This is the only choice for the positivists; for we cannot attach
much importance to the opinion of the German jurists,
Holtzendorff, Geyer, and others, who would do away with perpetual
imprisonment altogether. Professor Lucchini took up this theory
in Italy, saying that the personal freedom of the convict ought to
be limited in its exercise, but not suppressed as a right, and
that imprisonment for life destroys ``the moral and legal
personality of the criminal in one of its most important human
factors, the sociable instinct.'' He added that punishment
``ought not to become exhausted by excess of duration.''
Surely it is not speaking seriously to say that the right of the
individual cannot be suppressed if necessity demands it, when we
see it done every day in cases of legitimate self-defence; and
that punishment is exhausted by excess of duration, when it is
precisely the duration of banishment from one's kind which
constitutes the only real efficacy of punishment; and to speak of
the sociable instinct in connection with the most anti-social
criminals.
And it is only by oblivion of the elementary and least contestable
data of criminal bio-psychology that the exclusion of all life-
punishments can be maintained, on the ground that this perpetuity
``is contrary to the reformative principle of punishment, to the
principle that punishment ought to aim not only at
afflicting the prisoner, but also at arousing in him, if
possible, the moral sense, or at strengthening him, and opening up
to him a path by which he can hope to be readmitted into society,
amended and rehabilitated.
Pages:
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339