ALCOHOL AND CRIME: A STUDY IN SOCIAL CAUSATION GEORGE ELLIOTT HOWARD At last, after generations of dispute, experiment, and research, clarified public opinion recognizes the liquor traffic as a problem of first-rate national importance whose solution depends upon prevention rather than cure. Alcohol appears as a factor, a chief maker, of the bad social conditions which mar our civilization. It is known to be a direct or contributory cause of degeneracy, pauperism, poverty, disease, and crime. In short, science has cleared the way for an intelligent approach to the drink problem. Refuge after refuge of the liquor interest has been destroyed. Pet fallacies have been exposed. Science has demonstrated that alcohol is not a healthful "food," a safe "stimulant," nor a socially productive 'employer of labor." It increases the chances of death. If beer is "liquid bread," we now know that it is not the bread of life but of death, precisely in proportion to the amount of alcohol which it contains. In small quantity as well as in large, alcohol lessens physical and mental efficiency. It is a toxin, a narcotic, not a stimulant. It hinders sane thinking; for while it increases boldness and self-confidence it impairs the judgment. In all its effects it is destructive of the human organism. I. NATURE OF THE PROBLEM Accordingly, in its use and traffic alcohol appears as a powerful antisocial force. Especially is it a social menace with respect to crime. The results of the most cautious research show that it is a producer of criminals and of crime on an enormous scale. What else could one expect? Has not the scientific laboratory proved that the habitual use of alcohol, in whatever quantity, disintegrates the moral character? It impairs the judgment, clouds the reason, and enfeebles the will; while at the same time it arouses the appetites, inflames the passions, releases the primitive beast from the artificial restraint of social discipline. All the conditions are favorable to the generation of crime. To state in percentages the exact relation of alcohol to crime, or to the various classes of crime, may not always be possible in the present stage of statistical research. In the last analysis it may not always be easy to determine whether the crime committed by the intoxicated man is due to the habitual use of alcohol; whether the drinking habit was induced by poverty, disease, or other misery; or whether there is a "vicious circle" of cause and effect. It may not in every case be possible to disentangle alcohol as a cause from the skein of contributory causes of crime, nor to be quite sure whether it is a direct or an indirect cause; but, as will presently appear, the amount of crime for which it is certain that alcohol is wholly or in part responsible is so vast that even on this ground alone the shocked social conscience should demand nothing less than a drastic remedy: absolute outlawry of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks. The problem in hand is complex; but here, too, science has done much to simplify the task of the investigator. Just as the physicist, the chemist, the biologist, and the pathologist have revealed the true nature of alcohol, so the criminologist, with his scientific coadjutors, is disclosing the real causes of crimes and the true nature of criminals. Tendencies or "characters" "characters" may be transmissible from parent to child. Heredity in this sense is a factor in human destiny which the eugenist is reckoning with to the advantage of the race. But, practically speaking, we now know that the criminal is the creature of environment, of wrong social conditions which may be remedied. The extreme dogma of Lombroso and his school that the criminal as such is an abnormal man, a distinct human type, is swiftly passing, if it be not entirely abandoned. Even Lombroso modified his view as presented in the Criminal Man (1895); and in his later work, Crime: Its Causes and Remedies (1899), he places the accent on social causes. There The development of the theories as to the causes of crime are traced by Maurice Parmelee in the introduction of this English translation of Lombroso's work; and also in his Principles of Anthropology and Sociology in Their Relations to Criminal Procedure (1908). is no hereditary criminal class. If the "born criminal" exists he is a rare specimen, indeed, compared with the sinister yet pathetic host begotten by bad social conditions. Decisive proof of the power of living conditions to save or to damn the human soul is presented in Dugdale's famous book. Professor Giddings writes: An impression quite generally prevails that "The Jukes" is a thoroughgoing demonstration of "hereditary criminality," "hereditary pauperism," "hereditary degeneracy," and so on. It is nothing of the kind, and its author never made such claim for it. He undoubtedly believed in the hereditary transmission of character tendencies, as of physical traits, and here and there he points out what seem to him to be evidences of heredity, in this sense, in the "Jukes" blood. But he is ever careful . . . . to warn the reader "that the conclusion is tentative. Far from believing that heredity is fatal, Mr. Dugdale was profoundly convinced that ‘environment' can be relied on to modify, and ultimately to eradicate, even such deep-rooted and widespreading growths of vice and crime as the 'Jukes' group exemplifies." In the clearer light afforded by Weismann's researches and the Mendelian law, we can only say that probably heredity is a fateful factor in the moral, and therefore in the social, realm, but that we need an immense amount of patient research to determine exactly what it is and what it does." One thing is certain, heredity "always has the coefficient environment""; for hereditary character tendencies, whether these be good or evil, are modified, held in abeyance, or pushed forward by the conditions of the individual's life.' These conclusions are powerfully supported by the great work of Bonger, Criminality and Economic Conditions. The result is enlightening for the relation of alcohol to crime. There is no longer a plausible excuse for laissez faire. Under the shield of heredity the social conscience may no longer shift its burden to the shoulders of the Almighty. If directly or indirectly criminality is mainly the fruit of bad social conditions, the remedy is in society's own hands; for intellectual man, unlike the lower animal, is able to transform his environment. Sometimes the task is titanic. To master the crime-producing environment which consists in alcohol and the organized alcohol traffic may cost more courage, wisdom, and toil than it cost to abolish human slavery, than it may cost to destroy the "great white plague" or the "great 'Franklin H. Giddings, Introduction to the Jukes. "Criminals are made and not born," H. H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family, p. 54. black plague"; but it can be done and it will be done when its nature is clearly understood by the majority. To believe otherwise would be to lose faith in human intelligence. As a preparation for a wise policy the sinister record of actual crimes caused by alcohol must be placed within the reach of all. It should become a part of the textbook of public education. That record must be completed by the trained statistician. Already several valuable studies of limited extent-the best by the Committee of Fifty-have provided materials for fairly safe conclusions. Is it not needful to extend the investigation and bring it to date? Should not the national government put the whole many-sided problem of alcohol and the liquor traffic in the hands of a properly equipped commission for basic and comprehensive research? Still the figures in hand have a very great meaning. They reveal alcohol as a chief factor in felonies, in lesser crimes and misdemeanors, and in the often more harmful "social crimes" which are not always noticed by the statute book. What are the facts for each of these three classes of offenses? 2. ALCOHOL THE MOTHER OF FELONY The investigation of the Committee of Fifty (1893-1905) enables us in part to measure for the United States the relative influence of alcohol as a producer of felony and equivalent heinous crime. It is important to note, in weighing its conclusions, that the committee was almost painfully cautious and conservative in its methods and in its findings. It did not attempt the enormous task of gathering the facts for the whole country. Its aim was to establish conclusions which should have typical value. Accordingly, its study "covered 13,402 convicts, in seventeen prisons and reformatories scattered throughout twelve states." In effect it was thus virtually restricted to the crimes usually classified as "felonies." The results of the investigation are presented by Mr. Koren' in a number of elaborate statistical tables or "summaries": rich mines for exploitation by the criminologist, the economist, and the sociologist. What is their meaning for the problem in hand? I John Koren, Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem, pp. 133-209, and tables in the Appendix. The most salient fact-huge, tragic, portentous-is that 6,694 of these crimes, one-half of the whole number investigated, were wholly or in part induced by intemperance as a "general" cause. In 4,179 cases, or 31. 18 per cent of the total, alcohol was the "first" or principal cause; and in 2,261 cases, or 16.87 per cent of the whole, it was the sole cause of the felony. Assuming that the same ratio obtains, this means, according to the United States census, that on June 30, 1904, there were in the penitentiaries and reformatories of the whole country 30,000 felons whose crimes were wholly or in part due to alcohol.1 Another fact, hardly less enlightening, is disclosed by observing the nativity of the convicts. Intemperance as a cause of crime "yields percentages for the nationalities in the following order": (1) Scotch, 58.33; (2) Canadian, 56.74; (3) Irish, 56.70; (4) Swedish and Norwegian, 56.25; (5) Polish, 53.41; (6) English, 52.92; (7) American, 50.23; (8) Italian, 50.00; (9) German, 44.87; (10) Austrian, 34.62; (11) Russian, 25.00. The lesson taught by these figures is not hard to read. Among the foreign-born residents of the United States the relative percentage of felonies due to intemperance for each nationality stands in direct ratio to the drinking habits of such nationality. The hardest drinking peoples show the highest relative percentages of heinous crimes induced by alcohol. The relative quantity of alcoholic liquor consumed by a people produces a corresponding relative percentage of its convicted felons. Hence, as shown above, the notoriously hard-drinking Scotch, Irish, Scandinavians, and English take high rank for the proportion of their alcoholic criminals; while at the very bottom of the list we find the convicts classed as "Russians," in reality of the "Hebrew race which is noted for its exceptional sobriety the world over." The seeming exceptions to this rule may be explained. Thus the surprisingly high rank of the Poles and Italians may be accounted for by emotional race characteristics causing a large percentage of "crime against the person.' Perhaps the lower rank of the Germans may be accounted for by the excellent urban, industrial, and other superior social environment The total number of felons for all causes in prisons was on that day 60,653; but during the year 149,691 had been committed to imprisonment. |