Author: Ricardo Mella

Original: “Ciencia oficial de la criminología” in El Libertario, [No. 3] Gijón, August 24, 1912

Translation: Asa Ekengren, Madrid, 2016

France has created an office of criminology within the Ministry of Justice which aims to discover the social laws which determine the genesis of crime. With a modest budget of 17,000 francs, their goal is to establish a methodology and structure to study delinquents individually by focusing on physiological, psychological and social factors. A seed of anise .

French society appears to be alarmed by the rise of criminality among the youth. Nearly all of these Apache are still quite young—some, adolescents. The “barbarian youth” are legion. This is quite literally how a pseudo-journalist of the courts expressed himself.

This pseudo-journalist subscribes to highly pertinent, ordered considerations regarding these individuals. Above all, he is of the opinion that secular schooling—official in France—contributes to criminality, even when schools are neither amoral nor immoral per se, as they aren’t, as they should be, an appropriate institution to provide a moral education. The cited journalist also observes that there is a large gap between when children are no longer of schooling age and when one’s character and personality beings to develop. During this period, the State, as well as families, cease to exercise their tutelary role. Youth from working-class families enter workshops and factories without an education and at the mercy of pernicious examples. Youth from the middle-class enter trade, invade public and private offices and, defenseless, are exposed to the most pernicious influences. I cannot recall whether the pseudo-journalist also dedicated some words to the wealthy youth; aristocrats by blood and aristocrats by banking.

This man wants to extend the State’s tutelage beyond the School. He is delighted with the program enacted by the Prussian government to preserve the morals of adolescents when it handed over post-schooling age tutelage to the Ministry of Worship. More importantly, he supports wildly employing scientists at prisons to study delinquent individuals step-by-step. One or another seed of anise.

The goal of the French government, the Prussians’ order and the wisdom of the journalist represent one and the same thing: the desire to add some simple fixes and gaudy new science to the filthy wine-skin of historical criminology. Put in this light, governmental wisdom will be able to continue tightening the screws of repression and carrying out the social “vendetta” to its liking. Extending the tutelage of the State, assuming that the State accompanies us from the cradle to the grave like shadow to the body, is, in all orders of public life, the predominant obsession. With the youth and old barbarians rebelling—delinquents or not—the governing classes have no other recourse. This is their reasoning.

What will the official science be able to tell us that hasn’t already been said in every possible way? It will be able to falsify statistics, catalog prejudice, invent stigmas, justify horrors; but not discover and, above all, proclaim one single truth, and much less so if it is self-harming.

What will be achieved by extending the tutelage of the State, the damage of which still hasn’t been fully understood? It will tighten its grip on our personality a bit more, make us smaller, mold us, guide us at its will: but it won’t have offered us a shred of morality, and much less of health, well-being, happiness, which would be magnificent moralizing factors in both the public and private spheres.

What is secular schooling—official in France—other than a translation of the political language of religious schooling? “The moral education of the youth”! This, in bitter words, means the castration of man.

The hot topic of the booming rise of criminality is recurred to when convenient to justify further abuses, greater atrocities. It is the revolutionary hydra translated into the language of clueless lawmakers. Oh, the good men who tremble before these omens! They will be dubbed delinquents and the prison will devour them voraciously. The State beckons eunuchs, sheep, pariahs. It is famished.

If criminality spreads, it is because the well-being of some falls atrociously while that of others rises to unimaginable heights; it is because happiness is reserved to a handful of fortunate individuals and is denied for the homeless masses; it is because health has been violated and broken down everywhere. After all the storms of misery, the brutal display of luxury and abundance; after all the pain and tears of the masses, the bacchanalian indecencies of the powerful—happy as can be. And, above all, which is rather enough; the neurosis, syphilis, tuberculosis, and alcoholism corroding the entrails of humanity.

These physiological, psychological and sociological causes of criminality are but a seed of anise!

What ridiculous remedy will be offered with the ridiculous official science of 17,000 francs a year? What ridiculous remedy will be offered with the ridiculous post-schooling age tutelage, with these scientific employees at prisons? What ridiculous remedy will be provided by returning to religious schooling, which is neither better nor worse than civil schooling—oh so esteemed by the republicans?

Bread, bread, weary men; bread for the body and bread for the soul; well-being, happiness, health for all: this is the remedy, imbeciles of the official science, of professional journalism, of the political mafia who only propose to continue squeezing more out of their rebellious subordinates.

Well-being, happiness and health. How can you provide these? The poultices of science and education won’t stop slowing human progress in conquering all they have appropriated and unlawfully held; because they have it, they point to the dispossessed multitude as the criminals.

The barbarians are at your doors. Open, or they will be brought down.