Crime and the family

Preface

The first hint for the following discussion came to my mind from an experience gained in the administration of criminal justice. I had occasion to pass sentence upon several boys, whose history was known to me ; and in that history, I thought, I saw the reason why these boys were criminals, instead of being honest and industrious. It appeared to me, that in parental neglect I saw the true reason why they were what they were, and not other than they were.

Having a call to deliver a lecture, I took up the subject and discussed it substantially in the manner here pursued. I repeated that lecture upon several occasions, and, at each time, these views made, I had reason to believe, a deep and lasting impression. I was urged by many to write them out for publication. Encouraged by these requests, and feeling that the public mind needed to be roused up to a better understanding of this all-important subject, I have prepared the following work for publication, in the earnest hope that it may call attention and stimulate to thought on this subject. Amid the imperious calls of pressing public duties, I can not promise myself that the work might not have been better done ; I have labored to make myself understood, and, if I have not failed there, I am satisfied.

IV PREFACE.

The value of a book should be tested by the truth it contains, not by its fine writing.

I now submit this little work with the earnest hope that it may be as good seed sown in a fruitful soil, growing up into an abundant harvest — that it may awake public attention, and lead to thought, until others may come forth to supply its imperfections and enforce more eloquently it3 truths ; so that the children that may come after us may, by a more earnest performance of parental duties, escape the dangers which have so thickly beset the paths of those who have gone before. We may then hope to see the current of crime narrowing and shoaling until it shall wholly

disappear.

SIMEON NASH.

Gallipolis, Ohio, a. d. 1861.

The above was written some years since, as will be seen by the date. Circumstances then made it prudent not to publish. Now, on re-reading the proof after so many years, I see no reason to alter what I then wrote, but submit the same to every candid, truth-loving, and earnest

mind.

S. N.

Gallipolis, May 10, 1876.

Introduction

Crime and the family ! It may be objected that this is a strange juxtaposition" of these two words — the one indicating all that is wicked and debased in humanity ; the other, all that is endearing and holy. Strange, however, as it may seem, I think I shall be able to show that there is a most intimate relation between the family and crime ; a more intimate one than many mistaken and misguided parents have suspected, while they were blindly engaged in working out for their children a future overclouded with vice, crime, and misery. I hope to be able, by a discussion of this' relationship, to wake up the attention of parents to a clearer perception of their duties and responsibilities.

Much has been said, written, and done upon the subject of the reformation of criminals, and somewhat of good has grown out of these discussions and doings, in the improved architecture of our prisons, and the better and the more humane administration of them; but in the matter of the reform of criminals, little or nothing has been accomplished. This has been owing to various causes — mainly to the almost moral impossibility of reclaiming those who have

CRIME AND THE FAMILY.

grown up into crime, and acquired the thoughts and opinions and development necessarily attendant upon a life of crime. There is another consideration, however, which is not to be overlooked ; and that is, the objection raised against the adoption, in the government of prisons, of a thorough system of religious teaching. If the criminal is to be reformed, it must be by the introduction of a radical change in his life ; and religion alone holds out any hopes of working in humanity such a change. The prisoner must become religious, must feel within him a new life and new emotions — a life wrought out from a belief in God, and emotions of love and gratitude toward God, which that faith alone is capable of developing in a human soul. But it is said that to press upon the attention of criminals confined for crimes against the State, the subject of religion, is an infringement of their rights of conscience ; as though the State had not a right to employ all and any means which were reasonably calculated to reclaim the criminal, to change the bad man into a good one, to convert the law-breaker into a lawabider ! This imaginary difficulty has been got round by indirection — by the appointment of moral instructors instead of chaplains — just as though a change of name could work a change in the nature of the thing ; for no mere moral teaching, no mere appeal to the principles of expediency and prudence, ever did, ever will, or ever can work that moral and spiritual reformation in a human soul, without which it can not become what it must be, in order that the criminal shall be converted into the honest, law-abiding man.

There is still another difficulty connected with this effort, which has contributed to this failure — the abso-

INTRODUCTION.

lute disqualification of the men appointed to the office of religious teacher for these outlawed men. Clergymen are, in most cases, illy fitted to address such men. They are wholly ignorant of the mysterious workings of a human soul educated into crime. They can not reach it, can not get hold of it, since to do this requires a thorough knowledge of humanity, of a human soul, and of the motives and views which influence its actions and affections, when sunk into these terrible depths of vice and crime. One maybe able to methodize into science the whole of revealed truth, and yet utterly fail when brought face to face before a human soul tainted with crime. It would be well if our clergy studied humanity more, even if they studied theology less. The truths through which the Christian life is worked out are few and simple, while theology, as a science, is the way in which the intellect regards revealed truth, and methodizes it into a system. If the human soul is to be spiritually affected, it must be by the presentation of these plain and simple facts and truths, which go directly to its moral consciousness. The criminal must be made conscious of his guilt, or nothing in the way of reform can be accomplished. This self-consciousness of guilt is the first step in every moral change of heart and life and character. To do this with success, the teacher must understand the human soul in its degraded condition — must know its thoughts and opinions, and the motives by which it is influenced and impelled into action. This knowledge is necessary to the successful teacher or preacher, under all circumstances ; but it is indispensable when he is called upon to address a class of men so far removed from his own mode of

CRIME AND THE FAMILY.

life and thoughts as are the depraved inmates of a prison. He must know what these men believe, and how they think, if his instruction is to exert any beneficial influence upon their lives.

While these discussions on prisons and criminal reforms have been prosecuted, little or no attention has been given to this terrible fact — the existence of crime itself. The existence of crime and criminals has seemed to be regarded as the necessary products of social development. Hence no investigations have been prosecuted to* search out the origin and source and cause of this terrible social evil, and ascertain, if possible, upon whom rested the responsibility that criminals were, somewhere in the bosom of society, being constantly educated into a life of. crime. This subject is of the deepest moment, and an effort to fathom it can not fail to. do good. It will at least open up the inquiry, and point out the mode of its prosecution. These criminals were once innocent babes, drawing their life from a mother's breast. They were once in the family, and have come forth from it, not to adorn and bless, but to prey upon society. By whose fault and neglect does this take place? And how can it be prevented, if prevented it can be? In the following- work, I shall endeavor to furnish a solution to these all-important questions, by endeavoring to ascertain the origin and cause of crime, and the manner in which these causes may be removed, and the education of criminals prevented.

The effort is certainly worth an attempt at its solution ; and in such a cause, even a failure can not be without its beneficial influences. A failure oftentimes is as good as a success — if not for the author, at least

INTRODUCTION.

for the public mind. Some imperfect and incomplete productions possess a fertilizing value, which works more perfect do not. Sterile even from their very perfection, they are an initiation. They open up new ways, break the old worn-out molds, stimulate the thought and imagination of readers, and render easy, to those coming after, victories which they have failed to obtain. Such works become the germs, which other minds, under more favorable auspices, will develop and perfect in form. All serious efforts will .have their influence, and that influence can only prove beneficial to future thought and social progress. If, then, I shall succeed simply in calling attention to this subject — in turning the public mind in a new and fruitful direction — I shall not have labored in vain. A book which sets the reader thinking can never be a worthless book. It will open up new views of an old subject, and lead to new trains of thought. Whether I shall have succeeded in doing this, it is not for me to say. That conclusion must be formulated by the reader, not by the author.

CRIME AND THE FAMILY.

Chapter II. Crime Some Of Its Explanations

The existence of crime in society is a fearful and strange fact. If it were not so common, how startled should we be at the report of a larceny, or an arson, or a murder? The idea that men could be found capable of violating human law, to say nothing of the divine law, and run the chances of being overtaken by its penalties, is a startling fact, and would seem to be almost an impossible one ; and yet so it is. Men are found who will violate the law, set society at defiance, and proclaim perpetual war upon its interests, although the chances are that their crimes will be found out, and they in their persons be compelled to suffer the penalties. The continuity of crime is a permanent fact, and punish as society may, the number of crimes is kept up, and the number of criminals goes on increasing with the growth of population and the accumulation of wealth.

Since the enforcement of criminal law, the prompt conviction, and the rigid punishment of criminals are powerless to check the growth of crime and the multiplication of criminals, it becomes an all-important inquiry to ascertain what is the permanent source of crime, what t the method by which this army of criminals is recruited, is constantly kept up? If we could verify the real source of crime, we might be able to abate this, and thus get rid of it ; but so long as we

CRIME — SOME OF ITS EXPLANATIONS. 7

confine our attention to the punishment and reform of the criminal, instead of seeking to prevent his education, we shall never succeed in getting rid of crime. We must trace out the history of the criminal, ascertain how and where he was educated into crime, by whose agency and by whose neglect. We must prevent the formation of criminals, if we would put an end to the perpetration of crime. In this way, society will best protect its own interests, and advance civilization, intelligence, and moral worth. When the criminal is once formed, there seems, judging from experience, to be but very little hope of ever reclaiming him ; hence the great aim should be to prevent the formation, the education of the criminal.

Criminals are not born such ; they were all at first infants in their mothers' arms, and from that home of tenderness, they have somehow strayed away from its influences and grown up to be law-breakers, the enemies of law and social order. How then does it happen that one child grows up to be a criminal, and another to be an ornament and a blessing to society and friends? There is no necessity by which this strange result is wrought out ; there must be some cause consistent with free will and moral responsibility for this strange difference in the history of two human beings. How does it happen that of two infants, the one may become the judge upon the bench to pronounce, and the other the criminal at the bar to receive the sentence which the law has affixed to its violation?

Various answers have been given in explanation of this social mystery, and these explanations have been as various and diverse as the men who gave them. Each has explained it according to his theory of humanity and society, and yet all these explanations have led to no reforms ; the race of criminals has gone on unbroken, and crime has continued to be prosecuted, and society has found no relief to this wound, under which it has suffered and still does suffer.

The positive philosopher has his theory ; he explains crime by statistics. Gathering up the statistics of crime, he will tell you that a certain number of murders and robberies and arsons and larcenies are committed each j r ear, and a certain proportion of the criminals are prosecuted, and a certain other proportion convicted. In his investigations he does not confine himself to one nation or country ; he turns over the records of all countries, and shows that this law of proportion is found to exist in all civilized nations, in all social organizations ; hence he infers that this is a law of social development, a law as permanent and uniform in its action as any other law of humanity and society. Crime, therefore, is, according to his theory, a necessary condition of society, as much as disease is a necessary condition of the body.

All these statistics may be correct, and they may demonstrate the existence of certain facts and laws ; but do they ex f lain anything? Do they furnish any clue to the cause why society is so developed? Why this proportion of crime is kept up? They show that some law is at work, some cause ever operative, and productive of nearly the same results, under nearly similar conditions ; otherwise this uniformity of results would not be wrought out. These philosophers give us the diagnosis of the disease, but they furnish us no explanation of its cause, no remedy for its cure. The man whose limb is broken, or whose body is being con-

CRIME — SOME OF ITS EXPLANATIONS. 9

sumed by a slow disease, is little benefited by having the nature of the fracture or the condition and working of his disease explained, unless he is also told how the one can be reduced and cured, and the cause and remedy for the other. So society is little benefited by all these figures, by all these facts, by all these statistics, unless it is enlightened upon the true causes which produce these uniform effects. There must be some cause, underlying all these figures and facts, which operates upon beings endowed with reason and free will, and in harmony with these endowments, to bring about these uniform results, to produce these effects. It is this cause which we wish to know, which we must know before we can intelligently set ourselves to the work of anticipating and preventing these results, the education of criminals ; but of this cause or these causes the positive philosopher with all his statistics gives us no information : hence he is but a blind guide in the inquiry now before us.

With another class of minds, all the vices and crimes of men are attributed to poor, depraved human nature. Unless humanity had received a shock, a twist, an injury, there would have been no vice or crime, no sin of any degree of demerit. If man acted according to the idea by which God wrought in his creation, perfect order and harmony and happiness would have been the portion of humanity ; but man violates the divine idea, the divine law in his action and development, and hence the existence of sin, and vice, and crime, and misery. But while this depravity is truly the source and cause of vice and crime, and if the former did not exist the latter could not, still is it true that this depravity necessarily leads to crime? If so,

IO CRIME AND THE FAMILY.

all men ought to be criminals, and society and social order would be an impossibility. But all men are not criminals against the laws of society, whatever they may be-when tried by the higher and more comprehensive laws of God. Hence depravity does not necessarily lead a human soul to crime ; there must be some other cause which produces the wide differences which we witness in the lives and characters of men. Why is it that with this common inheritance of depravity, some men are honest and others dishonest, some are virtuous and others vicious, some observers and others breakers of the law? Now it is this cause which makes these men so unlike, so different that we need to know and comprehend, before we are prepared to guide this depraved humanity in all cases and in every instance into the development of a life of honesty, and virtue, and obedience.

Another will insist that the existence of crime depends upon the constitution of the race, or family, or individual ; that some races and families and individuals possess a constitution, an organization, something peculiar, which works out this result. It may be true that races and families deteriorate ; that, with some, this disease called depravity is stronger, and harder to be counteracted and overcome, than with others. Facts would seem to show that races and families improve ; that a race or family highly cultivated and moral produce children with more active intellects, with moral susceptibilities more easily excited and developed. They may also deteriorate. Ignorant and immoral parents do probably impart something of their own stupidity and animal development to their children, and so far may this

CRIME — SOME OF # ITS EXPLANATIONS. II

deterioration be carried on in the process of generations that the race or family will die out- — be incapable of perpetuating itself; but, before this can take place, moral responsibility must cease, and the race or family become idiotic. But still this fact, if it is a fact, does not necessitate the criminal, since, in these races and families, all are not violators of the laws of society and the State. The same distinction is here seen as among all societies — some are criminals, and others not. Hence there must be some reason, some cause for this distinction, for this marked difference in men of the same race and family. This explanation, then, is no better than the others, and equally false and insufficient to explain the existence of crime in a society composed of beings endowed with reason to comprehend the true and the divine, and a free will to obey or disobey their teachings.

All these explanations imply, if they do not assert, that crime is a fatality, not a sin — the result of blind causes, instead of the natural action of a free will and a blinded reason, overpowered by that animal nature which we all possess in common with the brute. If crime were a fatality, instead of ah act of free-will, it would cease to be a crime, an act worthy of punishment, and become only an occasion of commiseration. We should pity rather than punish. Society should protect itself against the criminal, as it does against the idiotic and insane, by simple restraint, not by the infliction of punishment. But we are conscious that such is not the case with the criminal. We know he acts against his own moral judgment in violating the law, doing that which he knows to be wrong, knows to be worthy of blame and punishment. Knowing that he ought not to do these acts, he does them ; and therein lies his criminality and his guilt, and the possibility and certainty of his being conscious of his own demerit, of his own guilt, of his desert of punishment, so that when he stands at the bar of justice for judgment, he knows and feels that his punishment is just, his own mind and consciousness being his judge.

Chapter III. Crime Some Of Its Manifestations

We will now turn to some of the facts connected with the development and manifestation of crime. Each criminal has a history, and crime itself has also its history ; and if we can read these histories aright, we may learn the secret cause, ever operative in society in the promotion and education of criminals.

The first fact to which I shall call attention, is the startling fact that the great majority of criminals are boys and young men of the age of thirty and under. The following facts are taken from the reports of the Ohio penitentiary : Out of one hundred and thirty convicts admitted to the penitentiary of Ohio during the year ending the 22d day of December, A. d. 1841, forty-four were of the age of twenty and under ; fiftytwo over the ages of twenty and under the age of thirty-one ; nineteen over thirty and under forty-one ; ten over forty and under fifty-one, and five over the age of fifty-one. In 1842 there were received one hundred and thirty-seven, the ages of which are reported as follows : Twenty-two were under the age of twenty-one ; seventy-three over twenty and under thirty-one ; nineteen over thirty and under forty-one ; sixteen over forty and under fifty-one, and seven over that age. Out of one hundred and fifty-six who were discharged in the same year, twenty-nine were under twenty-one ; seventy-one over twenty and under thirty-one ; thirty-five over thirty and under forty-one ; seventeen over forty and under fifty-one, and four over fifty. There were one hundred and thirty-four discharged in 1841, whose ages were as follows : Fourteen w r ere under the age of twenty-one ; seventy-four over twenty and under thirty-one ; twenty-three. over thirty and under forty-one ; fifteen over forty and under fifty-one, and eight over fifty. Out of two hundred and fifty-eight received, one hundred and eighty-five were under the age of thirty-one, and sixty-three over the age of thirty ; while of two hundred and ninety discharged convicts, one hundred and eighty-eight were under thirty-one, and one hundred and two were over thirty. In the case of the discharged convicts, the age of conviction is less than the age of discharge by the length of the imprisonment which the convict has undergone. I presume it will be found that these returns represent the general average of the ages of conviction, not only in Ohio, but in the other States of the Union. These returns of crime, whenever and wherever examined, will be found, I think, to present the same results as to ages ; and the experience of every judge connected with the administration of the criminal law, will only add confirmation to the melancholy fact that the great mass of our criminals are young men and boys under the age of thirty-one.

The reason why there are so few old criminals is in part and mainly due to the fact, that a life of crime is a short life. The criminal is almost universally addicted to those vices which contribute so fearfully to abridge the term of human life. Drunkenness and licentiousness are vices peculiar to the criminal, and none shorten human life like these. A life of crime is also a life of hardship and exposure, of excess and of want, conditions inconsistent with health and length of days. The great proportion of criminals then begin early, while yet mere boys, their career of crime, and' die off before attaining the age of forty. Those of a greater age will be found to be exceptional cases, where men in mature life have been led by the pressure of circumstances to the commission of a.single crime, and serve, therefore, to confirm the general result to which these figures and returns lead us.

There is another fact which is brought out by a careful reading of the history of crime, that the larger proportion of criminals come from our cities and large towns. The rural population furnish few criminals in proportion to the whole number, and there are reasons why this should be so. Crime usually commences in vicious indulgencies. The boy who becomes a criminal, has first been guilty of vice and dissipation ; he has by these been prepared to become a criminal; through them he has been educated into crime. The temptations to vice are not found in the rural districts ; drinking and licentiousness are not within the reach of youth there as they are in a city or large town, where they meet the boy in every street and at every corner, and call to him from every alley, inviting and urging him to indulgence ; hence the youth of a city are assailed by temptations, of which a boy raised on a farm can know nothing. The boy in the country may remain virtuous, simply, because the temptations and means of vice, of moral degradation, are not accessible to him ; while, if he had been bred in a city, he would have eagerly ran astray into vice and crime. The position of many a boy then decides his destiny for life, whether he shall be an ornament or a pest to society, an honor or a disgrace to his friends. This explains the fact that so many boys and young men, who in their rural home were virtuous and upright, go astray in the by-ways of vice and crime, when transferred amid the temptations and seductions of a great city ; they have been virtuous because the means of vice were not within their reach, not because they had received that intellectual and moral training which wakes up within us a power to resist all outward influences and vicious temptations, since we guide our life by the light that is within us, and not by the influences which act from without. Many a youth is kept from vice by the mere pressure of the outward influences which surround him ; but take this pressure off, and he will swing away into the regions of vicious indulgence, as the earth would into the regions of space, if the law of gravitation should cease to act. Abstinence from vice is not virtue ; that consists in a life wrought out from principles embraced by the reason and believed in as true — in a life which is the manifestation of a power within the spirit, and not the product of outward circumstances and influences.

Another fact may be here noticed, and that is, that the great proportion of criminals come from two classes — the -poor and the rich. It needs only a little experience in the administration of criminal justice to be satisfied of this fact. And there are reasons why this should be so. The prayer of Augur explains the reason of it : " Give me neither poverty nor riches ; feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny Thee, and say who is the Lord? — or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain."

Want often tempts to stealing, and stealing leads to other and higher crimes ; while an abundance of wealth furnishes the means of vicious indulgence, and, through vice, leads to want and crime. The one class can afford to be vicious ; the other can not afford to be honest and virtuous. The great body of our industrious population are by industry preserved from dissipation and vice, and hence from crime, while wealth enables its possessor to be idle, and in idleness is found one of the widest gates and broadest ways leading to vice and crime.

The last fact to which I wish to call attention, is the fact that most of the boys who grow up to become criminals are allowed to stray away from the family and waste their time in the streets and alleys, and the various places of recreation found in our cities and large towns. Family government is relaxed, and the boys are permitted to be out at nights, in these cities and towns, and thus acquire their education in the haunts of intoxication, licentiousness, and kindred vices. The moral consciousness is soon deadened by such a life ; vicious appetites and wants are stimulated in activity, and, to gratify these, the boy will resort to falsehood, and ultimately to crime. There he also comes in contact with older and more hardened boys, and by them is introduced into a society, the vocation of which is vice and crime. The school'of crime is the streets of a city or large town, and the teachers of crime are the reprobates in vice and the perpetrators of crime, who are there found swarming in multitudes, eager and ready to train others to walk the way they are engaged in themselves. I have witnessed the his- '