As for the cases in which a right to indemnification for judicial
errors ought to be acknowledged, it seems to me evident in the
first place that we must include those of convicted persons found
to be innocent on a revision of the sentence. Amongst persons
wrongfully prosecuted, I think an indemnity is due to those who
have been acquitted because their action was neither a crime nor
an offence, or because they had no part in the action (whence also
follows the necessity of verdicts of Not Proven, so as to
distinguish cases of acquittal on the ground of proved
innocence)--always provided that the prosecuted persons have not
given a reasonable pretext for their trial by their <p 162>own
conduct, or their previous relapse, or their habitual criminality.
The third proposition of the positive school in regard to
individual guarantees, which was also advanced by M. Puglia, is
connected with reform of the penal code, and especially with the
more effectual indemnification of the victims of crime. The
object is to prune the long and constantly increasing list of
crimes, offences, and contraventions of all acts which result in
slight injury, committed by occasional offenders, or ``pseudo-
criminals''--that is, by normal persons acting merely with
negligence or imprudence.
In these cases the personal and social injury is not caused
maliciously, and the agent is not dangerous, so that imprisonment
is more than ever inappropriate, unjust, and even dangerous in its
consequences. Deeds of this kind ought to be eliminated from the
penal code, and to be regarded merely as civil offences, as
__*simple__ theft was by the Romans; for a strict indemnification
will be for the authors of these deeds a more effectual and at the
same time a less demoralising and dangerous vindication of the law
than the grotesque condemnation to a few days or weeks in prison.
It will be understood that the classical theory of absolute
and eternal justice cannot concern itself with these trifles,
which, nevertheless, constitute two-thirds of our daily social and
judicial existence; for, according to this theory, there is always
an offence to be visited with a proportionate punishment, just as
with a murder, or a highway robbery, or a slanderous word.
<p 163>But for the positive school, which realises the actual and
practical conditions of social and punitive justice, there is on
the other hand an evident need of relieving the codes, tribunals,
and prisons from these microbes of the criminal world, by
excluding all punishments by imprisonment for what Venturi and
Turati happily describe as the atomic particles of crime, and by
relaxing in some degree that monstrous network of prohibitions and
punishments which is so inflexible for petty transgressors and
offenders, but so elastic for serious evil-doers.
II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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