The results of this inquiry also show that degeneracy among criminals is sometimes inherited and sometimes acquired.  It is inherited when the criminal is descended from insane, drunken, epileptic, scrofulous parents; it is often acquired when the criminal adopts and deliberately persists in a life of crime.  The closeness of the connection between degeneracy and crime is, to a considerable extent, determined by social conditions.  A degenerate person, who has to earn his own livelihood, is much more likely to become a criminal than another degenerate person who has not.  Almost all forms of degeneracy render a man more or less unsuited for the common work of life; it is not easy for such a man to obtain employment; in certain forms of degeneracy it becomes almost impossible.  A person in this unfortunate position often becomes a criminal, not because he has strong anti-social instincts, but because he cannot get work.  Physically, he is unfit for work, and he takes to crime as an alternative.

Another important result is the close connection between madness and crimes of blood.  We have seen that almost one third of the cases of conviction for wilful murder are cases in which the murderer is found to be insane.  And this does not represent the full proportion of murderers afflicted mentally; a considerable percentage of those sentenced to death have this sentence commuted on mental grounds.  In Germany, from 26 to 28 per cent. of criminals suffering from mental weakness escape the observation of the court in this important particular, and the same state of things unquestionably exists in the United Kingdom.  The actual percentage of criminals who suffer from mental disorders in the prisons of Europe is probably much greater than is generally supposed.  At the present time a knowledge of insanity is no part of the ordinary medical curriculum.  “With respect to this malady the great majority of medical men are themselves in the position of laymen.  They have not studied it.  It was not included in their examinations."[45] Till this state of things is altered we shall never exactly know the intimacy of the connection between nervous disorders and crime.

    [45] Sanity and Insanity.  C. Mercier, p.  XII.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME.

In a previous chapter the deterrent action of punishment on the criminal population has been pointed out.  It now remains for us to consider the nature of punishment, and the methods by which punishment should be carried out.  What is punishment as applied to crime?  According to Kant it is an act of retribution; it consists in inflicting upon the criminal the same injury as he has inflicted on his victim.  It is an application by society of the principle of “jus talionis.”  Such a definition of punishment does not harmonise with the facts.  We cannot punish the slanderer by slandering him in turn; and in punishing the murderer, it is impossible to torture him in the same way as he has probably tortured his victim.  According to the theory of retribution, punishment becomes an end in itself; it is quite unrelated to the benefits it may confer on the person who is punished, or on the community which punishes him.