For incorrigible habitual offenders it is absolutely necessary
that the trial on the last charge shall not definitely determine
the treatment of the offender, but that the decision shall be
carried on to a further inquiry, which shall have regard to the
offender personally, to his past, and to his conduct during a
fixed period of observation.
It is now necessary to inquire what form the perpetual or
indefinite segregation of the criminal should assume.
Two great innovations in regard to prisons, as M. Tarde observes,
have been made or developed within the past century, which are not
yet adopted in every country: penal colonies, whereof
transportation is only a factor, and the prison cell. The cell
has assumed a leading position since it was brought over from
America to Europe, where, however, the cellular prisons of St.
Michael at Rome, and of Gand, had preceded it.
The cellular system, a product of the reaction against the
enormous physical and moral putrefaction of the inmates of common
prisons and labour establishments, may have had, and doubtless
still has many advocates, amongst other reasons for the spirit of
pietism and religious penitence which always goes with it; but it
is open to strong criticism.
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