Dr. Algieri studied the interesting case and came to the diagnosis that there was splinter of bone in the man's brain which had not been noticed in the treatment at the hospital, and that this was the cause of the epilepsy and demoralization of the prisoner. He trepanned a portion of the skull around the old wound and actually found a bone splinter lodged in the man's brain. He removed the splinter, and put a platinum plate over the trepanned place to protect the brain. The man improved, the epileptic fits ceased, his moral condition became as normal as before, and this bricklayer (how about the free will?) was dismissed from the asylum, for he had given proofs of normal behavior for about five or six months, thanks to the wisdom of the doctor who had relieved him of the lesion which had made him epileptic and immoral. If this asylum for insane criminals had not been in existence, he would have ended in a padded cell, the same as another man whom I and my students saw a few years ago in the Ancona penitentiary. The director, an old soldier, said to me: "Professor, I shall show you a type of human beast. He is a man who passes four fifths of the year in a padded cell." After calling six attendants, "because we must be careful," we went to the cell, and I said to that director: "Please, leave this man to me. I have little faith in the existence of human beasts. Keep the attendants at a distance." "No," replied the director, "my responsibility does not permit me to do that."
But I insisted. The cell was opened, and the man came out of it really like a wild beast with bulging eyes and distorted face. But I met him with a smile and said to him kindly: "How are you?" This change of treatment immediately changed the attitude of the man. He first had a nervous fit and then broke into tears and told me his story with the eloquence of suffering. He said that he had some days in which he was not master of himself, but he recognized that he was good whenever the attacks of temper were over. Without saying so, he thus invoked the wisdom of human psychology for better treatment. There is indeed a physician in those prisons, but he treats generally only the ordinary diseases and is not familiar with special psychological knowledge. There may be exceptions, and in that case it is a lucky coincidence. But the prison doctor has also his practice outside and hurries through his prison work. "They simulate sickness in order to get out of prison," he says. And this will be so all the more that the physicians of our time have not sufficient training in psychology to enable them to do justice to the psychology of the criminal.
You must, therefore, give a scientific management to these institutions, and you will then render humane even the treatment of those grave and dangerous criminals, whose condition cannot be met by a simple compensation of the injury they have done to others.
This is the function of repression as we look upon it, an inevitable result of the positive data regarding the natural origin of crime.
We believe, in other words, that repression will play but an unimportant role in the future. We believe that every branch of legislation will come to prefer the remedies of social hygiene to those symptomatic remedies and apply them from day to day. And thus we come to the theory of the prevention of crime. Some say: "it is better to repress than to prevent." Others say: "It is better to prevent than to repress." In order to solve this conflict we must remember that there are two widely different kinds of repression. There is the immediate, direct empirical repression, which does not investigate the cause of criminality, but waits until the crime is about to be committed. That is police prevention. There is on the other hand a social prevention which has an indirect and more remote function, which does not wait until crime is about to be committed, but locates the causes of crime in poverty, abandoned children, trampdom, etc, and seeks to prevent these conditions by remote and indirect means. In Italy, prevention is anonymous with arrest. That is to say, by repression is understood only police repression. Under these circumstances, it is well to take it for granted that some of the expected crimes will be carried out, for crimes are not committed at fixed periods after first informing the police. The damage done by criminality, and especially by political and social criminality, against which police repression is particularly directed, will be smaller than that done by the abuse inseparably connected with police power. In the case of atavistic criminality, prevention does not mean handcuffing of the man who is about to commit a crime, but devising such economic and educational measures in the family and administration as will eliminate the causes of crime or attenuate them, precisely because punishment is less effective than prevention.
In other words, in order to prevent crime, we must have recourse to measures which I have called "substitutes for punishment," and which prevent, the development of crime, because they go to the source in order to do away with effects.
Bentham narrates that the postal service in England, in the 18th century, was in the hands of stage drivers, but this service was not connected with the carrying of passengers, as became the custom later. And then it was impossible to get the drivers to arrive on time, because they stopped too often at the inns. Fines were imposed, imprisonment was resorted to, yet the drivers arrived late. The penalties did not accomplish any results so long as the causes remained. Then the idea was conceived to carry passengers on the postal stages, and that stopped the drivers from being late, because whenever they made a halt, the passengers, who had an interest in arriving on time, called the drivers and did not give them much time to linger. This is an illustration of a substitute for punishment.
Another illustration. In the Middle Ages, up to the eve of our modern civilization, piracy was in vogue. Is there anything that was not tried to suppress piracy? The pirates were persecuted like wild beasts. Whenever they were caught they were condemned to the most terrible forms of death. Yet piracy continued. Then came the application of steam navigation, and piracy disappeared as by magic. And robbery and brigandage? They withstood the death penalty and extraordinary raids by soldiers. And we witness today the spectacle of a not very serious contest between the police who wants to catch a brigand, Musolino; and a brigand who does not wish to be caught.
Wherever the woods are not traversed by railroads or tramways, brigandage carries on its criminal trade. But wherever railroads and tramways exist, brigandage is a form of crime which disappears. You may insist on death penalties and imprisonment, but assault and robbery will continue, because it is connected with geographical conditions. Use on the other hand the instrument of civilization, without sentencing any one, and brigandage and robbery will disappear before its light. And if human beings in large industrial centers are herded together in tenements and slum hotels, how can a humane judge aggravate the penalties against sexual crimes? How can the sense of shame develop among people, when young and old of both sexes are crowded together in the same bed, in the same corrupted and corrupting environment, which robs the human soul of every noble spark?
I might stray pretty far, if I were to continue these illustrations of social hygiene which will be the true solution of the problem and the supreme systematic, daily humane, and bloodless remedy against the disease of criminality. However, we have not the simple faith that in the near or far future of humanity crimes can ever be wholly eradicated. Even Socialism, which looks forward to a fundamental transformation of future society on the basis of brotherhood and social justice, cannot elevate itself to the absolute and naive faith that criminality, insanity, and suicide can ever fully disappear from the earth. But it is our firm conviction that the endemic form of criminality, insanity, and suicide will disappear, and that nothing will remain of them but rare sporadic forms caused by lesion or telluric and other influences.