Amongst barbarous peoples, on whom prison makes but slight impression, or in primitive communities that do not possess criminal asylums, penitentiaries, and other means of social defence and redemption, the death penalty has always been considered the most certain and at the same time the most economical means of common protection. But criminal anthropologists realise that the desire to abolish this penalty, which so often finds expression in civilised countries, arises from a noble sentiment and one they have no wish to destroy.
Capital punishment, according to the opinion of my father, should only be applied in extreme cases, but the fear of it, suspended like a sword of Damocles above their heads, would serve as a check to the murderous proclivities displayed by some criminals when they are condemned to perpetual imprisonment.
We have, it is true, no right to take the lives of others but if we refuse to recognise the legitimacy of self-defence, exile and imprisonment are equally unjustifiable.
When we realise that there exist beings, born criminals, who are organised for evil, who reproduce the instincts common to the wildest savages and even those of ferocious carnivora, and are destined by nature to injure others, our resentment becomes softened; but notwithstanding our sense of pity, we feel justified in demanding their extermination when they prove to be dangerous and absolutely irredeemable.
Penalties Proposed by the Modern School
The following tables, compiled by Senator Garofalo, a celebrated jurist of the Modern School and inserted in Criminal Man, vol. iii, show the distribution of penalties systematically arranged.
I. Born Criminals who are utterly devoid of the sentiment of pity.
| Offender | Crime | Penalty | ||
| Murderers exhibiting moral insensibility and instinctive cruelty, convicted of | Murder for lucre or some other egotistical object Murder without provocation on the part of the victim Murder with ferocious execution | Prison, penal colony, criminal insane asylum, or capital punishment if recidivists. |
II. Violent and Impulsive Criminals, Criminaloids, and those guilty through insufficiency of pity, of decency, of inhibitory power, and through prejudiced notions of honor.