Yet this conclusion as to the very limited efficiency of punishments, which is forced upon us by facts, and which, as Bentham said, is confirmed by the application of each punitive act, precisely because its previous application did not succeed in preventing crime, is directly opposed to general public opinion, and even to the opinion of jurists and legislators.
On the inception or the growth of a criminal manifestation, legislators, jurists, and public think only of the remedies, which are as easy as they are illusory, of the penal code, or of some new Act of repression. Even if this were useful, which is very problematical, it has the inevitable disadvantage of making men ignore other remedies, far more profitable, albeit more difficult, of a preventive and social kind. And this tendency is so common that many of those who have dwelt upon or accepted the positive movement of the new school, not long after they had admitted that I was in the right, declared impulsively that ``the constant commission of crime arises from the lack of timely repression,'' and that ``one of the chief causes of the growth of crime in Italy is the mildness of our punishments.'' Or else they forgot to ask themselves the elementary question of criminal sociology, whether and how far punishments have a genuinely defensive force. This is just what happens with pedagogues who enter upon long discussions on the various methods and means of <p 97>education, without asking themselves beforehand whether and how far education has the actual power of modifying the temperament and character which heredity stamps upon every individual.
These conclusions take us far beyond the limit of penal severity, and at the same time they suffice to combat the objection commonly raised against those who think, like ourselves, that repressive justice ought to concern itself not with the punishment of past crime, but with the prevention of future crime. For whilst the advocates of severity, and those whom I will call the ``laxativists,'' virtually think (apart from a few platonic statements) only of punishments as remedies of offences, we on the other hand believe that punishments are merely secondary instruments of social self-defence, and remedies ought to be adapted to the actual factors of the offence. And since the social factors are most capable of modification, so we say with Prins that ``for social evils we require social cures.''
M. Tarde, then, was not quite accurate in his remark that my conviction as to the very slight efficacy of punishments is a mere consequence of my ideas on the anthropological and physical character of crime, and that, ``on the contrary, the preponderating importance which he has assigned to the social causes logically debars him from accepting this conclusion.'' As a matter of fact, punishment regarded as a psychological motive so far as it is a legal deterrent, and as a physical motive so far as it implies the confinement of the person condemned, would more naturally belong, in abstract <p 98>logic, to the biological and physical theory of crime. Whereas it is precisely because I recognise the influence of social environment, in addition, that experimental logic convinces me that punishment is not an efficacious remedy of crime, unless forces are applied beforehand to neutralise, or at any rate to counteract, the social factors of crime.
And if this is not a new conclusion, as one of our critics observes by way of reproach—as though it were not one of the characteristics of truth to repeat itself persistently, however much it may be forgotten or even opposed—we must nevertheless remark that it is now repeated with a mass of new observations and definite applications, which give it a force unknown to mere logical deductions.
The classical school has concerned itself simply with mitigation of punishment as compared with medi<ae>val excess; and for this reason, because every age has its own mission, it could not also concern itself with the prevention of crimes, which is far more useful and efficacious. A few isolated thinkers, it is true, wrote a few bold and far-reaching pages on preventive methods in opposition to the numerous volumes on punishment; but their words had no effect upon criminalists and legislators, because science had not yet undertaken the positive and methodical observation of the natural factors of crime.
I will confine myself to a few examples, in order to show that amongst practical men, as amongst public officials and legislators, the illusion that punishments are the true panacea of crime is always predominant. <p 99>
Practical men declare that ``the prohibitive penal law ought to be regarded as the first and most important of preventive laws.'' The pr<e'>fets in their circulars, being concerned about the increase of crime, put forward the most vigilant and severe repression as a sovereign remedy. A counsellor of the French Cour de Cassation writes that ``in a worthy system of social police there is no better guarantee for order and safety than intimidation.'' The Keeper of the Seals, in his report on French penal statistics for 1876, speaking of the continued increase of indecent assaults, comes to the conclusion that ``in any case, only firm and energetic repression can avail against a lamentable increase of crimes against morality.'' And more recently another Keeper of the Seals ended his report on the statistics of 1826 to 1880 by observing that ``the growth of crime can only be opposed by an incessantly vigorous repression.'' M. Tarde agreed with this conclusion, saying that ``if crimes are only, as has been said, railway accidents of a society travelling at full speed, it must not be forgotten that, the faster the train, the stronger must be the brake . . . and it is certain that such a state of affairs demands an increase or a new departure of repression and punishment.''
It may be admitted that our conclusion is not a novelty; but, as Stuart Mill said, there are two ways of effecting useful innovations, to discover what was not known before, or else to repeat with new demonstrations the truths which had been forgotten.
And this illusion as to the influence of punishments <p 100>is so widespread that it is well to inquire into its historic and psychological arguments; for, as Spencer says, in order to decide as to the value of an idea, it is useful to examine its genealogy.