Poverty and Prison
Introduction
Digesting Isaac Hopper's diary, one gets the sense that the ex-prisoners with which he meets are largely poor and desperate. Such is apparent not just from the fact that many require financial assistance, but also from the crimes they commit. Overwhelmingly, these crimes are crimes of poverty. Larceny and burglary are among the most common crimes tabulated by Hopper. These desperate acts spring from destitution. The dense degree of poor people behind bars evince prisons as little more than dustbins for the human leftovers of industrial capitalism.
Crimes of Poverty in the Diary
The cases of 761 ex-convicts are presented in Hopper's diary. I calculated 340 to be crimes likely associated with poverty---with 192 instances of grand larceny, 74 burglaries, 22 passing counterfeit monies, 20 forgeries, 11 petty larcenies, 8 vagrancies, 6 attempted burglaries, 4 highway robberies, and 3 for stealing.
According to the 1865 Penal Code of the State of New York, larceny is "the taking of personal property accomplished by fraud or stealth, or without color of right thereto, and with intent to deprive another thereof."1 Grand larceny is when the stolen property exceeds 25 dollars in value, and petit larceny constitutes anything less in value. Burglary, on the other hand, is classified as breaking and entering into any "erection in which any property is kept, with intent to steal therein or to commit any felony."2 Forgery takes many forms, but is generally defined as harboring or deploying counterfeit monies or falsified documents with intent to defraud.3 Vagrancy is the crime of homelessness.
But Wait...
Yet, the percentage of poverty crimes in Hopper's diary is significantly greater than the number 340 reflects. For starters, in 152 cases the crime is not mentioned by Hopper, or it is otherwise illegible. If less than half---say, 70---could be considered poverty-related crimes, then that 340 would jump to 410, which is more than half of all the people he sees.
Additionally, the Excel formula I used certainly didn't catch all the crimes for which it searched, as the search-terms had to be verbatim, and not each crime description is capitalized or phrased in exactly the same way. Lastly, there are a few crimes such as prostitution and assault/battery that I did not include as crimes of poverty, but in many cases could well be argued to be so. All in all, it would not be irresponsible to presume that nearly 3/4 of the people Hopper advised committed crimes related to poverty.
Crimes of Poverty in Hopper's Own Eyes
In his diary, Isaac Hopper himself notices the apparent connection between poverty and crime, and how the former leads to the latter. He details the cases of many people whose poverty, in his view, dictated their criminality---and who, once relieved of poverty, were able to live nobly and shed their criminal past. Here are three cases which stand out.
The PANY on Crime and Poverty
The relationship between crime and poverty is elucidated in the Tenth Report of the Prison Association of New York, which outright states that "Poverty is a cause of crime." The report then quotes British member of Parliament, Sir James McIntosh, who said "In this country pauperism has always advanced in parallel lines with crime, and with equal steps," and declares the same to be true of this country as with Britain. Such is true of urban and rural localities, but it is in the former where poverty "generates crime most rapidly and certainly."8
Having divided the counties of New York State into six groups, the report shows that "the division which ranks first in crime is the second in pauperism." They note, however, that their data is a tad distorted due to the significant number of cases tried in courts of special sessions in certain counties that, in other counties, would be tried in courts of record. Thus they claim: "If the table were corrected by the transposition of these counties---as, for the reasons given above, it ought to be---it would show that there was a perfect parallelism between crime and pauperism; those groups which stand highest in the one, standing highest in the other also."9
It bears emphasis that the report cites poverty as only the 11th most operative cause of crime, behind such influences as grog shops---or liquor stores---gambling, brothels, pernicious books, orphanage, insanity, and ignorance.10 In their eyes, however, poverty is the root and/or result of these other causes, and it's the final nail in the coffin of criminal proclivity. Indeed, the report states: "All the causes of crime that we have enumerated, except orphanage, act per se in its production, to a certain extent; but, besides this, they tend to produce pauperism. This is usually the last stage of descent before the unhappy victim is plunged into the abyss of crime."11
Poverty, Not Person
The First Report of the Prison Association of New York calls attention to the individual motivations beneath criminal intent, and particularly recidivist intent. John W. Edmonds, President of the Board of Inspectors of the State Prison at Sing Sing, begins the Report by inviting the attention of the benevolent to "the destitute condition of discharged convicts," lamenting how, "when they go forth into the world, they are often, for want of employment" forced to face two choices: "to starve or to steal."12
The Report goes on to state how the Inspectors became cognizant of "repeated instances, in which convicts on their discharge left the prison, with, as they believed, sincere intentions to lead honest lives, but who had been reduced to great extremities by the difficulty of obtaining employment, and had been frequently, by sheer destitution, again driven to a course of crime."13
Though certainly there were a handful of convicts whose "moral vision was too oblique" to enable reformation or rectitude, the Report asserts that "it is a sad error to regard these as justly characteristic of the whole class. They are exceptions rather than the general rule."14
The words of the PANY make this much clear: the majority of prisoners did not want to commit crimes, but circumstances demanded that they do. Destitution, or poverty, seems to be a very common circumstance very conducive to crime.
Emphasizing this idea, the Report states:
The cases are so frequent, in which a prisoner, leaving the Penitentiary with the best resolves, and entering into regular and respectable branches of industry, finds himself exposed, betrayed, and instantly cast off, and so forced to herd with the vile, and to resort to crime for mere subsistence, that they become hopeless as to the possibility of success, and recklessly give themselves up to a seemingly fatal destiny.15
We can thus see the external, rather than internal, inducements for crime. Once descended, the condition of poverty foredooms the otherwise innocent to lives of crime.
Conclusion
The ex-convicts Hopper counseled were by and large victims of circumstance, and he believed their wretched fates mendable and preventable. Nevertheless, the poor and desperate clog the yellowing pages of his diary. Largely, it is they who are committing crimes, and this is largely because of their poverty. Therefore, it is largely the poor and desperate behind bars---not the evil and malicious. What this says about how poverty operated in the 19th century is just as dismal and sinister as what it says about how prisons operated.
Footnotes
1. The State of New York. The Penal Code of the State of New York. By Alexander W. Bradford, William Curtis Noyes, and David Dudley. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons, 1865, page 210.
2. Ibid, page 196.
3. Ibid, page 205.
4. Hopper's Diary, vol. 1, pp. 47 and 53.
5. https://www.nvmc.uscg.gov/nvmc/(S(adaz4adppwis1caerigdkre5))/FAQ.aspx?id=06A5F5F5-D8DB-4BF0-8FE3-64E3309A698A
6. Hopper's Diary, vol. 2, pp. 42, 44, 54, 80, 150.
7. Hopper's Diary, vol. 2, page 44.
8. Prison Association of New York. Tenth Report of the Prison Association of New York. New York, N.Y.: The Association, 1855, page 110.
9. Ibid, page 111.
10. Ibid, pages 63-64.
11. Ibid, page 111.
12. Prison Association of New York. First Report of the Prison Association of New York. New York, N.Y.: The Association, 1845, page 11.
13. Ibid, page 37.
14. Ibid, pages 15-16.
15. Ibid, page 17.