, a by-word of reproach.
The physical and mental torture which they inflict, wholesale and
indiscriminately, on men and women, on political suspects as well as
on the lowest criminals, have been described over and over again,
from within and from without, during the last fifty years, in
Dostoieffsky’s Recollections of the Dead-House, by Maximoff, and by
Krapotkine, and still, when Mr. Kennan repeats the old story, a wave
of indignation passes across the civilised world. Elsewhere on the
fringe of European civilisation the primitive prison is still scarcely
changed. The Spanish prisons are often filthy and overcrowded, and
the inmates are maintained in laziness. In the Spanish prison of
Ceuta, in Morocco, there are 3000 convicts, mostly for life, and
crowded together, so that 112 sleep in one room.[92] The native
prisons of Morocco are the abodes of oppression, starvation, and
filth, where the innocent and guilty are thrown in together, without
any kind of work, and allowed to die slowly. “The horrors of these
places are indescribable. Often they are underground, damp, and
pestilential; always filthy. They are frequently very crowded, and a
dozen or more poor wretches may be fastened in one chain by their
necks, with heavy irons on their wrists and ankles, unable to stir a
foot away from one another for any purpose all night, and often all
day.”[93] “On the highest authority,” says Mr. Cook, “I am able to say
that the prison population of the city of Morocco equals the free
population.” In the interior, where there is no dread of European
influence, things are naturally much worse. In Egypt the prisons are
filthy and filled with untried prisoners. In Greece the prisoners are,
“if possible, dirtier than those of Egypt, no work, no books, and but
little food. Some of the rooms containing ten prisoners were less
than twelve feet square.” Many of the prisons of South Africa are in a
wretched condition, and some of those in the United States are little
better.
A century ago most of the prisons of England could fairly have been
included in any such enumeration as that I have just attempted.
“They are ironed,” wrote Howard of the English convicts of 1773,
“thrust into close, offensive dungeons, and there chained down,
some of them without straw or other bedding. They continue in
winter sixteen or seventeen hours out of the twenty-four in utter
inactivity, and immersed in the noxious effluvia of their own bodies.
Their diet is at the same time low and scanty; they are generally
without firing; and the powers of life soon become incapable of
resisting so many causes of sickness and despair.” There was not, as
a recent writer remarks, so much consideration for prisoners in
Britain as there had been in the reign of the Emperor Constantine,
for the Romans of the fourth century did not permit the
imprisonment of men in the same room with women. Howard found
a girl locked up all day with two soldiers in the Bridewell at St.
Albans, and in many of the gaols there was insufficient provision for
the separation of the sexes.
We have changed all that. The best prisons of England, France, the
United States, Belgium, Italy, and some other countries, are models
of ingenuity, cleanliness, and routine. It cannot be said, indeed, that
we have succeeded in hindering communication between prisoners,
or in preventing an illicit traffic in tobacco, etc., or even the practice
of unnatural intercourse; and we do not trouble ourselves too much
to reform the prisoner. Yet even these laxities of discipline have
added materially to the prisoner’s comfort; and if we have not
reformed the prisoner we have at least reformed the prison, an
easier task, and one which shows more tangible results. “The
prisoner of the present day is well cared for,” remarks Dr. Gover, the
medical inspector, in a recent Report of the Directors of Convict
Prisons; “he is supplied with all the necessaries, and not a few of the
comforts of life; and his existence is, to say the least, rendered very
endurable. The labour exacted from him is not irksome in its
character, and he is not subjected to any depressing punishment
unless it be for idleness or for serious misconduct.” But the work is
not of an exhausting character, so that there is no very strong
motive to laziness. “Hard labour,” Mr. Horsley remarks, “is such that
no prisoner could get a living outside if he did not work harder.” It is
not surprising that under these circumstances the prisoner
flourishes. “In our prisons now there is,” says Dr. Richardson, “a
lower mortality and probably a lesser sickness than in the most
luxuriously appointed and comfortable houses in the
commonwealth.” And what, he asks, is more natural when we find
“epidemic poisons shut out of our prisons; famine shut out; luxury
shut out; drink shut out; exposure to cold and wet shut out; the
acute and most destructive kinds of mental worry shut out; the
hungry strain for to-morrow’s bed and board shut out; the baneful
association with criminal life at large shut out!”
And yet we are dissatisfied! This comfortable, easy-going routine of
the modern prison is viewed with scarcely more approval by the
thoughtful investigator of to-day than the horrors of the primitive
prison. It is deeply interesting and suggestive to take note of the
opinions expressed during recent years by those most intimately
acquainted with the modern prison. “Why are our prisons failures?”
asks Mr. Horsley, who is as impressed as much as any one by the
material progress of prisons. “Men are asking, and will more loudly
ask, ‘Why are our prisons such utter failures?’ In the face of the
phenomena of recidivism, and men and women with hundreds of
convictions, it is absurd to imagine that they are as deterrent as they
should be.” The prisoner is, he points out, but temporarily
suspended from habits of crime by circumstances not under his own
control: “He may even boast of his intentions, but out he must go,
with as much safety to the State as if all mad dogs were muzzled for
twenty-four hours and then all unmuzzled, because it had been
found that in that period a certain proportion ceased to be
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