Punishment, in fact, by its special
effect as a legal deterrent, acting as a psychological motive,
will clearly be unable to neutralise the constant and hereditary
action of climate, customs, increase of population, agricultural
production, economic and political crises, which statistics
invariably exhibit as the most potent factors of the growth or
diminution of criminality.
It is a natural law that forces cannot conflict or neutralise each
other unless they are of the same kind. The fall of a body cannot
be retarded, changed in direction or accelerated, save by a force
homogeneous with that of gravity. So punishment, as a
psychological motive, can only oppose the psychological factors of
crime, and indeed only the occasional and moderately energetic
factors; for it is evident that it cannot, as a preliminary
to its application, eliminate the organic hereditary factors which
are revealed to us by criminal anthropology.
Punishment, which has professed to be such a simple and powerful
remedy against all the factors of crime, is therefore a panacea
whose potency is far beneath its reputation.
We must bear in mind a fact which is familiar enough, though it
has been too often forgotten by legislators and criminalists.
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