The most striking form which has been taken
by the latter process is the International Union of Penal Law,
which in 1891, two years after its foundation, numbered nearly six
hundred members of various nationalities, and which in the second
clause of its charter, in spite of the varied reservations of a
few members, notably supported the positive theories.
The defects of the penal system inspired by the theories of
the classical school of criminal law, and by the actual
regulations of the classical prison school, may be briefly summed
up. They are, a fallacious scale of moral responsibility;
absolute ignorance and neglect of the physio-psychological types
of criminals; intervals between verdict and sentence on the one
hand, and between the sentence and its execution on the other,
with a consequent abuse of pardons; disastrous practical effects
of corruption and of criminal association in prisons; millions of
persons condemned to short terms of imprisonment, which are
foolish and absurd; and a continuous, inexorable increase of
recidivism.
So that the tribunals of Europe, as M. Prins observed, with the
absolute impersonality of modern justice, allow their sentences to
fall upon unhappy wretches as a tap allows water to fall drop by
drop upon the ground.
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