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CRIMINAL TYPES

CRIMINAL TYPES

I

TYPAL EARMARKS

Criminal types there are, but there is no one criminal type.

Closely-allied criminous expression is vastly different as to individual intent. That will be so because the underlying causes for like offenders are dissimilar and variable.

The height of the offense usually squares with the depth of depravity, the which is no respector of facial or other deviations from the Apollo type.

Jails would be more numerous than churches, were natural criminals surely shadowed forth in visible signs such as long, tapering fingers; rodent eyes, or those bead-like, shifty, countersunk and narrowly spaced; bull neck, connected with a vertically-lined back head; laterally-extended side-jaw bones; protruding fore jaw; the ape’s forehead, marked by the ape’s fuzzy hairline, the same fuzzy hair extending inward from under the outer edges of the eye sockets; eagle’s beak, or more commonly, the tangential, flattened nose of the gorilla, with arms like his, unusually long and big-boned as compared with the rest of the frame; thin lips, emphasizing a cruelly-set mouth, or thick lip above a ponderous jaw; and ears in all sizes, conformation, setting and contour, opposed to the perfect model.

It is true that the predal felon frequently features several of such as the signs indicated. It is also true that millions of honest freemen feature the same signs, and do no worse than dissemble, as more or less do all humans. And it is further true that, in so far as emphasis on such symbols is concerned, the bulk of lawbreakers would pass unnoticed in a promiscuous crowd.

Still, close parallels prevail as between members of classes of the anti-social. They ply the same tools, speak the same language, are bound by and large by the same laws of clan, foregather in the same caves of earth, affect the same mannerisms and mental attitude, and spend ill-gotten gain for intrinsically the same things, if over different counters; but they do not yield of themselves in the same measure to the powers of darkness. If they did, the bulk of them would be capital criminals, instead of offenders against property.

Usually the pack are of one mind as to the method of procedure, else they wouldn’t “pal” it as one. Type then matches type as closely as members of criminal types match; yet no two will be actuated by absolutely the same motives, and no two will have come by motives to act in absolutely the same way. The demarcation may call for the most careful of research; but it will be there, and it will demarcate, if only by shading so slight as to escape other than the truly expert examiner.

Glaring cross-matches of type evolve not infrequently, as for example: of two on the same job, the one would ride rough-shod and quickly over human life to what he seeks. The other balks, then and there, at ruthless spilling of blood, and will “queer the deal” rather than be party to a killing.

The first duty of the criminologist is to probe to the cardinal causes for a given type of criminal. Doing it, he will uncover the fact that aside from the congenital thief—who thieves as naturally as his more polished prototype mulcts agreeably with man-struck statutes—the average criminal commonly consummates in effect to help whirl the treadmills of parasitic sporting mongers. He is the pawn sacrificed in the all-comprehensive predal game. His the lay to go out and “get the goods,” somewhere, anyway; theirs to induce him to stake his loot against odds that are unbeatable at long play. He takes all of the chances coming and going; but since he is a generous and constant provider, nimble-fingered and witted gentry pass some little of coin to grease his going, and to “stake” him, fresh from durance for having waxed a bit too bold while operating out of the domain of comparative immunity. In big cities, the “bull” usually gets him only when he bungles.

In any case it is “Easy come, easy go” with the criminal, both as to the gelt he gets and his punishment for getting it the way he gets it; and so, while plying their nefarious tools, all types of criminals play both ends against the established social order.

The marauding type figure, for instance, that it is clever business to crack a man on the cranium, relieve him of a money satchel containing a small fortune, “plant” the fortune, then if caught and convicted, loll around a prison for a few months; and it is “clever” as seen from the criminal’s point of view, however asinine it may be from the viewpoint of deterring him.

Right here hides “the nigger in the woodpile”: the thief is sentenced merely to serve time, without regard for restitution of that which he had stolen. In many cases the time served is little more than “sleepin’ time” the which he jeeringly dubs it; and in no case does it cover the question of equity.

What actual redress has a man for the loss of thousands of dollars, in the imprisonment of a malefactor, no matter how long his term of imprisonment runs?

What the deterrence in a comparatively short prison term that leaves the prisoner with a firm grip on his bundle of loot?

What expect other than that certain