3. Certain reprehensible actions (abortion, infanticide, suicide or complicity therein, passionate crimes, duelling, swearing, adultery, etc.), which are not considered criminal by the general public, should be non-criminal in the eyes of the law.
4. Born criminals, the morally insane, and hopeless recidivists, whose first convictions are not followed by any signs of improvement, should be regarded as incurable and confined for life in criminal lunatic asylums, relegated to penal colonies, or condemned to death.
A second edition of this book was published shortly afterwards with the title Notes on the New Penal Code. In this edition, each of the most notable adherents of the new doctrines: Ferri, Garofalo, Ballestrini, Rossi, Masé Dari, Carelli, Caragnani, and others, discussed one special point of the code and suggested the necessary modifications.
VI
Prison Palimpsests (I Palimsesti del Carcere)
(A Collection of Prison Inscriptions for the Use of Criminologists)
"Ordinary individuals, and even scientific observers, are apt to regard prisons, especially those in which the cellular system prevails, as mute and paralytical organisms, deprived of speech and action, because silence and immobility have been imposed on them by law. Since, however, no decree, even when backed up by physical force, avails against the nature of things, these organisms speak and act, and sometimes manifest themselves in brutal assaults and murders; but as always happens when human needs come into conflict with laws, all these manifestations are made in hidden and subterranean ways. Walls, drinking-vessels, planks of the prisoners' beds, margins of books, medicine wrappers, and even the unstable sands of the exercise-grounds, and the uniform in which the prisoner is garbed, supply him with a surface on which to imprint his thoughts and feelings."
With this paragraph my father begins the introduction to his book Prison Palimpsests, a collection of inscriptions and documents revealing the inmost thoughts of prisoners.
In the first part, these inscriptions are classified under different headings: opinions on prison life, penalties, morality, women, etc., and according to the surface on which they are inscribed—books, walls, pitchers, clothing, paper, etc.
For the psychologist and the student of degenerate types of humanity, this collection is of the greatest interest. The inscriptions are followed by a series of poems, autobiographies, and letters written by intending suicides, and criminals immediately before their execution. The comments made by criminals on the margins of books belonging to the prison library are especially interesting, because they enable the student to compare the effect produced on criminals by certain works with the impressions of normal individuals. The poems written by prisoners are equally interesting, since, like popular songs, they represent the intimate expression of the poet's desires and aspirations.