Book Review: Cry of a Man Running, Ward McNally, Angus & Robertson Ltd., Sydney, 1968, 209 pp. $3.25.; A Burglar's Life, or the Stirring Adventures of the Great English Burglar. Mark Jeffrey, W. & J. E. Heiner eds., Angus & Robertson Ltd., Sydney, 1968, 2nd ed., 194 pp., $4.95.
| Date | 01 March 1969 |
| Published date | 01 March 1969 |
| Author | J. Clunies-Ross |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486586900200109 |
AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (1969): 2, 1 59
of expression of a
great
deal of original
thought
based
on
the
fundamental
concept
of criminality as
one
form of reaction-type.
The
concept
of
mental
illness in
general
as
areaction-type is by no
means
new
but, in
defining
the
causes
and
features
of a
par-
ticular
subjective feeling
which
he
terms
"oppression"
and
conceptualising
the
vari-
ous modes of criminal behaviour
as
vari-
ous
reaction
types
to oppression,
Halleck
has
achieved
what
Plato
would
have
designated
asynthesising concept. In
other
words
he has, in
this
reviewer's opinion,
enunciated
aprinciple which
integrates
meaningfully a
mass
of
material
appearing
in
earlier
literature
as disjointed
fragments
confusing
to
students
and
clearly inade-
quate
to
experienced
clinicians.
The
very
great
appeal
of his achieve-
ment
to
the
clinical criminologist is
that
this principle is so
readily
extrapolated
to
the
practical
tasks
of
understanding
the
offender,
assessing
the
individual
case
for
the
courts,
and
carrying
out
management
programmes.
It
would
be
unfair
to
the
author
to
dis-
sect
his
contribution
in
the
short
space
of
areview, as
any
dissection would
destroy
the
very
real
blend
of common sense, com-
passion
and
social realism which is
the
most
remarkable
feature
of
the
book as a
whole. It is
certainly
exceptional
for
a
psychiatrist
to be
able
to convey to people
in
other
disciplines
just
what
he is doing
in his
attempts
to
treat
people;
and
the
author
does
just
this.
It should be
emphasised
that
Halleck
has
intended
this
book to be of use to
everyone involved in
the
administration
of
justice to
the
offender. If it is a
fact
that
judges
and
magistrates
rarely
visit
prisons
to
learn
first-hand
the
results
of
their
de-
cisions,
then
this
book will give
them
as
good
a
second-hand
picture
as is
at
pre-
sent
available.
If it is a
fact
that
criminology is a multi-
disciplinary
subject
concerned
at
the
prac-
tical level
with
teaching personnel
who
work
in
the
fields of prevention
and
refor-
mation,
then
this
book
is indispensable to
those
who
seek
to improve
their
training
methods
or
who
take
their
field
work
seriously.
What
justifies
such
dogmatic
statements
in a book review? Simply
that
rational
re-
form
and
treatment
programmes
can
only
be
based
on
valid
understanding
of
the
men
and
women
concerned, including of-
fenders,
correctional
workers,
and
adminis-
trators.
This
remarkable
book is rich in
under-
standing, for
which
this
reviewer
expresses
his
gratitude.
But
this is by no
means
a
superficial gloss-over
attempting
to sell
psychiatry
to society as
the
answer
to a
judge's prayer! On
the
contrary,
this
author
is painfully
realistic
in his
examination
of
the
difficulties, limitations
and
apparent
impossibilities
inherent
in
the
subject.
L.
HOWARD
WHITAKER
Psychiatrist, Melbourne.
Cry
of a Man Running,
Ward
McNally,
Angus &
Robertson
Ltd., Sydney, 1968,
209 pp. $3.25.
A
Burglar's
Life, or
the
Stirring
Adven-
tures
of
the
Great
English Burglar.
Mark
Jeffrey, W. & J. E.
Heiner
eds., Angus &
Robertson Ltd., Sydney, 1968, 2nd ed.,
194 pp., $4.95.
IT is
very
necessary
for
those
engaged in
the
academic disciplines
associated
with
the
study
of crime, criminals
and
criminal
justice
to aim
at
a
balance
between
theory
and
reality. It
goes
almost
without
saying
that
some
personal
contact
with
the
indivi-
dual men,
women
and
young
persons
who
are
the
basic
subject
matter
of
the
acade-
mic exercise
of
criminology, is obligatory.
These
individuals include
those
who
make
the
laws
and enforce them, as well as those
who
break
them,
not
forgetting
the
ones
who
carryon
from
there
-correctional
personnel
with
their
various
specialties.
Although biographies and autobiogra-
phies of lawyers, police officers, prison
personnel (both professional
and
custodial)
and correctional
authorities
make
some
contribution to
the
observation
and
under-
standing of deviant behavior, it is from
the
stories of
the
offenders themselves
that
criminologists,
are
inclined to
expect
the
most
enlightenment.
To
the
increasing
number
of
the
latter
-tales told by
the
offenders themselves
-belong
the
two
books reviewed.
Ward
McNally's
"Cry
of a Man Running" is
the
autobiographical
account
of a contem-
porary
criminal career: while
Mark
Jeff-
rey's
"A
Burglar's
Life" is described as
"a
thrilling
history
of
the
dark
days of con-
victism in Australia,
which
was
first pub-
lished in
Launceston
in 1893".
Both books disappoint hopes
that
some
light will be
cast
on
the
motivation, emo-
tional
maturity,
personality
development,
or psychological self-revelation of
the
per-
sistent
offender.
They
tend
to
confirm
the
suspicion
that
accounts
of this
sort
will
only reveal a
farther
monotonous
pattern
of
events
-offence piled on offence, op-
portunity
after
opportunity
missed
or
deliberately flouted
which
results
simply in a
description
of a seemingly
irrational self-propulsion
towards
self-
destruction.
But
perhaps
inexplicability is
the only revelation
we
should expect!
Certainly
the
climax of McNally's
story
is a change in
both
his
attitudes
and
actions which
broke
the
vicious circle of
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