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Colonies and elsewhere, attracted no doubt by the discoveries of gold. Now that the gold industry is settling down to a regular business this condition of things is rapidly passing away, and the foreign offenders who were attracted here fortunately show little desire to settle in the colony after they have been released from custody.
Having regard, nevertheless, to the large proportion of foreign offenders still in our midst it would not be reasonable to expect a young colony, such as Western Australia is, to take upon itself to initiate costly methods of reforming the criminal, such us are adopted in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and at Elmira, in the State of New York, where older, more settled, and wealthier communities have set in motion various elaborate and costly schemes of criminal reform.
Your Commissioners are of opinion that criminals of foreign or extra-West Australian origin should be encouraged, as far as possible, on their release from custody, to return to the countries from which they came. Whilst in prison they should be compelled to do such remunerative work as will, at any rate, to a large extent recoup to the State the cost of their maintenance.
CAUSES OF CRIME.
In order to deal with crime in an effectual and practical manner we must first understand its causes, and ascertain how far these causes are removable and remediable.
In this relation the tendency of scientists during the last few decades has been more and more to study the individual characteristics and peculiarities of the criminal as compared with non-criminal individuals, rather than the nature of the offence which he has committed. Scientific researches in this direction have supplied us with statistics of a very definite kind, showing that the criminal is not a normal individual, but a morbid variety of mankind, physically and morally degenerate.
Fortunately, this innate degeneracy of body and mind is in degree only, and thus those who are but slightly degenerate become criminals owing to stress of circumstances. They are therefore amenable to and susceptible of reclamation and reformation when placed in a suitable environment.
The recognition of this—the biological—factor in crime gives us a definite standpoint from which we can view it, and enables us to understand more clearly what natural and social influences are likely to affect the criminal man, who, from his degeneracy, has less control over his actions than the ordinary man.
The social environment is the cultivation medium of crime.∗ †
Neglect of sanitary and hygienic requirements greatly increases crime. So also does lack of education, especially of that part of education which deals with the physical and moral well-being of the individual.
Crime is ever influenced by climate, there always being an increase of crimes of violence in hot weather.‡
Ferri holds that any system of taxation which unduly increases the cost of the prime necessaries of life induces a corresponding increase in offences against property.
Again, any process by which public veneration for the law of the land is weakened most certainly increases crime. Thus purely expedient and experimental laws, not founded upon the dictates of justice and morality, may be the means of creating a temptation to do that which is punishable but not immoral. For instance, it is right to sell goods to any person who wants them and can pay for them at any hour which may suit the convenience of the parties concerned, but in some countries it is illegal. Such enactments must surely, by insidiously undermining the general respect of the people for the law, lead to an increase in the number of breaches of the law.§
Poverty is generally admitted to be the main cause of the great bulk of anti-social offences; but here we are met with the curious paradox that crime is nevertheless most rife in times of prosperity.‖ The Queensland Commissioners in their Report called special attention to what strikes them as being an extraordinary thing that in Queensland the years of exceptional prosperity should have been also years of exceptionally heavy criminal records, but since that report was published, investigations in other parts of the world point in the same direction, and establish the same conclusion as that indicated by West Australian official statistics.
∗1 "Society prepares crime; the criminal is the instrument that executes it."—Quetelet.
†1 The social environment is the cultivation medium of criminality; the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; every society has the criminals it deserves.—Lacassagne.
‡1 "Last year it was very seriously urged by the press to issue forecasts of 'increase of crime,' it being known that such an increase really takes place during some sorts of hot weather."—"Nineteenth Century."
§1 The idea conveyed in the above paragraph, that the State itself may in a certain sense become a manufacturer of criminals, is to some extent novel, and fearing that our views on this might be misapprehended in some quarters, we were in some doubt whether we should give expression to them. But. by a curious coincidence, the London "Times" of February 6. of this year, about the date when we first drafted our suggestions on this point, expresses exactly the same idea in almost the identical terms of our first draft. The "Times" says:—"Parliament is constantly swelling the list of Petty Offences, saving this shall be punishable by fine, that by imprisonment, and, what is a still more fruitful source of so-called crime. Parliament authorising public bodies to make by-laws which convert into crime what does not necessarily shock the consciences of ordinary citizens. This point merits attention. The various societies for the amelioration of the Criminal Law could not do better work than bring home to Members of Parliament the prodigious rate at which they are multiplying offences." We need scarcely say that we cordially endorse these sentiments. The "Times" goes on to say:—"It satisfies the pride of public bodies to stamp as a crime that which is intrinsically trivial; but it is a mischievous perversion of the objects of criminal law. At the beginning of the century there were complaints as to the multiplication of judge-made misdemeanours; at the close of it there is stronger ground for deploring the excessive increase of statute-made offences." If these remarks be true of Great Britain they apply with infinitely greater force to Australia, where the various local Governments seem to vie with each other in multiplying laws for the purpose of "converting into crime what does not necessarily shock the consciences of ordinary citizens."
‖1 Dr. Cleland, of Adelaide, puts this point very clearly when he says:—"Increased admissions to the prisons is a good index of the general prosperity of the masses. This, at first sight, may appear to he contradictory to a former statement that destitution is a breeder of the habitual offender. It is not so in reality. The crimes of prosperity are crimes of passion and of animal indulgence resulting from the unaccustomed handling of increased money. The crimes of adverse times are those resulting from organic degeneracy in the individual, and are an index of the degeneracy in the community. In prosperous times both factors are at work in adverse times only the latter."
