And in the
second place, the scientific proofs of these hereditary
tendencies to crime, even apart from the clinical forms of
mental alienation, are now so numerous that it is useless to
insist upon them further.
The third class is that of the criminals whom, after my prison
experience, I have called criminals by contracted habit. These
are they who, not presenting the anthropological characteristics
of the born criminals, or presenting them but slightly, commit
their first crime most commonly in youth, or even in childhood--
almost invariably a crime against property, and far more through
moral weakness, induced by circumstances and a corrupting
environment, than through inborn and active tendencies. After
this, as M. Joly observes, either they are led on by the impunity
of their first offences, or, more decisively, prison associations
debilitate and corrupt them, morally and physically, the cell
degrades them, alcoholism renders them stupid and subject to
impulse, and they continually fall back into crime, and become
chronically prone to it. And society, which thus abandons them,
before and after they leave their prison, to wretchedness,
idleness, and temptations, gives them no assistance in their
struggle to gain an honest livelihood, even when it does not
thrust them back into crime by harassing police regulations, which
prevent them from finding or keeping honest employment.
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