Studies in Forensic Psychiatry by Bernard Glueck (best black authors txt) 📕

reaching the 6th grade. He experienced no difficulty in learning but played truant on frequent occasions. His industrial career constitutes an uninterrupted chain of failures. He was frequently discharged for various offenses and quarrels with his associates. He commenced to indulge in alcoholics at a very early age and has been an excessive drinker all his life. Married in his twentieth year and managed to live with his wife for six years, when she left him on account of infidelity, non-support and drunkenness. One miscarriage and one apparently healthy child were the results of this union.

He came in conflict with the law for the first time at the age of twelve or thirteen for some offense against the person. We have an incomplete record of his criminal career, but this can easily be surmised when we take into consideration that part of it which we do possess. Between March, 1903, and December, 1910, he was arrested thirteen times for assault, twenty-eight times for disorderly, and drunk and disorderly, twice for housebreaking, once for petty larceny and twice for vagrancy. Habitual drunkenness, destruction of private property, and depredation on house furniture, add to the list of charges against him. During this period he served a penitentiary sentence, was tried for murder, and acquitted on a second trial on a plea of self-defense, and on four different occasions, was ordered to be examined mentally. Following a debauch, during which he was arrested three times for assault, he developed a mental disorder in jail while awaiting trial, which necessitated his transfer to the Government Hospital for the Insane.

He developed the idea that someone was always around him looking for a chance to kill him. Continually heard strange voices and noises. Was very nervous and irritable.

The records accompanying him stated that for years he had had a particularly bad and dangerous temper. That he had had several previous attacks of mental disorder; had repeatedly committed assaults, and was found not guilty of murder seven years ago—an act of insanity. Had been arrested by the Washington police about seventy-five times.

His mental disturbance soon cleared up, and on admission to the hospital he was absolutely free from any psychotic manifestations.

He was a well-developed man of average intellectual attainments. He was somewhat unstable emotionally, and his promises to lead a better life in the future were usually accompanied by a good deal of crying. He was a monumental liar, and although endeavoring to impress the examiner with the idea of being quite remorseful about his past life, it was clearly evident that his moral status was a very low one and that his promises and resolutions were merely brought forth to aid him in securing his freedom. He was extensively tattooed and showed remains of an old syphilitic lesion.

Upon his release from the Government Hospital for the Insane, he was given a year’s sentence in the workhouse, and the Press has been reporting frequent misdemeanors performed by him in the workhouse.

This case is interesting only in so far as it illustrates exceptionally well the rôle of alcoholism in the habitual criminal. It is, however, very difficult to decide whether the alcohol should be considered here the cause of the man’s degeneracy or its result. It would appear that whatever injurious effect inebriety had upon this man, and unquestionably it had, he owes his anomalies of character to causes over which he had no control. We find that his father was a chronic alcoholic, his mother a neurotic, a maternal aunt insane, and an uncle a suicide. That these pathological traits in the antecedents left their impressions on him cannot be doubted for one minute. He was abnormal before environment and personal habits had had time to make themselves felt. He, too, oscillated between penal institutions and the Hospital for the Insane all his lifetime. That the same degenerative basis lies at the bottom of both his moral and mental alienation, cannot be doubted. Here, too, we are able at this date to furnish other additional information. The patient was eventually discharged from the Hospital for a similar reason as in the preceding case, and in spite of all his promises and new resolutions was readmitted to the Hospital on October 13, 1913 with an attack of delirium tremens.

Let us endeavor to see now in what respects the above individuals simulate one another, and whether this similarity is of sufficient import to warrant the grouping of them into one category. Commencing with the family history we find disease and crime manifest in the antecedents, either direct or indirect, of all of them, that in all probability because of this, not one of these unfortunates was brought into the world with a sufficient impetus to carry him successfully to his goal. In every instance we find that the characterological anomaly became manifest already during their school career. It was the persistent truancy, disobedience and antagonism to submission to a well-regulated existence and not so much the incapacity to learn, which distinguished them from the other children in school. The same attributes of character which were at the bottom of their conflicts with the school authorities brought them into the hands of the police authorities soon afterwards. The contact with the outside world soon served to bring out other pathological traits of character. We now see them manifest a pathologic emotionalism, an unbounded egotism, a relentless vindictiveness and an apparently total disregard of consequences. Frictions with the surrounding world, which a normal individual meets in an ordinary manner with a view towards an efficient adaptation to existing conditions, were reacted to by them in a distinctly antisocial manner, with methods entirely void of consideration of the rights of others, an attribute so essential for a proper concourse with man. Thrown finally upon their own resources, when they had to rely for their existence upon some industrial pursuit, we find them lacking the most essential prerequisite for the efficient struggle for existence—definiteness of purpose, and continuity and persistence of effort. We find them leading a harum-scarum existence, drifting from place to place, and from occupation to occupation, never able to remain at any one undertaking for any length of time.

The next features which stand out prominently in the lives of these individuals are their recidivism and the fact that every one of them came under the observation of an alienist on one or more occasions in his life. What is at the bottom of all this? We cannot, of course, deny the very evident fact that these individuals differ from normal man and that this difference is due to their inferiority. But what characterizes this inferiority? Is it the lack of something which normal man possesses, or is it rather a disproportion, a disharmony between the various individual mental faculties of these individuals? In other words, is their inferiority a quantitative or qualitative one? Taking pure intelligence into consideration we find that they show no deficiency in this particular sphere. On the contrary, most or all of them show a degree of shrewdness and keenness which absolutely precludes the existence of an intelligence defect per se. Their recidivism is not due to an inability to distinguish between right and wrong. They know very well what is and what is not right, at any rate, as well as the average person, but they feel decidedly different from the average person about this distinction. They are what they are because of a discord, a disproportion between their various psychic attributes. The exaggerated egotism, which is so common to these individuals, serves to establish a pathologic degree of self-consciousness. This in turn makes them feel with an extraordinary keenness the everyday frictions in life, and now the pathologic emotionalism comes into play and being unsupported by any sense of altruism and morality they give way to their feelings in some criminal act. Their pathologic vindictiveness should also be mentioned. A sustained real or imaginary injury can never be forgotten by them.

These, in brief, I believe to be the characterological anomalies which distinguish the individuals herein reported from normal man and which at the same time are sufficiently common to all of them to justify their segregation into one distinct group of criminals.

I shall not enter here into a discussion of what part, if any, environment played in the shaping of the lives of these individuals, for several reasons, chief among which, however, is the fact that I have not had the opportunity of investigating thoroughly the environmental conditions in which they grew up and am therefore unable to evaluate properly this phase of the question. The fact, however, that my cases were culled from various sources and that the anomalous traits manifested by them were already present at an age when environment could hardly have had any lasting influence upon them, leads me to believe that it is heredity that is responsible for the major portion of this anomalous product. However, we shall leave this question to the decision of the practical eugenists. Personally I fully believe that we are dealing here with a type in which heredity plays an important rôle. I fully believe that these individuals were always the same as they are now and that the probabilities are that they will always remain so. Assuming then, for the moment, that we are correct, the question arises:—“Has society dealt with these individuals in a proper manner?”

This question must be answered decidedly in the negative. I will not enter here into an extensive discussion of a system of penology which might be specifically applicable to this class of individuals. I can only agree fully with the current opinions of eminent criminologists on this subject.

At the 1911 Congress of Criminology and Anthropology at Cologne, the following resolution among others was adopted:—“Hardened and professional criminals, recidivists, who present a great danger to society must be deprived of their liberty for as long a time as they are dangerous to the mass. Their liberty should be as a general rule, conditional.”

Archibald Hopkins, Esq., has been recently quoted by Gault as follows:—“The Head of Scotland Yard, in London, said not long ago that nine-tenths of the serious crimes there were committed by men who had served one or more terms of imprisonment and who might be regarded as belonging permanently to the criminal class. His judgment was that if they could be eliminated from such a situation, violation of the law would be diminished to less than a third of what it has been. Why cannot this be done? Let the Courts be clothed with power, after two or more offenses, in its discretion, to pronounce a man incorrigible, who shall be sentenced for life, to whom no pardon shall issue. By an arrangement between the general government and the states, a colony could be established, say in the Island of Guam, where escape would be impossible, and where, under military guard, convicts could be made to earn their own living. Surely society has the right to protect itself from these incorrigibles, who are released only to prey on it again. They also are the class who rapidly produce their kind, and at present society puts no obstacle in the way.

“It is exactly as if, instead of forming colonies to which all lepers are compelled to go and remain, we permitted them, after a brief term in the hospital, to go where they please and to marry and produce more lepers. The incorrigible criminal is worse