Two Views of the Criminal

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22467, 30 July 1938, Page 18

Two Views of the Criminal

PRISONERS The Scapegoat Dances. By Mark Benncy. Peter Davies. 316 PP(7/6 net.) This is the remarkable story of a gaol-bird endeavouring to readjust his life to liberty after years in prison. It is not a pretty story. The author believes that the prisoners readjustment to social life is most strongly hampered by a “repetition complex,” which compels the unhappy victim, if psychologically sensitive, to repeat in many forms experience forced on him by incarceration. Though he is physically free his mind cannot accept and respond to the freedom his body enjoys; and so he comes from prison unable to escape the fetters that have fastened themselves upon his subconscious mind. The reader is taken into a sordid criminal community, introduced to all forms of viciousneso and crime, and spared nothing in the telling. The impact on the reader’s mind is what, one' supposes, the author intended it to be—harsh and disturbing. It will shake the convictions of many who believe that prison is the only method of dealing with offenders against social laws.

PURSUERS Persons In Hiding. By J. Edgar Hoover. J, M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 320 pp. (8/6 net.) This book should be read before or after reading “The Scapegoat Dances.” It is the other side of the picture, more real because it deals with known persons. The author is the Director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation—the leader of the G.-Men. Their business is to track down and send to prison or the electric chair the men and women who have made the most horrible chapters of American history—the kidnappers, murderers, and gangsters of all descriptions, the drug pedlars, motor thieves, bank robbers, “gun molls,” and (unfortunately) many more. Mr Hoover gives something of the lifehistory of these persons, and (he methods by which they are brought to justice: and he shows that they are not necessarily the product of slum conditions in great cities, that many of them, indeed, come from decent, law-abiding families, and that they are really the product of the mental attitude of the American public towards crime and criminals. He sees it as an indifferent and sometimes actually sympathetic attitude, which gravely hinders the police. He endeavours, successfully, to show that these persons are not brave Robin Hood types, but dominated by an intense, over-riding selfishness —a belief that as long as they can “get away with it” they are entitled to commit any crime without respect for the interests or feelings of others. They are cowardly, inhuman “rats,” who deserve no better fate than to be hunted down and destroyed. In his condemnation Mr Hoover includes the politicians and "crook” lawyers who shelter and defend the outlaws, and the footling parole system that lets them out, time after time, to prey upon the community and encourages their belief that they can “get away with it.” Mr Hoover says much that is constructive and helpful, especially in his plea for a more wholesome family life and parental care and example; but he touches on only one aspect of the American judicial system, which the reader will probably conclude to be the strongest factor in the spread of vice and crime. A reform of the system by which judges and prosecutors can be voted into office without due regard to their characters and qualifications seems to be proved by these pages the most urgently necessary measure to check crime. Mr Hoover’s book should do much to open the eyes of the American public to the urgent peril in which they stand, for want of reform.

LIBERALITY AND HUMANITY Liberality and Ci-ilisation. By Gilbert Murray, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D. Allen and Unwin. 94 pp. (2s 6d net.) The New Vision of Man. By F. S. Marvin. Allen and Unwin. 171 pp. (5s net.) These two small books are somewhat similar in spirit and general purpose. Mr Marvin’s book is wider in scope; Professor Gilbert Murray’s, more profound and significant. “Liberality and Civilisation” consists of the Hibbert Lectures which Professor Murray delivered last year at three British Universities. It represents the latest product of a most distinguished mind, one trained in humane scholarship and inspired by liberal ideals. Professor Murray endeavours to show that liberality is the inner content of civilisation and that a failure of the liberal mind, such as we see in so many countries to-day, is a sign of the failure of civilisation. He gives an admirable account of the ideal principle' of politics but is by no means blind to the strength of the forces of unreason. He discusses the difficult problem of keeping alive liberal thought and feeling in a world which seems to have turned antiliberal, Mr Marvin in “The New Vision of Man” sketches the rise of the idea and the power of a common humanity—an idea which since the Romans has been known by the term “humanitas.” He discusses contemporary problems in the light of this conception, admits the present failure of the idea of a common humanity, but is imbued with what seems to be a rather facile optimism and idealism regarding it.