He was a bad man, as opposed to the good. He might be good, but he was not, and he was responsible for what he was. Society condemned him and punished him for being a criminal and held out the further threat of perdition—of torment after death. In fact, he was not regarded as anything more than an aberration from the moral type only. His sub-morality eclipsed his sub-normality. This was the old way of thinking—the way of thinking that we find in the Book of Job—the way of thinking which attributed even physical goods and ills to a man’s morality.
But other truths have dawned since. A criminal is now beginning to be regarded as more an aberration from the physical type than anything else. He is now regarded as a physically degenerate—a diseased, person; diseased in the most ordinary sense. According to Lombroso and his school, the criminal is just as diseased as an insane person. In fact, he, too, is insane. A mad man or an epileptic is not morally responsible; his brain is diseased, and his mind is malformed. In the same way, it is argued, criminality too, is a disease—and presumably a disease of the brain too, and, just as an insane person cannot help being what he is and doing what he does, so,—and exactly for similar reasons—a criminal too, cannot help being what he is. In both cases, similar organic causes are at work.
We need not pause to examine he soundness of this theory. It is undeniable that the theory has found acceptance in important scientific circles. One attractive feature of the theory is that, it vouchsafes a humaner treatment for the criminal. We do not look with disfavour—and certainly never with moral disapprobation—upon a man who labours under an organic deformity. An idiot excites pity and not moral condemnation; a mad man is an object of commiseration. And so, if we could only believe that a criminal is also a diseased person, we would pity him rather than condemn him. This would decidedly ensure for him a better treatment in society.
