Perpetuity of punishment excludes this
possibility.''
The framers of the Dutch penal code replied to these observations
of Professor Pols, first in the name of common sense, that
``punishment is not inflicted for the benefit of the prisoner, but
for that of society,'' and secondly, with something of irony, that
``even for the sake of the abolition of capital punishment, and to
prevent a reaction in favour of this punishment, we must uphold
the right of shutting up for ever the few malefactors whose
release would be dangerous.''
It is entirely futile to consider the amendment of criminals as
opposed to imprisonment for life, when it is known that born
criminals, authors of the most serious crimes, for whom such
punishment is reserved, are precisely those whose amendment is
impossible, and that the moral sense attributed to them is only a
psychological fallacy of the classical psychologist, who
attributes to the conscience of the criminal that which he feels
in his own honest and normal conscience.
But it is easy enough to see that this opposition to perpetual
detention, though it has remained without effect, as being too
doctrinaire and sentimental, is only a symptom of the historical
tendency of the classical schools, entirely in favour of the
criminal, and always tending to the relaxation of punishments.
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