Thus we find that France, after the proposals of Michaux, Petit,
and Migneret, and especially after the advocacy of M. Reinach,
followed by several publications of a like kind, agreed to the law
of 1885 on the treatment of recidivism.
Messrs. Murray Brown and Baker spoke at the <p 253>Prison Congress
at Stockholm and at the Soci<e'>t<e'> G<e'>n<e'>rale des Prisons
at Paris, of the system of cumulative and progressive sentences
adopted, though not universally, in England with respect to
hardened criminals. The term of imprisonment is increased, almost
regularly, on each new relapse. This is the system which had
already been suggested by Field and Walton Pearson at the Social
Science Congress in October, 1871, and subsequently by Cox and
Call, who was head of the police at Glasgow, at the Congress of
1874, and which, as Mr. Movatt pointed out, was adopted in the
Indian penal code, and had been established in Japan by a decree
fixing perpetual imprisonment after the fourth relapse.
The delegate from Canada at the Prison Congress at Stockholm
testified that short terms of imprisonment increased the number of
offences. ``After a first sentence many offenders in this class
become professional criminals. Professional thieves, who are
habitual offenders, ought, with few exceptions, to be sentenced to
imprisonment for life, or for a term equivalent to the probable
remainder of their life.'' The draft Russian code, in 1883,
provides that, ``If it is found that the accused is guilty of
several offences, and that he has committed them through habitual
criminality, or as a profession, the court, when deciding upon the
punishment in relation to the different crimes, may increase it,''
&c. And the Italian penal code, though with much timidity, has
decreed a special increase of punishment for prisoners ``who have
relapsed several times.''
<p 254>
Quite recently, Senator B<e'>renger introduced a measure in France
``on the progressive increase of punishment in cases of relapse,''
which became law on March 26, 1891, under the title of ``the
modification and increase of punishments.''
It is therefore very probable that even the classical criminalists
will end by accepting the indefinite seclusion of hardened
criminals, as they have already come to accept criminal lunatic
asylums, though both ideas are opposed to the classical theories.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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