The criminal / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The criminal / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    or who have, before the commission of the crime, been in a condition of mental alienation. Nearly a hundred persons every year in this country are sent to prison to be found insane on admission. The hanging of persons who are afterwards generally regarded as insane has been, and is still, frequently carried on. In Germany Dr. Richter has shown that out of 144 lunatics who were, as was afterwards shown, at the date of their crimes in the highest degree insane, only 38 were recognised as insane before the judge—i.e., 106 madmen were, on account of their madness, condemned to severe punishment. Out of 100 insane persons brought to the bar of justice only 26 to 28 are recognised as insane.^ The insane criminal is clearly in a category of his own. He is only a criminal in the same sense as an infant or an animal who performs some noxious act The lunatic may be influenced by the same motives that influence the sane person, but he is at the same time impelled by other motives peculiar to himself, and to which we may have no means of access. To bring all the solemn formalities of law to bear against a madman, and to condemn him to severe punishment, is in a civilised country unreasonable. The political criminal may usually be recognised without difficulty when we lay aside political pre- judice ; the criminal by passion can be recognised at once when we know his history. There is not usually much difficulty in ascertaining the insanity of the criminal who is insane in the strict and perhaps the only legitimate sense of the word—i.e., intellectually ^ Sander and Richter, Die Bezielmngen zwischen Geistesslortmg una Verbrechen, See also Loinbroso, VUomo Delinqtienle, vol. ii., part 3, ch. I, for many facts and figures concerning criminal insanity.