Criminal Sociology | Page 6

concerned merely with the construction of a theory of anthropology or psychology, or a system of criminal statistics, nor merely with the setting of abstract legal theories against other theories which are still more abstract. Our task is to show that the basis of every theory concerning the self-defence of the community against evil-doers must be the observation of the individual and of society in their criminal activity. In one word, our task is to construct a criminal sociology.
For, as it seems to me, all that general sociology can do is to furnish the more ordinary and universal inferences concerning the life of communities; and upon this canvas the several sciences of sociology are delineated by the specialised observation of each distinct order of social facts. In this manner we may construct a political sociology, an economic sociology, a legal sociology, by studying the special laws of normal or social activity amongst human beings, after previously studying the more general laws of individual and collective existence. And thus we may construct a criminal sociology, by studying, with such an aim and by such a method, the abnormal and anti-social actions of human beings--or, in other words, by studying crime and criminals.
Neither the Romans, great exponents as they were of the civil law, nor the practical spirits of the Middle Ages, had been able to lay down a philosophic system of criminal law. It was Beccaria, influenced far more by sentiment than by scientific precision, who gave a great impetus to the doctrine of crimes and punishments by summarising the ideas and sentiments of his age.[1] Out of the various germs contained in his generous initiative there has been developed, to his well-deserved credit, the classical school of criminal law.
[1] Desjardins, in the Introduction to his ``Cahiers des Etats Generaux en 1789 et la Legislation Criminelle,'' Paris, 1883, gives a good description of the state of public opinion in that age. He speaks also of the charges which were brought against the advocates of the new doctrines concerning crime, that they upset the moral and social order of things. Nowadays, charges against the experimental school are cited from these same advocates; for the revolutionary of yesterday is very often the conservative of to-day.
This school had, and still has, a practical purpose, namely, to diminish all punishments, and to abolish a certain number, by a magnanimous reaction of humanity against the arbitrary harshness of mediaeval times. It had also, and still has, a method of its own, namely, to study crime from its first principles, as an abstract entity dependent upon law.
Here and there since the time of Beccaria another stream of theory has made itself manifest. Thus there is the correctional school, which Roeder brought into special prominence not many years ago. But though it flourished in Germany, less in Italy and France, and somewhat more in Spain, it had no long existence as an independent school, for it was only too easily confuted by the close sequence of inexorable facts. Moreover, it could do no more than oppose a few humanitarian arguments on the reformation of offenders to the traditional arguments of the theories of jurisprudence, of absolute and relative justice, of intimidation, utility, and the like.
No doubt the principle that punishment ought to have a reforming effect upon the criminal survives as a rudimentary organ in nearly all the schools which concern themselves with crime. But this is only a secondary principle, and as it were the indirect object of punishment; and besides, the observations of anthropology, psychology, and criminal statistics have finally disposed of it, having established the fact that, under any system of punishment, with the most severe or the most indulgent methods, there are always certain types of criminals, representing a large number of individuals, in regard to whom amendment is simply impossible, or very transitory, on account of their organic and moral degeneration. Nor must we forget that, since the natural roots of crime spring not only from the individual organism, but also, in large measure, from its physical and social environment, correction of the individual is not sufficient to prevent relapse if we do not also, to the best of our ability, reform the social environment. The utility and the duty of reformation none the less survive, even for the positive school, whenever it is possible, and for certain classes of criminals; but, as a fundamental principle of a scientific theory, it has passed away.
Hitherto, then, the classical school stands alone, with varying shades of opinion, but one and distinct as a method, and as a body of principles and consequences. And whilst it has achieved its aim in the most recent penal codes, with a great, and too frequently an excessive diminution of punishments, so in respect of theory, in Italy, Germany, and