Does it pay to commit crime? The income of a criminal.

In the early 1900’s the great magician (“handcuff king” and jail-breaker) Harry Houdini researched court cases, interviewed police, detectives and criminals with the intent to make a contribution that would safeguard the public from fraud. In 1906 he published The Right Way To Do Wrong: An Expose of Successful Criminals. I found the first chapter very enlightening, answering the question, “Does it pay to commit crime?”

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“This is a question I have often asked the chiefs of police and great detectives of every country in the world. How great are the money rewards of evil doing? Does a ‘good’ burglar have an income equal to that of a bank president? Can a pickpocket make more money than the fashionable tailor who makes the pockets? Is a gambler better paid than a governor? Can a shoplifter make more money than the saleswoman? In fact, does it pay to be a criminal, and, if so, how great is the reward for evil doing?

I am aware that it is the general impression, considered simply as a matter of profits, that the professional criminal is well paid. He gets something for nothing; therefore you would say at a first glance that he must be rolling in wealth.

Many people who get their ideas of criminals from novels and story papers, for instance, imagine a gambler as a man who always has a roll of bills in his pocket big enough to choke a horse, as they say. No doubt, also, the histories of sensational coups as reported in the daily press are chiefly responsible for this false impression. But such colossal frauds and robberies are rarely the work of professional criminals. They are usually perpetrated by men whose previous good character has placed them in positions of trust. Men who have led honest lives, when temptation came along and on paper they figured out that they could not lose—why, they stole and fell—into the clutches of the law. Disgraced, they are ruined for life, often ruining all their family. It is a terrible thing to have the finger of fate point at you with the remark, ‘His father is serving time for doing so and so,’ or ‘Her brother is now in his sixteenth year, and comes out in five years.’

Such humble criminals as the area sneak thief, the porch and hallway thieves, and the ordinary shoplifter may be dismissed with a few words; their gains are miserably small, they live in abject poverty, and after detection (for sooner or later they are detected) they end their lives in the workhouse!

‘If I could earn $5 a week honest, I’d gladly give up "dragging” (shoplifting),’ said a thief of this type to a New York detective; ‘but I can’t stand regular work, never could; it’s so much easier to “prig” things.’ No avarice, but simple laziness keeps these thieves dishonest.

The truth is, that a life of dishonesty may pay at first when you are not known to the police, but when an offender once falls into the hands of the ever-watchful police he begins to be a well-known customer. He now pays dearer and dearer every time he is brought up for trial. His brief spells of liberty are spent in committing some crime that once again brings him back to the prison, so when you figure out the sentences he has to serve, why, his honest gains are contemptible compared to such awful penalties . . . .

IT DOES NOT PAY TO LEAD A DISHONEST LIFE, and to those who read this book, although it will inform them ‘The Right Way to Do Wrong,’ all I have to say is one word and that is ‘DON’T.’”