By A Man in Prison

[The American Magazine recently offered prizes for the best replies. Here is one of the winning answers.]

What is a criminal? To-night I pace the narrow confines of my steel-barred cell and ask myself for the hundredth time—What is a criminal? Is he, as Lombroso claims, a moral degenerate? Is he the mental imbecile that metaphysicians in learned verbiage assert? Is he the hardened, desperate malefactor, the sinking, murderous beast that penologists would have us believe? Is he the victim of adverse circumstances, unsavory environment, and changing social conditions? Or does he wage war on organized society for adventure’s sake? Why is he a criminal?

Garbed in the vestment of dishonor and disgrace, I myself am what the world terms a criminal. Should I not know the meaning of the appellation far better than the casual observer? For many years my life has been the life of an habitue of the underworld. Criminals, so called, have been my associates and my friends. I have known them in the moments of their success, I have known them in the hours of their failure. Failure that spells oblivion, the oblivion of cold gray walls and heart-breaking, monotonous, man-killing routine. I have seen how recklessly they can live, and I have also seen how gamely they can die. I have known them intimately, and well, and never have I been able to discover any difference between them and their more fortunate brethren. They entertain in their hearts the same ideas, the same hopes, and the same ambitions as do average men.

Those who commit crime as a matter of choice are few indeed. Many follow it as a means of livelihood because it is the only vocation open to them; and they must be men of stamina, courage, and brains, if they would survive. Those who match their wits against the vast resources of the Powers Who Rule must be clever rogues indeed. They are, in short, just such men as those who attain success in other walks of life—no different. The same ability to think and plan, the same nerve and determination, the same unswerving loyalty, the same persistent application that diverted into legitimate channels would have won for them recognition in any sphere of endeavor. These are the men who have chosen crime as a vocation, because their talent and training equipped them for that career, just as you may have chosen the law or the field of high finance for similar reasons. And these men in some degree succeed as law breakers, but even they must pay the cost of their success. And the toll is not light, my friend.

There are others, men who were born a hundred years too late. Men who live as their kind has always lived—by the strength of their own right arms. To them might is right, and they know no other code. They, too, are criminals, are they not? These are the men who have never learned to turn the other cheek. These are the men who strike back. Society tramples them under its feet, and they arise from the dust with grim murder in their hearts. They cannot forget; they cannot forgive; and so they fight to the bitter end with the blind courage of their breed.

Some, the very machinery of the courts has converted into criminals. I see them every day in the chrysalis stage. They commit some minor infraction of the law, some petty offense, and for that they go to jail. In jail they receive scant consideration and little courtesy from either their fellow prisoners or from the police. They are neither fish nor fowl. They note the fact that the “good thief” is respected and feared by one, and extended the hand of good fellowship by the other. Straightway they determine to become criminals—and some few succeed. Many more fill our prisons.

Others are accidentally criminals. Under the influence of liquor, drugs, sudden passion, and sometimes actual hunger, they commit crimes. They are not really criminals, however; they are “accidents.” Sometimes serious accidents no doubt, but still accidents. Surely you would not call them criminals!

You ask what is a criminal? In the last analysis the question is unanswerable. You could as readily ask, “What is a man?” and the definition would be as undefinable as this. What is a criminal? Out of the depths of my experience I would say that a criminal is a thousand changing moods, a thousand inherited tendencies, a thousand mistakes, a thousand injustices, wedded into a thousand different personalities; and from the furnace of the melting pot you could perhaps find the answer. What is a criminal?—A Man in Prison.