The two fundamental conditions of the conditional sentence in
Europe (a slight infraction and a nonrelapsed criminal) do not,
therefore, afford a complete guarantee of the utility of its
application.
It is true that this system tends to fix the attention of the
judge on the personal conditions of the prisoner, requiring him to
decide if the conditional sentence is suitable to the particular
occasion, having regard to the special circumstances of the action
and the individual, apart from the legal limitations of the
offence and of the punishment.
But we know that the crowding of the prisons with persons
condemned to short terms of imprisonment is attended by a grievous
crowding in the courts of prisoners accused of slight offences and
contraventions. Thus it is inevitable that the judges, even apart
from their ignorance of the biological and psychological
characters of the offenders, being compelled to decide ten or
twenty cases every day, cannot fix their attention on the
procession of figures which files past the magic lantern of the
courts, but simply leave them with a ticket bearing the number of
the article which applies, not to THEM, but to their particular
infraction of the law.
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