Chapter IV.
THE MANNER AND PHILOSOPHY OF PUNISHMENT.
The various punishments which are inflicted upon our law breakers are fines, imprisonment, flogging, and death.
Fines produce a very useful means of dealing with persons whose offences show a tendency to crime rather than to actual criminality. In many cases the self-respect of the offender has not been sacrificed, and while under arrest the sense of shame is deeply aroused. The shock from being brought face to face with the law is often sufficient in these persons to check any further tendency towards crime. The imposition of a fine will satisfy the claims of justice and inflict that degree of punishment necessary to fix the idea of abhorrence towards crime in the mind of the offender. In the case of boys charged with petty offences fining is often a most valuable means of punishment. To dismiss with a caution may lead to nothing; to imprison is invariably a most disastrous course to pursue; to flog within a gaol may be too severe but to fine is an excellent method. The parent has to pay the fine, and as the child's offence is generally due to the want of parental control and discipline, the punishment reaches right home and better control for the future generally results. Where parental control is non-existent, and there remains no possibility of creating it, other measures must be taken which will supply a substitute for the discipline of home life.
In some case of theft, minor assault, disturbing the peace, and other offences which indicate a momentary and not very serious lapse of self-control, or perhaps a somewhat vague conception of the supremacy of the law, fines serve all the purposes of justice. A four-fold restitution for all damage done might be taken as a standard to be increased or diminished in exceptional cases. In all these instances the culprit should be made to pay the fine himself even though it should require a fairly lengthy period in which to liquidate it. Section 16 of The New Zealand Criminal Code provides that the Court may exercise its own discretion in imposing a fine upon any person whose offence rendered them liable to a term of imprisonment. There are many cases, however, even of first offenders, in which fining is quite useless.
Imprisonment.—So much has been written describing the various prison systems in vogue in different parts of the world that it is unnecessary to do much more than briefly outline them here.
(1). The congregate system. In which the prisoners are associated together by day or by night or by both. Were the object to convert the prison into a school of crime, no better system could be devised. The standard of the lowest is the standard which must prevail under the congregate system.
(2). The solitary system. The extreme opposite of the congregate system. The prisoners are allowed to have practically no communication with anyone whomsoever. In some countries this system is made indescribably cruel. At Santiago in Chili in one part of the prison the inmates are employed upon useful work under most humane conditions, and yet in another part of the very same building a most barbarous system exists. Mr F. B. Ward (quoted in Penological and Preventive Principles) describes what he saw in 1893:—"In this splendid model institution there are noisome, slimy cells, where daylight never enters, in which human beings are literally buried alive. Under the massive arches of enormously thick walls, where even in the outside rooms perpetual twilight reigns, are inner cells, two feet wide by six feet long, and destitute of a single article of furniture. Until recently, those confined in them were walled in, the bricks being cemented in places over the living tomb. Now there is a thick iron door, which is securely nailed up and then fastened all around with huge clamps, exactly as the vaults are closed in Santiago Cemetery, and over all the great red seal of the Government is placed—not to be removed until the man is dead, or his sentence has expired. The tiny grated window is covered by several thicknesses of closely-woven wire netting, making dense darkness inside, so that the prisoners cannot tell night from day. There is no ventilation except through this netting, and no opening whatever to admit outside air into the tomb. Low down in the iron door, close to the ground, is a tiny sliding panel a foot long by a few inches wide arranged like a double drawer, so that food and water may be slipped in on shallow pans and the refuse removed. Twice in every twenty-four hours this panel is operated, and if the food remains untouched a given number of days, it is known to a certainty that the man is dead, and only then can the door be unsealed, unless his time is up. If the food is not touched for two or three days no attention is paid to it, for the prisoner may be shamming; but beyond a certain length of time he cannot live without eating. Not the faintest sound nor glimmer of light penetrates those awful walls. In the same clothes he wears on entering, unwashed, uncombed, without even a blanket or handful of straw to lie upon he languishes in sickness, lives or dies with no means of making his condition known to those outside. He may count the lagging hours, sleep, rave, curse, pray, long for death, dash his brains out, go mad if he likes—nobody knows it. He is dead to the world and buried though living. They told us that only one man has ever survived a year's sentence there. Those that survive six months are almost invariably drivelling idiots or raving maniacs."
It was under similar conditions to these that the assassin of King Humbert of Italy was incarcerated. Such a system shows a cruel vindictive rage towards the criminal. Terrible as the offender's crime may be, society must deal calmly and not lose self-control or give such an exhibition of its own criminal ferocity.