The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 by Enrico Ferri
page 27 of 75 (36%)
page 27 of 75 (36%)
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the criminal, will justice guided by science discard the sword which now
descends bloody upon those poor fellow-beings who have fallen victims to crime, and become a clinical function, whose prime object shall be to remove or lessen in society and individuals the causes which incite to crime. Then alone will justice refrain from wreaking vengeance, after a crime has been committed, with the shame of an execution or the absurdity of solitary confinement. On the one hand, human life depends on the word of a judge, who may err in the case of capital punishment; and society cannot end the life of a man, unless the necessity of legitimate self-defense demands it. On the other hand, solitary confinement came in with the second current of the classic school of criminology, when at the same time, in which Beccaria promulgated his ideas, John Howard traveled all over Europe describing the unmentionable horrors of mass imprisonment, which became a center of infection for society at large. Then the classic school went to the other extreme of solitary confinement, after the model of America, whence we adopted the systems of Philadelphia and Harrisburg in the first half of the nineteenth century. Isolation for the night is also our demand, but we object to continuous solitary confinement by day and night. Pasquale Mancini called solitary confinement "a living grave," in order to reassure the timorous, when in the name of the classic school, whose valiant champion he was, he demanded in 1876 the abolition of capital punishment. Yet in his swan song he recognized that the future would belong to the positive school of criminology. And it is this "living grave" against which we protest. It cannot possibly be an act of human justice to bury a human being in a narrow cell, within four walls, to prevent this being from having any contact with social life, and to say to him at the end of his term: Now that your lungs are no longer accustomed to breathing the open air, now that your legs are no longer |
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