It is just from these laws of social physiology and pathology that
we derive the notion of penal substitutes, which at the same time
we must not dissociate from the law of criminal saturation. For
if it is true that by modifying the social factors we can produce
an effect on the development of crime, and especially of
occasional crime, it is also true, unfortunately, that in every
social environment there is always a minimum of inevitable
criminality, due to the influence of the other factors, biological
and physical. Otherwise we might easily fall into the opposite
and equally fallacious illusion of thinking that we could
absolutely suppress all crimes and offences. For it is easy to
reach on one side the empiric idea of penal terrorism, and on the
other side the hasty and one-sided conclusion that to abolish some
particular institution would get rid of its abuses. The fact is
that we must consider before all things whether it is not a less
evil to put up with institutions, however inconvenient, and to
reform them, than to forfeit all the advantages which they afford.
And it must above all be borne in mind that as society cannot
exist without law, so law cannot exist without offences against
the law.
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