Thus in our everyday life, as in science, we very often find
intermediate types, for complete and unmixed types are always the
most uncommon. And whilst legislators and judges, in their
complacent psychology, exact and establish marked lines of
cleavage between the sane and the insane criminal, experts in
psychiatry and anthropology are often constrained to place a
prisoner somewhere between the mad and the born criminal, or
between the occasional criminal and the normal man.
But it is evident that even when a criminal cannot be classed
precisely in one or the other category, and stands between
the two, this is in itself a sufficiently definite classification,
especially from a sociological point of view. There is
consequently no weight in the objection of those who, basing their
argument on an abstract and nebulous idea of the criminal in
general, and judging him merely according to the crime which has
been committed, without knowing his personal characteristics and
the circumstances of his environment, affirm that criminal
anthropology cannot classify all who are detained and accused.
In my experience, however, as a counsel and as an observer, I have
never had any difficulty in classifying all persons detained or
condemned for crimes and offences, by relying upon organic, and
especially upon psychological symptoms.
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