Gordon: Well, do you train an animal by locking it up and making it miserable? Will a snake dance for you if you hurt it? Jim Poor (sinking into a chair with assumed weariness): Now, you’ve got him going! Judge Dykeman: Ah, but punishment is an example to others! You cannot deny the deterrent principle. Gordon: Does the procession of convicted men ever halt? Where there was one yesterday, there are two to-day and there will be three to-morrow. Father Creedon (crossing himself): Do not say, Mr. Gordon, that you quarrel with the great principle of Example! Do not forget what one Man, divine, has given us! Gordon: I remember that the Romans crucified that Man as an example. Did they accomplish what they thought to do? So we, instead of making the criminal an example to others, should make our treatment of him the example to the criminal himself. To-day we cannot claim example as our purpose when the life of the murderer is taken in the pale light of dawn, in a little room, and in the presence only of a few scientists. Surely, it is not these that need the warning! If punishment is intended as an example, let us be consistent; let the executions take place in the public parks and let the State declare the occasions holidays. Judge Dykeman: You have forgotten, Gordon, the most important doctrine of all--Protection. Travesty: Yes! Society has the right of self-defense. We are justified in imprisoning such people; even if it does them no good, because it protects Society. Jim Poor: That’s right! Gordon: Only while imprisonment lasts, and in almost every instance it releases them a more dangerous menace than before their incarceration. And all because we deal with crime by a system childishly futile! As well might we sentence the lunatic to three months in an asylum, or the victim of smallpox to thirty days in the hospital, at the end of these periods to turn them loose, whether mad or sane, cured or still diseased. Jim Poor (with great dignity): Now listen to me! You’re going to claim that criminals are mentally diseased. There’s nothing in that idea of their being abnormal. Gordon: They must be! No normal man chooses sickness rather than health, or selects poverty when he might be rich! No one seeks suffering when he could be happy! Why, then, does a man follow crime when it brings him only misery in the end? Jim Poor (with great satisfaction): As some great man once said--I forget who it was--“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Gordon: Apply this very theory of Protection which Judge Dykeman urges. Judge Dykeman: Just so. Protect ourselves against them. Gordon: No! The protection of society would be doubly sure if we applied the great principle rightly. Our criminal law aims to protect society--in this it fails; it should aim to benefit the criminal--in that it could succeed. Father Creedon: You’re right!