Crime and Criminals
If I looked crime and prisoners in the way the ordinary person does, I would not write on this topic. The reason is because I really do not believe in crime, because there is no such thing as crime as the word is generally perceived. I do not believe there is any distinction between most people in or out of jail. The people in prison can no more help being there than the people outside can avoid being in their particular circumstances. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are there because of conditions which are beyond their control and for which they are not to blame.
There are people who think that everything in this world is an accident. But there is no such thing as an accident. Many of the people in jail should not be there, and many who are not in prison should be in one. However, there should be no prisons, and if it were not for the fact that people are so callous in their dealings with “crime”, there would be no such institution as prison. I do not to believe that all prisoners are angels-but there are people of all types, from different environments and all situations in prison. In a sense everybody is equally good and equally bad. We all do the best we can under our particular set of circumstances. But as to the exact things for which people are sent to prison, some are guilty and did the particular act because they needed money. Some because they are in the habit of doing it, and some because they were born to do it, and it comes to be as natural for them to do as it is for me to be what I am.
While some people might pick my pockets, I do not think all of them would. They might not have anything against me, but it might be their profession. Some of them, if my doors were unlocked, might come in if they saw something they wanted — not out of malice, but because that is their trade. But it is also true that nearly everybody picks my pocket. When I want to turn my lights or my heat on PSE & G holds me up. They charge me $200 or more for something that is worth $100 or less, and they are good people; they are pillars of society and they are “highly regarded” people.
When I ride the railroad — I pay five or ten dollars for a ride that is worth two and a half bucks, simply because a body of men have bribed the city council and/or the legislature, so that all the rest of us have to pay tribute to them. If I use gasoline, then the good people at Exxon hold me up, and they use a certain portion of this money to build universities and support churches which are engaged in telling us how to be good.
Some people are in prison for obtaining property under false pretenses — yet I pick up a great Sunday paper and read the advertisements— “Shirts for $39.00, marked down from $100.00; a pill that takes off excess weight without dieting or exercise, or a brand new car for less than the dealer paid for it.” When I read the advertisements in the paper I know they are all lies.
If I should want to get out and stand on any land on the face of the earth, I find that it has all been taken up long before you and I came here, and somebody says, “Before you can enter, swim into the lake, fly into the air; or go anywhere, you must pay me first.” That is because these people have the police, the prisons, the judges, the lawyers, the soldiers, and anything that they need, to drive anybody off their property that comes in their way.
A great many people will tell you that while all this may be true, it does not excuse a criminal act. These facts do not excuse some fellow who reaches into my pocket and takes out a five dollar bill; or the fact that Exxon bribes the members of the legislature from year to year, and fixes the law, so that everyone is compelled to be “fleeced” whenever you deal with them; or the fact that Big Oil has control of the government and the fact that they own all the earth, they say, has nothing to do with you.
Let us see whether there is any connection between the crimes of the respectable classes and a criminal’s presence in the jail. Many people are in jail because they have committed burglary. Many have stolen something; in the meaning of the law, you have illegally taken some other person’s property. Some may have entered a store and carried off a pair of shoes because they could not afford them. Possibly some have committed murder. There are a great many people who have done these things who really do not know themselves why they did them.
I think I know why they did them — everyone did these things because they had to do them. It looked at the time as if they had a choice to do them or not, but the truth is that they had no choice. There may be people who had some money in their pockets, who still went out and got some more money in a way society forbids. Now you may not know exactly why they did this, but if you look carefully enough you would see that there were circumstances that drove them to do it. They could not help it any more than we can help doing what we do every day. The reformers who tell you to be good and the people who have property to protect —think that the only way to save society is by building prisons and locking people up in cells and praying for their souls on Sunday.
I think that all of this has nothing whatever to do with morals. Some criminals — and I use this term because it is handy— I speak of the criminals who get caught as distinguished from the criminals who catch them — some of these criminals are in jail for their first offense, but nine-tenths of the people in jail are there because they did not have a good lawyer and of course they did not have a good lawyer because they did not have enough money to pay for a good lawyer. There is no great danger of a rich person going to jail.
There are many people who are so in the habit of coming to prison who would not know where else to go. There are people who are born with this tendency and cannot avoid it. You cannot figure it out but still there is a reason for it, and if we were wise enough we could figure it out.
In the first place, more people go to jail in the winter time than in summer—why? Is it because people are more dishonest in winter? No, it is partly because the oil and gas companies have us in their grip during the winter. A few people own all of the fuel and unless people are willing pay outrageous sums of money, they must freeze. There is nothing left for them to do but break the law or freeze, so there are many more people in jail in the winter than in summer. The prisons are always heated, maybe they’re not as comfortable as a first-rate hotel or motel, but they’re warm enough to sustain life and prevent disease.
There are more people who go to jail in hard times than in good times — few people go to jail except when they are hard up. They go to jail because they have no other place to go. People are not more wicked in hard times. The fact is that all over the world, in hard times more people go to jail than in good times, and in winter more people go to jail than in summer. Of course it is pretty hard for people who go to prison any time. The people who go to prison are almost always poor people — people who have no other place to live. When times are hard you find large numbers of people who go to prison who would not otherwise be there.
A long ago a great philosopher and historian collected facts and showed that the number of people who are arrested increased just as the price of food increased. When they jack up the price of gas ten cents a gallon I do not know who will go to jail, but I do know that a certain number of people will go. When food markets raise the price of beef I do not know who is going to jail, but I know that a large number of people are bound to go. Whenever Exxon raises the price of oil, I know that a certain number of old and poor people are going to freeze to death because they cannot afford to heat their homes or apartments. I know that Exxon and their associates are responsible and not the people who could not afford the heat.
People are sent to prison because they are poor. No man in his right mind would go into a strange house in the dead of night and prowl around with a flashlight through unfamiliar rooms and take a chance with his life, particularly if he has what he needs in his own home. You would not take such chances. If a man had clothes in his closet, food in his refrigerator, and money in the bank, he would not travel around nights in houses he knows nothing about. It requires experience and education for this profession, and people who do it are no more to blame than I am for being what I am. A man would not hold up another man on the street if he had enough money in his own pocket. He might do it if he had one dollar or two dollars, but he wouldn’t if he had as much money as Mr. Trump or Mr. Gates has. Mr. Gates is better at holding-up people than most criminals. The difference is that he does it “legally” and thus is able to perpetrate his criminal career unfettered by inconveniences like being put into a prison.
The more that is taken from the poor by the rich, who have the chance to take it, the more poor people there are who are compelled to resort to crime for a livelihood. They may not understand it, they may not think so at the time, but they have been driven into that line of employment.
You cannot cure crime by passing a law punishing it by death or mandatory life sentences without a chance for parole. There is only one way to cure it and that is to give people a chance to live. There is no other way, and there never was any other way since the world began, and the world is so stupid and blind that it does not see this. If every man and woman and child in the world had a chance to make a decent, fair, honest living, there would be no crime, no prisons, no lawyers, and no courts. I am not talking pure theory. I will give you two or three illustrations.
The English people once punished criminals by sending them away. They would load them on a ship to Australia. England was owned by lords and nobles—rich people. They owned England and the other people had to stay in the streets. They could not make a decent living. They used to take criminals and send them off to Australia (Botany Bay)— at least those criminals who were unfortunate enough to get caught. When they reached Australia, they had the whole continent to themselves. They could raise sheep and furnish their own meat, which is easier than stealing it; they became decent, respectable people because they had the chance to live. They did not commit any crimes. They were just like the English people who sent them there, only better.
A portion of this country was settled in the same way, landing prisoners down on the southern coast, such as Georgia (James Oglethorpe); but when they got here and had a whole continent to run over and a chance to make a living; they became respectable citizens just like any other citizen in the world. but the English aristocracy, who sent the people over to Australia, found out they were getting rich, and so they went over and got possession of the land as they always do, and organized land syndicates thereby getting control of the land and mines, and then they had just as many criminals in Australia as they had in England. It was not because they had grown bad; it was because the land had been taken away from them.
Some people live in the country. It’s prettier there. And if you have ever lived on a farm you understand that if you put cattle in a field where the pasture is short they will jump over the fence; but put them in a good field where there is plenty of pasture, and they will be law-abiding cattle. Humans are ike animals, only a little more so. The same thing that governs in one governs in the other.
Everybody makes his living along the lines of least resistance. A wise man that comes into a country early sees a great undeveloped land. For instance, rich men long ago saw that Chicago was small and knew a lot of people would eventually come here and settle, and they readily saw that if they owned all the land it would be worth a good deal, so they grabbed the land. In England, Ireland, and Scotland less than five percent of the population own the land and the people have to stay there on any terms the landlords give them. They must live the best they can, so they develop other professions — burglary, picking pockets and the like.
Again, people find all sorts of ways of getting rich. These are diseases like everything else. You look at people getting rich, organizing trusts, and making millions of dollars, and somebody gets the disease and he starts out. He catches it just as a man catches the mumps or the measles; he is not to blame, it is in the air. You will find men speculating beyond their means, because the mania of money-getting is taking possession of them. It is simply a disease; nothing more, nothing less. You cannot avoid catching it; but the fellows who have control an advantage over you. When these men get control, they make the laws. They do not make the laws to protect anybody except themselves. Courts are not instruments of justice; when your case gets into court it will make little difference whether you are guilty or innocent; but it will be better for you if you have a smart lawyer. And you cannot have a smart lawyer unless you have money.
First and foremost it’s a question of money. Those men who own everything make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a fence around what they have, and they fix the laws so nobody on the outside can get in. The laws are really organized for their protection. Laws were never designed, organized, or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice.
If we had a system of doing justice the poorest person would have as good a lawyer as the richest. When you go into court you would have just as long a trial and just as fair a trial as the richest person in the country. If you were rich and were beaten, your case would be taken to the Appellate Court. A poor man usually cannot take his case to the Appellate Court because he cannot afford to; and if he were beaten there he might perhaps go to the United States Supreme Court. And he might die of old age before he got into jail. If you are poor, it’s a quick job. You are assumed to be guilty or else you would not be there. Why should anyone be in criminal court if he were not guilty?
He would not be there if he could be anywhere else. The officials have no time to look after these cases. The people who are running banks, building churches, and constructing prisons have no time to examine 600 or 700 prisoners each year to see whether they are guilty or innocent. If the courts were organized to promote justice the people would elect somebody to defend all these criminals, somebody as smart as the prosecutor — and give him as many detectives and as many assistants to help, and pay as much money to defend as to prosecute you. The state prosecutor has many assistants, detectives and policemen without end, and judges to hear the cases — everything is so handy for them.
Most of our criminal code consists of offenses against property. People are in jail because they have committed a crime against property. It is of very little consequence whether one hundred people more or less go to jail who ought not to go — you must protect property, because in this world property is more important than people.
How is it done? The people who own property fix it so they can protect what they have. When somebody commits a crime it does not follow that he has done something that is morally wrong. The man on the outside who has committed no crime may have done something. For instance: to take all the gasoline in the United States and raise the price two dollars or three dollars a gallon when there is no need for it kills thousands of babies and sends thousands of people to prison every year in the United States — this is a greater crime than all the people who are now in our jails have ever committed, but the law does not punish it. Why? Because the fellows who control government make the laws. If you and I made the laws, the first thing we would do would be to punish the fellow who controls government. Nature put petroleum in the ground for me as well as for them and nature made the prairies to raise wheat for me as well as for them, and then the people who really control our government comes along and fences it up.
Most all of the crimes for which we are punished are property crimes. There are a few personal crimes, like murder — but they are very few. The crimes committed are mostly against property. If this punishment is right the criminals must have a lot of property. How much money is there in this crowd? And yet they are all in prison for crimes against property. The people up and down Wall Street have not committed any crime, but they have so much property they don’t know what to do with it. It is perfectly plain why these people have not committed crimes against property; they made the laws and therefore do not need to break them. And in order for you to get some property you are obliged to break the rules of the game.
I don’t know but what some of you may have had a very nice chance to get rich by working for a cleaning company for sixty or more dollars a day. Instead of taking that nice, easy profession, you might be a burglar. If you had been given a chance to be a banker you would rather follow that. Some of you may have had a chance to work as a switchman on a railroad where you know, according to statistics, that you cannot live and keep all your limbs more than a few years, and you get about $4,000 dollars a month for risking your lives. Instead of taking that lucrative position you might choose to be a sneak thief or something like that. Some make that sort of choice. I don’t know which I would take if I was reduced to this option. I have an easier choice.
I will guarantee to take five hundred men who have been the worst criminals and law breakers who ever got into jail, and I will go down to our lowest streets and take five hundred of the most hardened prostitutes, and go out somewhere where there is plenty of land, and give them a chance to make an honest living, and they will be as good people as the average person in the community.
There is a remedy for the sort of condition we see here. The world never finds it out, or when it does find it out it does not enforce it. You may pass a law punishing every person with death for burglary, and it will make no difference. Men will commit it just the same. In England there was a time when one hundred different offenses were punishable with death, and it made no difference. The English people strangely found out that so fast as they repealed the severe penalties and did away with punishing men by death, crime decreased instead of increased; that the smaller the penalty the fewer the crimes.
Hanging men does not prevent murder. It makes murderers. And this has been the history of the world. It’s easy to see how to do away with what we call crime. It is not so easy to do it. I will tell you how to do it. It can be done by giving the people a chance to live — by destroying special privileges. So long as the really big criminals own the oil fields, so long as the big criminals have control of the city council they can get the public streets for anything that pleases them, and this is bound to send thousands of poor people to jail. So long as men are allowed to monopolize all the earth, and compel others to live on such terms as they see fit to make, then you are bound to get people into prison.
The only way in the world to abolish crime and criminals is to abolish the big ones and the little ones together. Make fair conditions of life. Give everyone a chance to live. Nobody would steal if he could get something of his own some easier way. Nobody will commit burglary when he has a house full of property. No girl will go out on the streets and prostitute herself when she has a comfortable place at home.
The man who owns a security agency or a department store may not be to blame himself for the condition of his employees, but when he pays them $8.00/hr or less, I have to wonder where he thinks they will get the rest of their money they need to live. The only way to cure these conditions is by equality. There should be no prisons. They do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. If you wiped them all out, there would be no more criminals than there is now. They terrorize nobody. They are a blot upon civilization, and a prison is evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the prisons and fill them with the victims of their own greed.
