Ellington

I just ran across this excellent quote while researching primary source material for my reference book on criminal justice history. I can't use it in the book, but it's too good not to repeat (emphases mine):

Realistic students of crime today lay little stress upon the older and elaborate attempts to classify crimes, as, for example, crimes against property, crimes against persons, crimes of passion, accidental crimes, and the like. The majority of serious crimes are crimes against property. The personal damage which results is usually incidental and unwished for by the criminal and the victim alike. No criminal, unless he be insane or feeble-minded, wishes to add liability for murder to the penalty for theft or burglary. Aside from the murder and other personal damage incidental to burglary, robbery, and the like, and due to the haste, fear, or excitement of the criminal, the greater amount of physical violence is a result of temporary anger or of the compulsions growing out of a psychopathic personality.

The actual number of deaths produced by crime, while deplorably and scandalously high in the United States, is notoriously exaggerated in the public mind. This condition results from the fact that murders are sensational events played up in the newspapers to gain circulation. The annual homicide figure in the United States --about 12,000 on the average--is far higher per capita than in any other civilized country and steps should be taken to reduce it markedly. But we rarely consider suicide as an important social problem, though there were over 20,000 suicides in 1932. Homicides pale into insignificance compared to accidental deaths, which now average 100,000 annually in this country. Approximately four persons are killed every year in automobile accidents for every one who meets death as a result of homicide. Likewise, homicides are numerically unimportant when compared with the tens of thousands of deaths from preventable diseases and from inadequate medical care. Further, most victims of homicide are fortunate, indeed, when compared to the millions who live under conditions which are worse than death as a result of economic exploitation and insecurity.

If we supplant sentimentalism with realism, we are compelled to recognize the economic basis of the great majority of crimes-indeed, of almost all crimes which are not an outgrowth of literal, if not legal, insanity. Need and greed lie at the foundation of the greater portion of contemporary crime. And greed is responsible for the vast majority of dangerous crime in our day. The latter represents the socially unapproved methods of obtaining something for nothing. Our petty crimes may be the result of the necessity for stealing food or clothing or small sums to provide these, but the economically dangerous crimes are those motivated by greed and a desire to realize the sense of power.

-- Harry Elmer Barnes, Society in Transition: Problems of a Changing Age, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937.

Previous Comments

ID

108770

Comment

Fascinating. :) He's got some good quotes there, that's for sure.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2006-12-06T09:49:55-06:00