These practical reforms, which, when grafted on the old trunk of
the classical theories of crime and punishment, are mere arbitrary
and misplaced expedients, really represent, when they are
logically co-ordinated and completed, the new system of social
defence against crime, which is based on the scientific data
and inductions of the positive school, and which it is therefore
necessary for us to trace out from its foundations.
I.
In the first place, whilst the positive theories largely reduce
the practical importance of the penal code, yet they do more to
increase the importance of the rules of penal procedure, which are
intended to give practical and daily effect to penal measures, for
the defence of society against criminals. For, as I maintained in
the Italian Parliament, if the penal code is a code for evil-
doers, that of penal procedure is a code for honest people,
who are placed on their trial but not yet found guilty.
This is all the more true because, if it is possible to have penal
codes whose machinery of psychological coercion is planted on a
platonic platform of penitentiary systems written out fair in
their symmetrical clauses, but still non-existent, as is the case
in Italy, this is not possible in regard to penal procedure.
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