Petersburg
(1889). On the contrary, the Congress at Stockholm decided that,
``reserving minor and special punishments for certain slight
infractions of the law, or for such as do not point to the corrupt
nature of their authors, it is desirable to adopt for every prison
system the greatest possible legal assimilation of punishments by
imprisonment, with no difference except in their duration, and the
consequences following upon release.''[20]
[20] Proceedings, i. 138-70, 551-7, 561-3. Now and then,
however, a prison expert of more positive tendencies maintains
``the very great use, or rather the scientific necessity, of the
classification of prisoners as a basis for the punitive and prison
system'' (Beltrani Scalia.)
To positivists, the ``uniformity of punishment,'' even of mere
detention, appears simply absurd, since it ignores the capital
fact of different categories of criminals.
There must be homogeneity between the evil and its remedy; for, as
Dumesnil says, ``the prisoner is a moral (I would add a physical)
patient, more or less curable, and we must apply to him the great
principles of the art of medicine. To a diversity of ills we must
apply a diversity of remedies.
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