A Detective’s Sermon

The cell-door in the police station was closed upon a thief who had given his age as seventeen years and looked even younger. He did not look much like a criminal. His clothing and person were clean and his features were of a type indicating intelligence. The brutal expression often noticed in the features of law-breakers was lacking entirely in his. A New York Tribune reporter, who saw him locked up, noticed tears in the youth’s blue eyes. The detective who had made the arrest had served many years in the police department, and was familiar with the history of many thieves. “That boy ought not to be a thief,” he said. “His father is dead, and he has a respectable, hard-working mother, to whom he might be a comfort, instead of a curse. He has been on the island twice already, and now he will go up for burglary.”

“What kind of boys become burglars?” the reporter asked.

“All kinds.”

“Do good boys ever get to be thieves?”

“Yes, when they fall into bad company.”

“What influence do you consider the most powerful in leading boys on to crime?”

“Rum.”

“Has not natural depravity much to do with their fall?”

“I do not believe that human depravity is natural,” the detective said. “It is unnatural. The lives of the worst criminals in the city prove as much. Did it ever occur to you that there is much less of what you call natural depravity in country places than in the city? People get to be bad because their surroundings are bad, because they cannot resist temptation, because their better instincts are taken away by evil influences. The boy here lives in a tenement house. His mother is poor, and there is not much pleasure for him in the house. So he runs about in the street. If he lived in the country, as I did when I was a boy, he couldn’t find much mischief away from home. Here he associates with… Read More