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Page 46
[31] Ages at which 507 offenders first began to commit crime--
Under 10 1.5 41 to 45 2.1
11 to 15 17.0 46 to 50 2.3
16 to 20 36.1 51 to 55 2.1
21 to 25 20.1 56 to 60 .8
26 to 30 7.1 61 to 65 .8
31 to 35 5.1 66 to 70 .2
36 to 40 3.6
Marro. _I Caratteri dei delinquente. Studio antropologico-sociologico_,
p. 356.
After the age of manhood has been reached, and the main lines of
character are formed, punitive methods of dealing with criminal
offenders must assume a more prominent position, and the prison should
then take the place of the Reformatory. In youth the deterrent effects
of punishment are small, and the beneficial effects of reformative
measures are at their maximum. In manhood, on the other hand, this
condition of things is reversed, and the deterrent effects of
punishment exceed the beneficial effects of reformative influences. An
interesting example of the value of punishment for adults, as compared
with other methods, is given by Sir John Strachey in his account of
infanticide in certain parts of India. "For many years past," he says,
"measures have been taken in the North-West Provinces for the
prevention of this crime. For a long time, when our civilisation was
less belligerent than it has since become, it was thought that the best
hope of success lay in the removal of the causes which appeared to lead
to its commission, and especially in the prevention of extravagant
expenditure on marriages; but although these benevolent efforts were
undoubtedly useful, their practical results were not great, and it
gradually became clear that it was only by a stringent and organised
system of coercion that these practices would ever be eradicated. In
1870 an act of the legislature was passed which enabled the Government
to deal with the subject. A system of registration of births and deaths
among the suspected classes was established, with constant inspection
and enumeration of children; special police-officers were entertained
at the cost of the guilty communities, and no efforts were spared to
convince them that the Government had firmly resolved that it would put
down these practices, and would treat the people who followed them as
murderers. Although the time is, I fear, distant when preventive
measures will cease to be necessary, much progress has been made, and
there are now thousands of girls where formerly there were none. In the
Mainpuri district, where, as I have said, there was not many years ago
hardly a single Chauh�n girl, nearly half of the Chauh�n children at
the present time are girls; and it is hoped that three-fourths of the
villages have abandoned the practice."[32]
[32] _India_ by Sir John Strachey, pp. 292-3.
These facts speak for themselves and afford an incontestable proof of
the value of punishment as a remedial measure when other remedies have
failed.[33] In the re-action which is now in full force, and rightly
so, against the excessive punishments of past times, there is a marked
tendency among some minds to go to the opposite extreme, and an
attempt is being made to show that imprisonment has hardly any
curative effect at all. Its evils, and from the very nature of things
they are not a few, are almost exclusively elaborated and dwelt upon,
little attention being paid to the vast amount of good which
imprisonment alone is able to effect. It is possible that imprisonment
sends a few to utter perdition at a quicker pace than they would have
gone of their own accord, but on the other hand, it rescues many a man
before he has irrevocably committed himself to a life of crime. If it
fails the first time, it very often succeeds after the second or the
third, and no one is justified in saying imprisonment is worthless as
a reformative agency till it has failed at least three times. According
to the judicial statistics for England and Wales, imprisonment is
successful after the third time in about 80 per cent. of the cases
annually submitted to the criminal courts, and although it is a pity
that the percentage is not higher, yet it cannot fairly be said that
such results are an evidence of failure. The prison is unquestionably
a much less effective weapon for dealing with crime among Continental
peoples, and in the United States, than it has shown itself to be in
Great Britain; but this failure arises in the main from the laxity and
indulgence with which criminals are treated in foreign prisons. A
prison to possess any reformative value must always be made an
uncomfortable place to live in; Continental peoples and the people of
America have to a large extent lost sight of this fact; hence the
failure of their penal systems to stop the growth of the delinquent
population. If, however, imprisonment is not allowed to degenerate
into mere detention, it is bound to act as a powerful deterrent upon
grown-up offenders, and it is the only menace which will effectually
keep many of them within the law. The hope of reward and the fear of
punishment, or, in other words, love of pleasure, and dread of pain,
are the two most deeply seated instincts in the human breast; if Mr.
Darwin's theory be correct, it is through the operation of these
fundamental instincts that such a being as man has come into existence
at all. In any case these instincts have hitherto been the chief
ingredients of all human progress, the most effective spur to energy
of all kinds, and when properly utilised they are the most potent of
all deterrents to crime. Were it possible for the hand of social
justice to descend on every criminal with infallible certainty; were
it universally true that no crime could possibly escape punishment,
that every offence against society would inevitably and immediately be
visited on the offender, the tendency to commit crime would probably
become as rare as the tendency of an ordinary human being to thrust
his hand into the fire. The uncertainty of punishment is the great
bulwark of crime, and crime has a marvellous knack of diminishing in
proportion as this uncertainty decreases. No amelioration of the
material circumstances of the community can destroy all the causes of
crime, and till moral progress has reached a height hitherto attained
only by the elect of the race, one of the most efficient curbs upon
the criminally disposed will consist in increasing the probability of
punishment.
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