When, in 1810, Franz Joseph Gall said: "The measure of culpability and
the measure of punishment can not be determined by a study of the
illegal act, but only by a study of the individual committing it," he
expressed an idea which has, in late years, come to be regarded as a
trite truism. This called forth as an unavoidable consequence a more
lively interest on the part of various social agencies in the
personality of the criminal, with the resultant gradually increasing
conviction that the suppression of crime is not primarily a legal
question, but is rather a problem for the physician, sociologist, and
economist. Whatever light has been thrown in recent years upon this most
important social problem, criminality, did not issue from a
contemplation of the abstract and more or less sterile theses on crime
and punishment as reflected in current works on criminal law and
procedure, but was the result of research carried on at the hands of the
physician, especially the psychopathologist, sociologist, and
economist. The slogan of the modern criminologist is, "intensive study
of the individual delinquent from all angles and points of view", rather
than mere insistence upon the precise application of a definite kind of
punishment to a definite crime as outlined by statute. Indeed, the whole
idea of punishment is giving way to the idea of correction and
reformation. This radical change of tendency cannot be looked upon as a
mere misdirected sentimentality on the part of modern society, but is
the inevitable result of the final conviction that the solely punitive
criminology upon which society has been relying in its efforts to
eradicate criminal behavior from its midst has proved a total failure.
The idea of punishment as a deterrent of crime is, as a consequence,
gradually losing its hold upon modern criminologists, and in its stead
we have been experimenting for some time past with such measures as
probation, suspended or indeterminate sentence, and parole. Now it can
not be too strongly emphasized that in giving these measures a fair
trial we ought to guard against those very same grave errors which were
chiefly responsible for the failure of the old, solely punitive methods,
namely, the dealing with the criminal act rather than with the
individual committing it. If these new measures of probation, suspended
sentence, and parole, which are perfectly adequate in theory, are to
justify their existence in the practical everyday handling of the
problem of criminology, we must not fail to take into full account the
very obvious natural phenomenon that human beings vary within very wide
limits in their susceptibility to correction or reformation, that some
individuals because of their psychological make-up, either qualitative
or quantitative, are absolutely and permanently incorrigible and present
a problem which can be dealt with in only one effective way--namely,
permanent segregation and isolation from society. It is on this very
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