Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out!. Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison онлайн

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Under the head of Criminal Anthropology we are called upon to study the criminal’s anatomy, social and moral habits and temperaments. But the strangest thing about him is that though he may be physically and mentally normal—just as other men are—he is abnormal morally. We must always remember, however, that while we consider the criminal scientifically, his disease is entirely moral. Nor has the average criminal any peculiarities that are not common to the rank and file of other men in every walk of life. His head and his heart and his brain are like those of other men and he shows the marks of human folly just as men do who never saw the inside of a jail.

As a rule the criminal is largely a creature of circumstances; often too lazy to work and unwilling to resist the common temptations of life, he simply drifts. He takes to crime as an easy way of making a living and often believes that the fates are against him, as an excuse for his wrong-doing, or perhaps he has a foolish delusion that there is something heroic in criminality.