THE NEW CRIMINOLOGY 863 



a being to be treated rather than to be punished, and holds that his 

 treatment must be adapted to the individual, in the light of his actual 

 condition and possibilities, and not determined by the criminal label 

 with which he happens to be tagged. It has brought into strong 

 relief the relations between abnormal physiological conditions 

 reacting against a special environment and the crimes which such 

 reaction suggests and induces. The psychological experiences of the 

 criminal are in fact written, in characters more or less legible, more 

 or less obscure, upon his physical frame; and their decipherment is 

 a worthy task, a pursuit which may well absorb the attention of sci- 

 entific investigators. The labors of the criminal anthropologists 

 logically lead to the acceptance and adoption of the indeterminate 

 sentence; but they were little known, and had made no serious 

 impression in America at the date of the creation of the Elmira 

 institution. 



What w r as, in fact, the unsubstantial basis of the vanishing crim- 

 inal code? It was retribution. It was the belief that crime is to be 

 punished because it merits punishment; that the criminal must 

 be made to suffer because he deserves to suffer; that guilt can be 

 removed only by expiation. True it is that crime merits punish- 

 ment, and that the criminal deserves to suffer. Does it follow that 

 I, you, or we are under a moral obligation to inflict this punishment? 

 True it is, that expiation is the antidote to guilt; but is not sorrow, 

 the pain of penitence, more truly expiatory than physical agony? 

 By \vhat are men saved? By despair? Why may not the punish- 

 ment of offenses be left to the slow but sure processes of natural or 

 supernatural law? If it should be said that the reaction against 

 crime, the horror and indignation that it awakens in the human 

 mind, is an integral part of the process, that vengeance is a natural 

 instinct, it is nevertheless a brutal instinct, the same that animates 

 the murderer, and, therefore, to be held in check. The religious 

 instinct is opposed to brutality, forbids retaliation, and enjoins the 

 forgiveness of injuries. In any event it is needless to found impris- 

 onment on the instinct of retaliation, since the reactionary ends of 

 justice are met by the fact of imprisonment, and the treatment 

 accorded to the perpetrator of an unlawful act will be more, not less, 

 effective for good if its conscious aim is not punitive but restorative. 



The criminal code must have a basis. If not retribution, what is 

 it? Social self-defense. Whatever is essential for the protection of 

 social order and security is lawful, whether it be the redemption of the 

 offender, his incapacitation for evil, or his extermination. Whatever 

 transcends this limit is unauthorized in ethics and contrary to public 

 policy. We incapacitate the criminal by confining him in prison. 

 If he can be reformed, this is his right and our duty. If he cannot be 

 reformed, he has forfeited the right to his personal liberty, and 



