Criminals By Habit

People will be influenced by their ripus (1) wherever:

• moral integrity is low
• no effort is made to develop mental force
• social control is slack

They will choose a path which lets them express their propensities unchecked.

Ordinary people manage to keep their base propensities under control through internal moral reasoning.

• But those who lack mental strength often knowingly commit crimes in an almost mechanical way, even though they have a sense of morality.
• Such people keep their mental weaknesses under control out of fear of what society might do

But if any one of these three obstacles which keep people from moving along the path of evil becomes weak, people will tend to engage in antisocial activities

In the absence of fear of these obstacles, they will gradually become increasingly addicted to such activities.

In this way, people get accustomed to performing antisocial activities and finally turn into hardened criminals.

The diseases of habitual criminals are not congenital.

• In treating these people, there is little place for a physiologist or doctor.
• They can be treated if they are provided with:
  • a proper moral education
  • a method of acquiring moral strength
  • a strictly regulated social environment.

During the trials of habitual criminals, the judge should focus more on the provisions of the penal code than on humanitarian sensibility.

No matter how villainous habitual criminals become, and no matter how notorious, they will never be as dangerous as born criminals.

They have some sense of discrimination, they should not be automatically pardoned on the grounds of mental illness.

They also possess the ability to feign innocence.

They behave like saints by day and steal by night;

they live like landlords one moment and like armed robbers the next; they are chaste in public and promiscuous in private.

Generally the scale of their criminal activities is greater than that of other criminals.

Psychological treatment and strict prison discipline help to a great extent in reforming the nature of habitual criminals. (Of course such criminals must live in a pure social environment as well.)

This type of criminal nature is often formed as an indirect result of people being forced to submit to strict control without being given any moral education or guidance as to how to develop strength of mind.

For example, some parents do not impart moral education to their children, and do not help them to acquire strength of mind or teach them how to lead a virtuous life; instead, they beat their children with or without justification. It is the children of such parents who later take part in antisocial activities.

Daughters will naturally have the secret desire to leave home and experience the world if:

• parents fail to educate their daughters out of fear that they will go astray
• fail to provide them with a moral education
• fail to help them acquire strength of mind by holding up high ideals before them
• parents try to forcibly keep their unmarried or widowed daughters confined behind the purdah

As a result, they will put on a show of purity in public while indulging in sinful conduct in private.

Often they will even break away from the constraints imposed on them and openly engage in antisocial activities.

Although it is extremely difficult to convince habitual criminals to follow the path of spirituality, it may be possible through psychological means.

In most cases they are intelligent, but out of petty selfishness they rebel against society, country and state. Many habitual criminals become politicians in order to further their own selfish ends and cheat the public day after day. Most of the great wars fought in the world have been started by such criminals. The leaders of the criminal community come from this group.

Sometimes the unfortunate public grabs hold of these leaders, just as fishermen catch fish in a net and drag them onto the shore, and sometimes these leaders break the net and slip away. Not only is intelligence required to bring these criminals to justice, a great deal of caution and courage is required as well. Black marketeers and adulterators who operate on a large scale should also be included in this group of criminals.

Habitual criminals sometimes also try to influence judges. They intimidate them in the hope of ensuring the successful continuation of their criminal activities. In order to punish habitual criminals, it is necessary to give judges far greater power than they now possess.