For on one
side the champions of the classical school plainly see that the
persistent increase of crimes and offences amounts to a
proof of that breakdown of penal systems, practical and
theoretical, which have hitherto been applied--as was admitted by
Holtzendorff. And on the other hand, the increase of crimes is
denied or affirmed for the purpose of supporting or attacking some
particular ministry. For, in parliaments more than elsewhere,
there is always a deep-seated and vivacious prejudice, a kind of
social artificiality, which causes men to think that the condition
of States, moral and economic, is fundamentally determined far
more by the action of this or that government than by natural
factors, which are mainly superior to and outside of governments
and politicians.
And this is why in Italy there has been much discussion of late,
in scientific publications, at the sittings of the Central
Commission of Judicial Statistics, and even in Parliament, as to
whether crime was increasing or decreasing.
Beltrani-Scalia and Lombroso almost simultaneously called
attention to the growth of Italian crime, and they were succeeded
by various adherents of the positive school, such as Ferri,
Garofalo, Pavia, Pugliese, Guidi, Bournet, Barzilai, and Rossi,
who produced evidence that the general tendency of crime in Italy
was to increase, and that the diminutions observed after 1880 were
mere transitory oscillations; and after 1886 they were justified
by facts.
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