A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Another striking insight relates to sexuality. ‘Almost without exception, the participants in our
study were either involved in sexual activity very early or [indulged in] a great deal of sexual
thinking...’ The criminal ‘peeks through cracks in doors and peers through keyholes to catch
glimpses of mother, sister or a friend’s mother or sister as she dresses, bathes or uses the toilet’.
One habitual criminal began engaging in sex games at the age of four, with the daughter of a
neighbour who took him to school. Later, he was part of a gang who used to grab girls in alleyways
and commit rape - although if the girls showed no objection, they were allowed to go; it was
essential that they should cry and struggle.
Most children experience curiosity about sex; in the criminal, it seems to be an obsession that
narrows down the focus of his consciousness to the idea of exploring the forbidden, of committing
stealthy violations of privacy. His sexuality becomes tinged with violence and his criminality with
sex. One of the most puzzling things about many cases of rape is the damage inflicted on the
victim, even when she makes no resistance. This is because, in the criminal mind, sex is a form of
crime, and crime a form of sex. The passage from de Sade is a remarkable illustration of this
connection - Juliette’s intense sexual excitement as she waits to commit a crime. What Yochelson’s
observation shows is that there is a sexual component in all crime; the criminal is committing
indecent assault on society.
This, then, brings us close to the essence of criminality. It is a combination of egoism, infantilism
and sex. No animal is capable of ‘crime’ because for animals sex is as natural as eating and
defecating. Moreover, animals become mature as soon as they are fully grown. And, as far as
human beings can judge, they seem to lack all sense of ego. With the possible exception of greed,
animals lack all the basic qualifications for crime.
But it is important to get all this into perspective. We are speaking as if criminality had always been
the same at all times, and this is untrue. Yochelson and Samenow conducted their research in the
second half of the twentieth century, and we must bear in mind - as H. G. Wells once pointed out -
that the world has changed more in the past century than in the previous five thousand years. Until
fairly recently, life was incredibly hard for all but about one per cent of the population. It was an
endless battle against starvation, cold and ill-health. As Henry Hazlitt put it in The Conquest of
Poverty (New York, 1973):
The ancient world of Greece and Rome... was a world where houses
had no chimneys, and rooms, heated in cold weather by a fire on a
hearth or a fire-pan in the centre of the room, were filled with smoke
whenever a fire was started, and consequently walls, ceiling and
furniture were blackened and more or less covered by soot at all times;
where light was supplied by smoky oil lamps which, like the houses in
which they were used, had no chimneys; and where eye trouble, as a
result of all this smoke, was general. Greek dwellings had no heat in
winter, no adequate sanitary arrangements, and no washing facilities.
And two thousand years later, things were just as bad:
The dwellings of medieval labourers were hovels - the walls were
made of a few boards cemented with wood and leaves. Rushes and
leaves or heather made the thatch for the roof. Inside the house there
was a single room, or in some cases two rooms, not plastered and
without floor, ceiling, chimney, fireplace or bed, and here the owner,