An Additional Classification of Criminals
Arthur N. Foxe · Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951) · 1939
In a previous work' I showed that a large proportion of criminotic individuals in prison are more or less destined to carry out certain criminotic acts until they have matured and settled at the age of thirty or thereabouts. There is nothing more common than the following sequence of events in an individual. Larceny of a car from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, unlawful entry or burglary from the ages of seventeen to twenty-one, robbery from the ages of nineteen to twenty-eight and then a settling down, adjustment and avoidance of prison. These are important facts to recognize. One so often sees a man released in his early or middle twenties, knowing full well that he will soon commit a robbery in which he may kill someone or for which he may get a long sentence that will keep him in prison until the age of forty or forty-five when all hope of a satisfactory adjustment is gone. One wonders if it would not be better to keep certain young burglars and robbers in prison until they are about thirty and already matured. To this type of individual I should like to apply the term Developmental criminal, or, to be more scientific, Developmental Criminotic. Anyone who has dealt largely with active problems of crime must have already dimly or clearly seen this issue. In the work above mentioned I found certain of the early findings of the Gluecks inadequate in that they had not as yet considered this problem of maturation. More recently another important work of theirs2 has appeared and in this work ideas of maturation occupy the most conspicuous place. It is obvious that these considerations are most important for the legislature that is to make laws against, the policeman who must investigate and arrest, the district attorney who is to prosecute, the judge who is to sentence, the institutional officers who are to rehabilitate, and the Parole Board that is to supervise the criminotic. It is important further to make extensive