ANTISOCIAL behavior: DELINQUENCY AND CRIME 38 1 



resulting in life failures and in mental upsets, are some 

 examples of what I mean. Or injuries done to one's fellow 

 beings in more public ways often represent behavior that is 

 worse than crime. We may remember Shakespeare's "He 

 that robs me of my good name" as a case in point. 



This is a matter of vast importance if we are really to 

 get at the relationship of antisocial conduct to biological 

 conditionings. Injurious to the person and rights of others is, 

 for example, the action of the landlord who maintains 

 premises conducive to immorality and ill-health, or the 

 attitude of employers who have such wage scales that 

 decent standards of living cannot be upheld by their 

 employees. Then what witness we could give, from hundreds 

 of case histories, to the harm done by extreme moral neglect 

 of young boys and girls, or by pernicious teachings, resulting 

 not only in sex misconduct but also in other forms of delin- 

 quency, the real offender not being convicted or perhaps 

 convictable by legal process. Or to go to history for rep- 

 resentative examples of terrible misconduct to be contrasted 

 to legal crime, what a huge material is available, ranging from 

 the kiss of Judas to the wholesale slaughterings of Napoleon. 



It becomes plain enough that the portrayal of the causes 

 in human nature of tendencies towards antisocial conduct, 

 one artificially differentiated variety of which is called 

 crime, must be undertaken upon a much larger canvas if 

 the true perspectives and backgrounds of antisocial conduct 

 are to be shown. 



In considering statements of what criminals are in terms 

 of human nature, it is an important point to remember the 

 differences in the laws and in the facilities for detection 

 and apprehension of offenders in various countries, and 

 even in different parts of our own country. It appears highly 

 probable that the undetected and unapprehended may 

 represent in average make-up a very different group from 

 those who relatively easily fall into the toils of the law. 

 There are a hundred ways in which we might suggest possible 

 differences; a very picturesque comment on the whole 

 problem is afforded by the immediate situation in this 

 country with regard to murder. Apropos of the recent so- 

 called gangster murders, we are informed by the press. 



