Weak or absent resistance in the face of a normal motor impulse whose
expression injuriously affects another, is crime, and a criminal is one
whose power of resistance to motor impulses has been reduced by disease,
hereditary or acquired, or is absent through arrested development.
A confirmed criminal is one in whom the frequent recurrence of an
unrestrained impulse injurious to others has induced habit.
Auto-inhibition is defective or absent, and society must in her own
interest provide external restraint, and this we call law.
Criminals are, therefore, mental defectives, and may be defined for
sociological purposes as those in whom legal punishment for the second
time, for the same offence, has failed to act as a deterrent.
M. Boies, in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third
time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint.
The existence of motor impulses in the human animal is normal. They vary
in strength and force. We cannot eradicate, we can only control them.
They may become less assertive under the constant control of a highly
cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be
affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual
himself or by the State.
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