Criminal Sociology [49]
jurists and prison authorities, precisely because it is inhuman, as well as unwise and needlessly expensive.
It is a psychological absurdity and a social danger, which nevertheless underlies the new Italian penal code, that punishment ought to consist more and more in a short isolation of the prisoner. For, setting aside the well-known results of short punishments, such as corruption and recidivism, it is evident that in this way punishment is deprived of its main element of negative efficiency against crime, as well as of its effect in preventing crime during the incarceration of the criminal.
II.
Since punishments, instead of being the simple panacea of crime which popular opinion, encouraged by the opinions of classical writers on crime and of legislators, imagine them, are very limited in their deterrent influence, it is natural that the criminal sociologist should look for other means of social defence in the actual study of crimes and of their natural origin.
We are taught by the everyday experience of the family, the school, associations of men and women, and the history of social life, that in order to lessen the danger of outbreaks of passion it is more useful to take them in their origin, and in flank, than to meet them when they have gathered force.
Bentham relates that in England the delays caused by hard-drinking couriers, who used to be heavily fined without any good result, were obviated by combining passenger traffic with the postal service. Employers of labour secure industry and the most productive work far more easily by offering a share of the realised profits than by a system of fines. In the German universities, academic jealousies and intolerance have been in great measure overcome by paying the professors in proportion to the number of their pupils, so that the Faculties find it to their interest to engage and encourage the best professors, in order to attract as many students as possible. Thus the activity and zeal of professors, magistrates, and officials would be stimulated if their remuneration depended not only on the automatic test of seniority, but also on the progress displayed by publications, sentences not reversed, settlements not cancelled, and the like. It is better to regulate the disturbing restlessness of children by timely diversions rather than by attempting to repress them in a manner injurious to their physical and moral health. So in lunatic asylums and prisons, work is a better means of order and discipline than chains and castigation. In brief, we obtain more from men by consulting their self-respect and interests than by threats and restraint
If the counteraction of punishment must inevitably be opposed to criminal activity, still it is more conducive to social order to prevent or diminish this activity by means of an indirect and more effective force.
In the economic sphere, it has been observed that when a staple product fails, recourse is had to less esteemed substitutes, in order to supply the natural wants of mankind. So in the criminal sphere, as we are convinced by experience that punishments are almost devoid of deterrent effect, we must have recourse to the best available substitutes for the purpose of social defence.
These methods of indirect defence I have called penal substitutes. But whereas the food substitutes are as a rule only secondary products, brought into temporary use, penal substitutes should become the main instruments of the function of social defence, for which punishments will come to be secondary means, albeit permanent. For in this connection we must not forget the law of criminal saturation, which in every social environment makes a minimum of crime inevitable, on account of the natural factors inseparable from individual and social imperfection. Punishments in one form or another will always be, for this minimum, the ultimate though not very profitable remedy against outbreaks of criminal activity.
These penal substitutes, when they have once been established in the conscience and methods of legislators,
It is a psychological absurdity and a social danger, which nevertheless underlies the new Italian penal code, that punishment ought to consist more and more in a short isolation of the prisoner. For, setting aside the well-known results of short punishments, such as corruption and recidivism, it is evident that in this way punishment is deprived of its main element of negative efficiency against crime, as well as of its effect in preventing crime during the incarceration of the criminal.
II.
Since punishments, instead of being the simple panacea of crime which popular opinion, encouraged by the opinions of classical writers on crime and of legislators, imagine them, are very limited in their deterrent influence, it is natural that the criminal sociologist should look for other means of social defence in the actual study of crimes and of their natural origin.
We are taught by the everyday experience of the family, the school, associations of men and women, and the history of social life, that in order to lessen the danger of outbreaks of passion it is more useful to take them in their origin, and in flank, than to meet them when they have gathered force.
Bentham relates that in England the delays caused by hard-drinking couriers, who used to be heavily fined without any good result, were obviated by combining passenger traffic with the postal service. Employers of labour secure industry and the most productive work far more easily by offering a share of the realised profits than by a system of fines. In the German universities, academic jealousies and intolerance have been in great measure overcome by paying the professors in proportion to the number of their pupils, so that the Faculties find it to their interest to engage and encourage the best professors, in order to attract as many students as possible. Thus the activity and zeal of professors, magistrates, and officials would be stimulated if their remuneration depended not only on the automatic test of seniority, but also on the progress displayed by publications, sentences not reversed, settlements not cancelled, and the like. It is better to regulate the disturbing restlessness of children by timely diversions rather than by attempting to repress them in a manner injurious to their physical and moral health. So in lunatic asylums and prisons, work is a better means of order and discipline than chains and castigation. In brief, we obtain more from men by consulting their self-respect and interests than by threats and restraint
If the counteraction of punishment must inevitably be opposed to criminal activity, still it is more conducive to social order to prevent or diminish this activity by means of an indirect and more effective force.
In the economic sphere, it has been observed that when a staple product fails, recourse is had to less esteemed substitutes, in order to supply the natural wants of mankind. So in the criminal sphere, as we are convinced by experience that punishments are almost devoid of deterrent effect, we must have recourse to the best available substitutes for the purpose of social defence.
These methods of indirect defence I have called penal substitutes. But whereas the food substitutes are as a rule only secondary products, brought into temporary use, penal substitutes should become the main instruments of the function of social defence, for which punishments will come to be secondary means, albeit permanent. For in this connection we must not forget the law of criminal saturation, which in every social environment makes a minimum of crime inevitable, on account of the natural factors inseparable from individual and social imperfection. Punishments in one form or another will always be, for this minimum, the ultimate though not very profitable remedy against outbreaks of criminal activity.
These penal substitutes, when they have once been established in the conscience and methods of legislators,