Criminal Sociology [87]
neighbourhood.
By payment of money. Reparation of damages Deduction from wages. Fine (going to the State) Forced labour, without Indemnification of the victims imprisonment.
Imprisonment for fixed periods for special offences (forgery and outbreaks); or as alternative to indemnification or forced labour. Interdiction of certain professions and public functions.
M. Liszt also, agreeing with the positive school in regard to the necessity of a radical reform in the penal system, yet with certain reservations, has propounded a scheme, which, however, as it does not sufficiently consider various classes of criminals, whom he divides merely into the habitual and the occasional, would need completion, especially in comparison with the well-reasoned scheme of Garofalo. M. Liszt's system is as follows:--
Punishment by fines.
In proportion to the property of the offender--not alternative with For offences (with alternative imprisonment imprisonment).
Capable of being worked out by For contraventions of the law forced labour without imprisonment (without imprisonment).
Conditional sentences.
For first offenders condemned to imprisonment, with or without For offences punishable by sureties for three years imprisonment.
Imprisonment (for an indeterminate period, a maximum and minimum being enacted). Separate confinement--six weeks to two years.
House of detention (separate for 2 to 15 years (with police one year, then gradual relaxation supervision and assistance of discharged prisoners)--or for life.
Indemnifications (always as a civil liability) added to other penalties.
I believe, however, that it is necessary, before laying down practical and detailed schemes, more or less complete, to establish certain general criteria, based upon the anthropological, physical, and social data of crime, such as may lead up to a positive system of social defence.
These fundamental criteria, it seems to me, can be reduced to the three following:--(1) No fixity in the periods of segregation of criminals; (2) the social and public character of the exaction of damages; (3) the adaptation of defensive measures to the various types of criminals.
1. For every crime which is committed, the problem of punishment ought no longer to consist in administering a particular dose, as being proportionate to the moral culpability of the criminal; but it should be limited to the question whether by the actual conditions (breach of law or infliction of injury) and by the personal conditions (the anthropological type of the criminal) it is necessary to separate the offender from his social environment for ever, or for a longer or shorter period, according as he is or is not regarded as capable of being restored to society, or whether it is sufficient to exact from him a strict reparation of the injury which he has inflicted.
Under this head there is a radical contradiction. The existing schemes of punishment, differing in their machinery (and out of harmony with the sentence of the judge, often even with the terms of the law), are all based on the principle of fixed periods of punishment, graduated into hundreds and thousands of possible doses, and have regard far more to the crime than to the criminal. On the other hand we have the positive system of punishment, based on the principle of an unfixed segregation of the criminal, which is a logical consequence of the theory that punishment ought not to be the visitation of a crime by a retribution, but rather a defence of society adapted to the danger personified by the criminal.
This principle of unfixed punishment is not new, but it is only the positive theory which has given it system and life. The idea of justice as assigning punishment to a crime, measured out by days and weeks, is
By payment of money. Reparation of damages Deduction from wages. Fine (going to the State) Forced labour, without Indemnification of the victims imprisonment.
Imprisonment for fixed periods for special offences (forgery and outbreaks); or as alternative to indemnification or forced labour. Interdiction of certain professions and public functions.
M. Liszt also, agreeing with the positive school in regard to the necessity of a radical reform in the penal system, yet with certain reservations, has propounded a scheme, which, however, as it does not sufficiently consider various classes of criminals, whom he divides merely into the habitual and the occasional, would need completion, especially in comparison with the well-reasoned scheme of Garofalo. M. Liszt's system is as follows:--
Punishment by fines.
In proportion to the property of the offender--not alternative with For offences (with alternative imprisonment imprisonment).
Capable of being worked out by For contraventions of the law forced labour without imprisonment (without imprisonment).
Conditional sentences.
For first offenders condemned to imprisonment, with or without For offences punishable by sureties for three years imprisonment.
Imprisonment (for an indeterminate period, a maximum and minimum being enacted). Separate confinement--six weeks to two years.
House of detention (separate for 2 to 15 years (with police one year, then gradual relaxation supervision and assistance of discharged prisoners)--or for life.
Indemnifications (always as a civil liability) added to other penalties.
I believe, however, that it is necessary, before laying down practical and detailed schemes, more or less complete, to establish certain general criteria, based upon the anthropological, physical, and social data of crime, such as may lead up to a positive system of social defence.
These fundamental criteria, it seems to me, can be reduced to the three following:--(1) No fixity in the periods of segregation of criminals; (2) the social and public character of the exaction of damages; (3) the adaptation of defensive measures to the various types of criminals.
1. For every crime which is committed, the problem of punishment ought no longer to consist in administering a particular dose, as being proportionate to the moral culpability of the criminal; but it should be limited to the question whether by the actual conditions (breach of law or infliction of injury) and by the personal conditions (the anthropological type of the criminal) it is necessary to separate the offender from his social environment for ever, or for a longer or shorter period, according as he is or is not regarded as capable of being restored to society, or whether it is sufficient to exact from him a strict reparation of the injury which he has inflicted.
Under this head there is a radical contradiction. The existing schemes of punishment, differing in their machinery (and out of harmony with the sentence of the judge, often even with the terms of the law), are all based on the principle of fixed periods of punishment, graduated into hundreds and thousands of possible doses, and have regard far more to the crime than to the criminal. On the other hand we have the positive system of punishment, based on the principle of an unfixed segregation of the criminal, which is a logical consequence of the theory that punishment ought not to be the visitation of a crime by a retribution, but rather a defence of society adapted to the danger personified by the criminal.
This principle of unfixed punishment is not new, but it is only the positive theory which has given it system and life. The idea of justice as assigning punishment to a crime, measured out by days and weeks, is