Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare LombrosoLombroso, Gina
Science
Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso
Lombroso, Gina
Criminal anthropology; Criminology
_Criminals of Passion._ The true criminal of passion suffers more from
remorse than from any penalty the law can inflict. Additional
punishments should be: exile of the offender from his native town or
from that in which the person offended resides; indemnity for the injury
caused, in money, or in compulsory labour if the offender is not
possessed of sufficient means. Recourse should never be had to
imprisonment, which has an injurious effect even upon the better types
of law-breakers; and criminals from passion do not constitute a menace
to society. On the contrary, they are not infrequently superior to
average humanity and are only prompted to crime by an exaggerated
altruism which with care might be turned into good channels.
This applies equally to political offenders, for whom exile is the
oldest, most dreaded, and most efficacious punishment, and the disuse
into which it has fallen does not appear to be justified, since it
admits of graduation, is temporary, and an adequate check on any attempt
at insurrection.
_Criminaloids._ Repeated short terms of detention in prison should be
avoided and other penalties substituted for petty offences against
police regulations, cheating the Customs, etc., when committed by
criminaloids who are not recidivists and have no accomplices. A short
term of imprisonment, which brings this type of offender into contact
with habitual criminals, not only does not serve as a deterrent, but
generally has an injurious effect, because it tends to lessen respect
for the law, and, in the case of recidivists, to rob punishment of all
its terrors; and because criminaloids, when once branded with the infamy
of prison and corrupted by association with worse types, are liable to
commit more serious crimes.
For all minor offences, fines are more efficacious than imprisonment
and, in the case of the poor, should be replaced by compulsory labour at
the discretion of the magistrate. Binding over under a guarantee to make
good the injury done, corporal punishment, confinement to the house,
judicial reprimands and cautions are applicable to offenders of this
type, as is also the system of remitting first offences used in France
with great success by Magnaud. Under this system, the offender is
sentenced to an adequate penalty, which, however, is only inflicted in
the case of recidivation.
An efficacious, and at the same time, more serious method of dealing
with criminaloids, is by means of the probation system and indeterminate
sentence. The offender is sentenced to the maximum penalty applicable to
his particular offence, but it may be diminished after a certain time if
he shows signs of improvement. During this interval he is on probation,
that is, under supervision, much in the same way as juvenile offenders.
The probation system is extensively and successfully adopted in America,
either singly or in conjunction with other penalties, as shown above.
THE PROBATION SYSTEM
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