A few
days in prison, mostly in association with habitual criminals,
cannot exercise any deterrent influence, especially in the
grotesque minimum of one day, or three days, as provided by the
Dutch, Italian, and other codes. On the contrary, they are
attended by disastrous effects, by destroying the serious
character of justice, relieving prisoners of all fear of
punishment, and consequently driving them to relapse, under the
influence of the disgrace already suffered, and of the corrupting
and compromising association with habitual criminals in prison.
The results of these short terms, indeed, which impose about the
same restriction of liberty as an attack of indigestion, or a
heavy fall of snow, are so manifest that the objection to them is
now almost unanimous, though they still form the basis of the most
recent penal codes.
As to the substitution of other repressive methods in the many
cases of sentence for light offences, theorists and legislators
have proposed domiciliary arrest, sureties, judicial warnings,
compulsory work without imprisonment, conditional suspension of a
sentence or a punishment, qualified banishment. For the moment
there is a marked preference for conditional sentences.
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