Thorsten Sellin

The Negro Criminal A Statistical Note

I T is commonly believed that the Negro in our country is more criminal than the white. This condition is occasionally laid at the door of inherited racial characteristics, ranging from an &dquo;inferior mentality&dquo; to what a recent writer on &dquo; criminal science &dquo; has called &dquo;inherited recollections,&dquo; presumably handed down from the jungles of Africa. Unfavorable social factors are frequently blamed. Lack of formal education, the deleterious effects of the contact of the illiterate and unskilled Negro migrant with the city life of the North, the injustice of our agencies of justice, poverty, and a host of other conditions are brought forward as generators of crime. The important fact, however, is the belief in the Negro’s higher criminality. Regardless of its basis in reality, it is a significant element in the creation of racial attitudes toward him on the part of the white. We are prone to judge ourselves by our best traits and strangers by their worst. In the case of the Negro, stranger in our midst, all beliefs prejudicial to him aid in intensifying the feeling of racial antipathy engendered by his color and his social status. The colored criminal does not as a rule enjoy the racial anonymity which cloaks the offenses of individuals of the white race. The press is almost certain to brand him, and the more revolting his crime proves to be the more likely it is that his race will be advertised. In setting the hall-mark of his color upon him, his individuality is in a sense submerged, and instead of a mere thief, robber, or murderer, he becomes a representative of his race, which in its turn is made to suffer for his sins, through the mysteries of emotionally conditioned thought processes. This makes the reduction of Negro crime more than the solution of an urgent social problem, common to Negro and white alike; it should, in fact, be given

The Basis of a Crime Index

To the student of social phenomena, the statistical method has proved of the greatest importance. Sociological investigators are using statistics more and more frequently to objectify social changes and relationships. While statistical presentation has been found to be a valuable scientific device, its psychological importance has also come to be fully realized, for to most people and particularly to him who is not fully aware of the nature and the limitations of statistics, numbers carry in themselves something of a categorical imperative. Jacquart has aptly voiced this fact:

Race Prejudice in the Administration of Justice

It would be denying to the judge the ordinary attributes of human nature to assume that he could render justice free from all preconceptions. The marked influence of race and nationality prejudice in the administration of justice is revealed through a study of the average length of sentences, definite and indeterminate, of foreign born, Negro, and white male prisoners received from courts in 1931 and commited to state and federal prisons and reformatories for adults in the United States. The great and relatively constant variations observed must be largely attributed to the human equation in judicial administration and as evidence that equality before the law is a social fiction.

Recidivism and Maturation

1 See Thorsten Sellin, The Criminality of Youth, Philadelphia, American Law Institute, 1940. and concluded that the penchant for crime &dquo;seems to develop by reason of the intensity of man’s physical vitality and passions; it attains its maximum about the age of twenty-five, when physical development has almost been completed. The intellectual and moral growth, which is slower, later abates the penchant for crime, which diminishes still later due to the en-

Crime and Delinquency in the United States: An Over-All View

To describe the scope, nature, and trends of criminality in any country, it is necessary to rely upon crimi nal statistics. The task is made difficult in the United States by the multiplicity and diversity of jurisdictions, each state as well as the federal system having its own criminal legislation, its own police, courts, and correctional agencies, and its own methods of compiling and publishing criminal statistics. The most important national series of criminal statistics is pub lished by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was claimed that 89 per cent of the United States population resided in the areas covered by those reports in 1959. There exists the general limitation that statistics are based on crimes known to the police. Also, the picture of criminality will depend on the stage in the law enforcement process at which statistics are gathered, because a process of selection operates at each stage between offense and sentence. As traditionally constructed and published, criminal statistics are deficient in a number of respects. They do not, for example, reveal occupation, em ployment status, or social class of offenders, nor do they show the existence of organized crime or gang, even juvenile gang, activity. The social and financial costs of criminality are great enough to warrant information sufficiently detailed to provide an improved basis for preventive action and repressive meas ures.—Ed.

Correction in Historical Perspective

A study of the changes that have occurred in our ideas of how to deal with offenders against the criminal law brings us into contact with one of the most fascinating and challenging aspects of social history, the history of punishment. It is, by and large, a sordid history; a record of our slow progress in finding effective means of reducing criminality by punishment; a record of much violence, brutality, torture, and indifference to human suffering, but also of charity, compassion, and honest search for methods of correctional treatment that will salvage rather than destroy those who are its objects. It is the purpose of this paper to attempt to disengage a few of the general trends that are discernible in that record and lay bare some of the conspicuous elements that compose these trends, especially since the Middle Ages. To the casual student of the history of punishment and of the reasons given for its existence, character, and myriad forms, it would appear that there are two noticeable purposes of punishment and that while they are different in kind, they are not always completely separable. One of these purposes is the protection and conservation of the social interests or values which have been injured by the offender. It is a mundane purpose, nowadays often designated, especially abroad, by the term of social defense. This protection is thought to be achievable by various means, such as (a) the extermination of the offender; (b) making him so fear punishment that he will commit no more crimes (deterrence); or (c) reforming, re-educating, or curing him by more positive methods. The second purpose is other-worldly, so to speak. It views punishment as being inflicted in order to save the offenders soul, this end being achieved by his repentance and atonement. Next, we must consider the human motives, wishes, and desires that have led us to establish and apply punishments that would effect the means and thereby achieve the purposes or ends thereof. Prominent among these motive forces have been (a) a primitive desire for vengeance or retaliation; (b) compassion with sinners *A.B. I915, LL.D. 1942, Augustana College; A.M. I9I6, Ph.D. I922, University of Pennsylvania. Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania. Member and Consultant, American Law Institute, Advisory Committees on the Youth Correction Authority Act and the Model Penal Code; Chairman, Governors Commission on Penal and Correctional Affairs, State of Pennsylvania; Chairman, Board of Trustees, City Prisons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Secretary-General, International Penal and Penitentiary Commission, 1950-51; Consultant, Swedish Penal Code Commission, 1946-47. Author, A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL MANUAL FOR THE STUDENT OF CRIMINOLOGY (1935), RESEARCH MEMORANDUM ON CRIME IN THE DEPRESSION (1937), CULTURE CONFLICT AND CRIME (I938), THE CRIMINALITY OF YOUTH (1940), PIONEERING IN PENOLOGY (1944), and numerous monographs, pamphlets, and articles on various criminological and penological topics.

Sweden's Substitute for the Juvenile Court

Not all countries have followed this pattern, however. The Scandinavian nations represent one great exception today. The purpose of this article is to sketch briefly the manner in which one of these nations, Sweden, has shaped its policies toward young delinquents without creating a juvenile court. According to the code of 1734, children under 7 years of age were considered free from criminal responsibility. Older children under 15 years of age were also exempt from most of the

Historical Glimpses of Training for Prison Service

We have in recent years been experimenting with training schools for prison officers, the best known being the schools conducted, for the training of future guards, by the U. S. Bureau of Prisons and the New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies. These schools-not mentioning the lecture courses conducted by the Massachusetts Department of Correction in 1921 and for some years thereafter for guards already in service, and the Prison Keepers School of the New York City Department of Correction-have become known as the first of their kind in the United States and claims

The Historical Background of Our Prisons

E have in the United States a Whundred-odd State and Federal prisons and reformatories, and we have several thousand jails and workhouses. In these institutions we place annually several hundred thousand prisoners who have offended against our criminal laws, and subject them to punishment and correction. To the average person the word &dquo;prison,&dquo; more than any other form of punishment, represents the law’s threat against wrongdoers. Yet imprisonment is used only in dealing with a small part of the total number of lawbreakers and, furthermore, it is, historically speaking, one of the most recent of all penalties. In all times, punishment by the State has been motivated by desires to intimi-

A New Phase of Criminal Anthropology in Italy

our country, in spite of the fact that our interest in the study of delinquents has constantly been growing to a large degree, thanks to the attention which Lombroso and his disciples fixed upon these social misfits. This silence with regard to the great pioneer is natural though hardly merited. Like many innovators, Lombroso suffered the fate of having his immature plans taken for the final structure, and their startling form, as well as their passionate defense by the architect, often caused critics to lose sight of the progressive modifications which time and study necessitated and which finally resulted in a synthesis which surpassed and transformed his original concept of the nature of the criminal. With the passing of the years the echoes of the scientific controversies aroused by the Lombrosan theories have died. To-day these doctrines, which were once declared superannuated, are reappearing in a different guise and it is of this recent orientation of criminal anthropology in its native country that the writer proposes to give a very brief and descriptive