Crime, Its Cause and Treatment

Probably the chief barrier to the commission of crime is the feeling of right and wrong connected with the doing or not doing of particular acts. All men have a more or less binding conscience. This is the result of long teaching and habit in matters of conduct. Most people are taught at home and in school that certain things are right and that others are wrong. This constant instruction builds up habits and rules of conduct, and it is mainly upon these that society depends for the behavior of its citizens. To most men conscience is the monitor, rather than law. It acts more automatically, and a shock to the conscience is far more effective than the knowledge that a law is broken. For the most part the promptings of conscience follow pretty closely the inhibitions of the criminal code, although they may or may not follow the spirit of the law. Each person has his own idea of the relative values attached to human actions. That is, no two machines respond exactly alike as to the relative importance of different things. No two ethical commands have the same importance to all people or to any two people. Often men do not hesitate to circumvent or violate one statute, when they could never be even tempted to violate another.

Ordinarily unless the response of conscience is quick and plain, men are not bothered by the infraction of the law except, perchance, by the fear of discovery. This is quite apart from the teaching that it is the duty of all men to obey all laws, a proposition so general that it has no effect. Even those who make the statement do not follow the precept, and the long list of penal laws that die from lack of enforcement instead of by repeal is too well known to warrant the belief that anyone pays serious attention to such a purely academic statement. No one believes in the enforcement of all laws or the duty to obey all laws, and no one, in fact, does obey them all. Those who proclaim the loudest the duty of obedience to all laws never obey, for example, the revenue laws. These are clear and explicit, and yet men take every means possible to have their property exempted from taxation -- in other words, to defraud the State. This is done on the excuse that everyone else does it, and the man who makes a strict return according to law would pay the taxes of the shirkers. While this is true, it simply shows that all men violate the law when the justification seems sufficient to them. The laws against blasphemy, against Sunday work and Sunday play, against buying and transporting intoxicating liquors and smuggling goods are freely violated. Many laws are so recent that they have not grown to be folk-ways or fixed new habits, and their violation brings no moral shock. In spite of the professions often made, most men have a poor opinion of congressmen and legislators, and feel that their own conscience is a much higher guide for them than the law.