Often people ask me to describe Darrow’s voice. Recently I found this short clip on the History Channel web site. Here Darrow is talking about the causes of crime, a common lecture topic for him. It’s probably from the early 1920s. Enjoy!
http://www.history.com/audio/clarence-darrow-on-crime
Andrew E. Kersten is Frankenthal professor of history in the Department of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. He received his PhD in American history at the University of Cincinnati in 1997. Clarence Darrow, American Iconoclast is his latest book. He has published others—Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest; Politics and Progress: The American State and Society since the Civil War; A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard; and Labor’s Home Front: The American Federation of Labor during the Second World War—as well as several articles. He is also interested in and has written about Wisconsin history and the history of the city of Green Bay.
September 1, 2011 at 4:09 pm
I realize this was more about hearing Darrow’s voice than about making Darrow’s argument, but I thought a few remarks about his casual theory of crime were in order, particularly in light of the millions of poor people ensnared by our criminal justice system, a situation about which I suspect Darrow would have a great deal to say. Darrow is right about everything in the universe having a cause. However, the evidence suggests his analysis of the causes of crime is wrong on several points.
To begin with, almost everybody commits crime; most people across the class structure have at one time or another behaved in a way that, if detected, would have labeled them, perhaps only temporarily, a criminal. Most of these behaviors happen in our youth. Surveys of youth find that delinquent behavior is distributed throughout the class structure. The difference is that poorer youth are subject to coercive control more often than our more affluent youth. Moreover, criminal labels are more likely to stick to poor youth than to others.
Second, the type of crime most likely to land a person in prison is street crime. Yet street crime is but a fraction of the total amount of crime in a capitalist society. For example, according to the FBI, the totality of street crime in the United States annually costs the public between $5 and $20 billion (this amount does not reflect the costs of police, courts, or corrections, but is an estimate of the dollar value of lost or damaged property). In contrast, the annual cost of white collar crime is in the neighborhood of $200-500 billion (again, the cost of control is not factored in). Self-evidently poverty doesn’t cause the latter type of crime. The difference here is really a matter of whom the state coercively controls. So it would be more accurate to say that poverty does not cause crime, but rather attenuates coercive state action.
Third, focusing only on serious street crime, we find that most people living in poverty do not commit serious crime. If poverty causes the types of crime that could lead to serious coercive state control, then how do we explain all the poor people who do not engage in such behavior? It is more accurate to say that poverty is a source of serious crime but does not cause it. There are other factors that must reckoned. For example, inequality is associated with the blocked economic opportunities – in short, social injustice – that are predictive of street crime. Poverty is a result of inequality.
Fourth, the claim that our patterns of behavior are set up early in life is contradicted by the evidence. Darrow – who speaks about “criminal careers” – is here guilty of backwards causal thinking. While it is true that nearly all adult street criminals have a record of juvenile offending, it is not true that most juvenile offenders go on to be adult street criminals. In fact, only about five percent of juvenile offenders become persistent adult criminals. We call this phenomenon “aging out.” This is why one must look at these matters prospectively.
Finally, most crime in a politically organized society exists because officials formulate and apply criminal definitions to behavior based on particular group interests. Property crime emerges in a particular type of societal arrangements. Drug crimes are the result of the particular needs of particular social segments. If one wants to understand the cause of most crime, then, one must study group interests and their expression in political and legal power.