“Nor can I admit that the object of the law is the upholding of the present state of things. The law aims at reforming—”
“A nice kind of reform, in a prison!” Nekhludoff put in.
“Or removing,” Rogozhinsky went on, persistently, “the perverted and brutalised persons that threaten society.”
“That’s just what it doesn’t do. Society has not the means of doing either the one thing or the other.”
“How is that? I don’t understand,” said Rogozhinsky with a forced smile.
“I mean that only two reasonable kinds of punishment exist. Those used in the old days: corporal and capital punishment, which, as human nature gradually softens, come more and more into disuse,” said Nekhludoff.
“There, now, this is quite new and very strange to hear from your lips.”
“Yes, it is reasonable to hurt a man so that he should not do in future what he is hurt for doing, and it is also quite reasonable to cut a man’s head off when he is injurious or dangerous to society. These punishments have a reasonable meaning. But what sense is there in locking up in a prison a man perverted by want of occupation and bad example; to place him in a position where he is provided for, where laziness is imposed on him, and where he is in company with the most perverted of men? What reason is there to take a man at public cost (it comes to more than 500 roubles per head) from the Toula to the Irkoatsk government, or from Koursk—”
“Yes, but all the same, people are afraid of those journeys at public cost, and if it were not for such journeys and the prisons, you and I would not be sitting here as we are.”
“The prisons cannot insure our safety, because these people do not stay there for ever, but are set free again. On the contrary, in those establishments men are brought to the greatest vice and degradation, so that the danger is increased.”