And they will also be more
possible and practical than that universal social metamorphosis,
direct and uncompromising, insisted on by generous but impatient
reformers, who scorn these substitutes as palliatives because
humanitarian enthusiasm causes them to forget that social
organisms, like animal organisms, can be only partially and
gradually transformed.
The idea of these penal substitutes amounts, in short, to this.
The legislator, observing the origins, conditions, and effects of
individual and collective activity, comes to recognise their
psychological and sociological laws, whereby he will be able to
obtain a mastery over many of the factors of crime, and especially
over the social factors, and thus secure an indirect but more
certain influence over the development of crime. That is to say,
in all legislative, political, economic, administrative, and penal
arrangements, from the greatest institutions to the smallest
details, the social organism will be so adjusted that human
activity, instead of being continually and unprofitably menaced
with repression, will be insensibly directed into non-criminal
channels, leaving free scope for energy and the satisfaction of
individual needs, under conditions least exposed to violent
disturbance or occasions of law-breaking.
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