I will
return to this when I trace the outline of the positive system of
social defence against criminals.
The positive school, precisely because it aims at an equilibrium
between individual and social rights, is not content with taking
the part of society against the individual. It also takes the
part of the individual against society.
In the first place, the very reforms which we propose for the
indemnification of the victims of crime, regarded as a social
function, as well as the operation of the punishment, have an
individualist character. The individualism of the classical
school was not even complete as a matter of fact; for the
guarantees which it proposed took account of the individual
criminal only, and did not touch his victims, who are also
individuals, and far more worthy of sympathy and protection.
But, beyond this, we may point to three reforms as an instance of
the positive and reasonable guarantees of the individual against
the abuse or the defects of social authority. Of these
reforms two have been put forward by the classical school also,
but, like criminal lunatic asylums, alternatives for short terms
of imprisonment, and so on, they have generally remained
inoperative, for they are not in harmony with the bulk of
traditional theory, and only in a positive system have they any
organic and efficacious connection with the data of criminal
sociology.
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