CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 665 



tion can correct any erroneous verdict or judgment or work any reduc- 

 tion of the term of imprisonment. 



(5) The proposed law of conditional condemnation is upon the same 

 principle as that of conditional liberation. It corresponds somewhat 

 to the practice prevailing in some States of the United States of sus- 

 pension of sentence during the indefinite period of good behavior. 

 It is a measure generous and wise, is addressed to delinquents of 

 tender years, — those who have been arrested for the first time, who may 

 be the victims of circumstances, who are without criminal intent, and 

 who, if the sentence be suspended, would probably never be guilty of 

 the oS'ense again, while, if their sentence should now be carried into 

 execution, it would almost certainly result in the loss to society of one 

 who might become an honest and respected member thereof, and gain 

 in his place he who might easily become a hardened criminal. But the 

 application of this principle is or will be surrounded by researches ex- 

 tremely delicate, which ought to be highly scientific and so length- 

 ened as to include the antecedents of the delinquent, his life, his 

 raising, his surroundings, and to get if possible into the interior of his 

 soul. Tlie word ''delicate" has been used, and truly this is necessary, 

 for the responsibility is great, for as the judge may by refusal to sus- 

 pend sentence lose a member of good society, so also he may by a sus- 

 pension of sentence grant indulgence to unworthj' subjects and be 

 deceived by hypocritical pretenses and promises, crocodile tears manu- 

 factured for the occasion and practiced upon him by a hardened and 

 instinctive criminal. 



(6) The instinctive delinquency of the young criminal is not abso- 

 lutely in relation with the enormity of the crime. This imposes upon 

 the jurist the necessity of a proper selection from among the arrested 

 as well as among those imprisoned as to whom, injustice, to apply the 

 different systems of treatment. The operation of these two systems, 

 the one of which operates upon those subjects which can possibly be 

 reformed, the other with the prolonged and continued punishment and 

 incarceration, even in solitary confinement, of incorrigible subjects, who, 

 if allowed their liberty in the least degree, will use it onl}' for the con- 

 tamination of their fellow-prisoners and the prei)aration and arrange- 

 ment for themselves to enter into a wider sphere of crime upon their 

 release. These are the foundations of the two systems. 



(7) Individualization is necessary in order to recognize and class the 

 delinquents, and to determine whether the medicine to be administered 

 to him for his cure should be of incarceration or liberation. Sometimes 

 it might be better to adopt the plan of solitary confinement in order to 

 conduct properly this individualization. An anthropologic examina- 

 tion or a psychologic analysis may not be sufiicient to determine to 

 which class he should belong, and therefore he should be tried under 

 different conditions, always bringing out his real and heartfelt senti- 

 ment, thus enabling one to determine to which class he belongs and 



