Criminal Sociology [48]
reaction against crime less violent; but that is not enough. Henceforward, if we are to adapt ourselves to psychological and sociological laws, the development of our defensive administration must tend to render this social reaction less direct. If the struggle for existence is always to remain the supreme law of living creatures, yet it is not necessary that it should always be developed in the violent forms of primitive humanity. On the contrary, one of the results of social progress is to make the struggle for existence less violent and less direct.
In the same way, the continuous struggle between society and criminals, instead of being a physical and social force, directly opposed to a physical individual force, should rather become an indirect system of psychical forces. Penal law in society has the same qualities as education in the family and pedagogy in schools. All the three were once dominated by the idea of taming human passions by force; the rod was supreme. In course of time it was perceived that this produced unexpected results, such as violence and hypocrisy, and then men thought fit to modify their punishments. But in our own days schoolmasters see the advantage of relying solely on the free play of tendencies and bio- psychological laws. Similarly the defensive function of society, as Romagnosi said, in place of being a physical and repressive system, ought to be a moral and preventive system, based on the natural laws of biology, psychology, and sociology.
Force is always a bad remedy for force. In the Middle Ages, when punishments were brutal, crimes were equally savage; and society, in demoralising rivalry with the atrocity of criminals, laboured in a vicious circle. Now, in the lower social grades, the brutal man, who often resorts to violence, is in his turn frequently the victim of violence; so that, amongst criminals, a scar is somewhat of a professional distinction.
To sum up, our doctrine as to the efficacy of punishments does not consist, as some critics too sparing of their arguments have maintained, in an absolute negation, but rather and especially in objecting to the traditional prejudice that punishments are the best and most effectual remedies of crime.
What we say is this. Punishment by itself, as a means of repression, possesses a negative rather than a positive value; not only because it has not the same influence on all anthropological types of criminals, but also because its use is rather to preclude the serious mischief which would result from impunity than to convert, as some imagine that it can, an anti-social into a social being. But impunity would lead to a demoralisation of the popular conscience in regard to crimes and offences, to an increase of the profound lack of foresight in criminals, and to the removal of the present impediment to fresh crimes during the term of incarceration.
It is the same with education, the modifying power of which is commonly exaggerated. Education, though it has an enduring influence on children, and is therefore more effectual than punishment, is far more serviceable in eliminating anti-social tendencies, whereof we all possess the germs, than in any supposed creation of social tendencies and forces which were not present from birth.
Thus, whilst the consequences of impunity and lack of education are serious and mischievous, still this does not prove conversely that punishment and education have in reality so positive an influence as is commonly attributed to them.
It is precisely on the ground of this negative, yet real efficacy of punishments, especially whilst they are being carried out, that, whilst we appreciate the mitigation of punitive discipline which has been achieved by the classical school, we believe, on the other hand, that their abbreviation of the term of punishments is altogether mistaken and dangerous. We admit that punishment ought not to be an arbitrary and inhuman torture, and for this reason we have no sympathy with the system of solitary confinement, now so much in fashion with the classical
In the same way, the continuous struggle between society and criminals, instead of being a physical and social force, directly opposed to a physical individual force, should rather become an indirect system of psychical forces. Penal law in society has the same qualities as education in the family and pedagogy in schools. All the three were once dominated by the idea of taming human passions by force; the rod was supreme. In course of time it was perceived that this produced unexpected results, such as violence and hypocrisy, and then men thought fit to modify their punishments. But in our own days schoolmasters see the advantage of relying solely on the free play of tendencies and bio- psychological laws. Similarly the defensive function of society, as Romagnosi said, in place of being a physical and repressive system, ought to be a moral and preventive system, based on the natural laws of biology, psychology, and sociology.
Force is always a bad remedy for force. In the Middle Ages, when punishments were brutal, crimes were equally savage; and society, in demoralising rivalry with the atrocity of criminals, laboured in a vicious circle. Now, in the lower social grades, the brutal man, who often resorts to violence, is in his turn frequently the victim of violence; so that, amongst criminals, a scar is somewhat of a professional distinction.
To sum up, our doctrine as to the efficacy of punishments does not consist, as some critics too sparing of their arguments have maintained, in an absolute negation, but rather and especially in objecting to the traditional prejudice that punishments are the best and most effectual remedies of crime.
What we say is this. Punishment by itself, as a means of repression, possesses a negative rather than a positive value; not only because it has not the same influence on all anthropological types of criminals, but also because its use is rather to preclude the serious mischief which would result from impunity than to convert, as some imagine that it can, an anti-social into a social being. But impunity would lead to a demoralisation of the popular conscience in regard to crimes and offences, to an increase of the profound lack of foresight in criminals, and to the removal of the present impediment to fresh crimes during the term of incarceration.
It is the same with education, the modifying power of which is commonly exaggerated. Education, though it has an enduring influence on children, and is therefore more effectual than punishment, is far more serviceable in eliminating anti-social tendencies, whereof we all possess the germs, than in any supposed creation of social tendencies and forces which were not present from birth.
Thus, whilst the consequences of impunity and lack of education are serious and mischievous, still this does not prove conversely that punishment and education have in reality so positive an influence as is commonly attributed to them.
It is precisely on the ground of this negative, yet real efficacy of punishments, especially whilst they are being carried out, that, whilst we appreciate the mitigation of punitive discipline which has been achieved by the classical school, we believe, on the other hand, that their abbreviation of the term of punishments is altogether mistaken and dangerous. We admit that punishment ought not to be an arbitrary and inhuman torture, and for this reason we have no sympathy with the system of solitary confinement, now so much in fashion with the classical