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Criminal (Foundations of Criminal Justice)
Criminal - Foundations of Criminal Justice Author:Havelock Ellis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY (PSYCHICAL). § i. Moral Insensibility. TlIE moral insensibility of the instinctive and habitual criminal, his lack of fo... more »rethought, his absence of remorse, his cheerfulness, had been noted long before they were exhaustively studied by Despine. In the argot of French criminals, conscience is la muette, and to induce any one to lead a dishonest life is I'affranchir. This moral insensibility is, indeed, a commonplace of observation with all who have come in close contact with criminals. Gall remarked: " If criminals have remorse, it is that they have not committed more crimes, or that they have let themselves be caught." Dostoieffsky, speaking from his intimate and sympathetic acquaintance with convicts in Siberia, said : "During so many years I ought to have been able to seize some indication, however fugitive, of regret, of moral suffering. I have perceived positively nothing. Seclusion and excessive work only develop among those people a profound hatred, the thirst of forbidden pleasures, and a terrible indifference." He goes on to tell of a parricide who remarked carelessly, in the course of conversation : " Take my father, for example; he was never ill up to the day of his death." " Scenes of heartrending despair are hardly ever witnessed among prisoners," observes Dr. Wey of Elmira; " theirsleep is disturbed by no uneasy dreams, but is easy and sound ; their appetites, also, are excellent."1 " It is a most singular thing," remarks Mr. Davitt, "that I have met very few individuals in prison who gave evidence in appearance or talk of being truly miserable, no matter what the length of their sentence, amount of extra punishment, or contrast between their previous and their convict life may have been."2 Mr. Davitt seems inclined to attribute ...« less