6GG CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 



whether he should be condilionaliy liberated or continued in solitary 

 continement. To this end an opportunity must be given both by re- 

 straining his liberty until he shall be in solitary confinement or extend- 

 ing it until he shall be conditionally liberated. His actions and the 

 psychologic efifect which this has upon him must determine the future 

 course to be pursued with him. In doubtful cases the conditional liber- 

 ation is the most rational, as it is the most humane. It gives the 

 delinquent an opportunity to reclaim himself, and gives him a guaranty 

 that his attempts at reformation will be well seconded. 



(8) After having returned to society those of whom we have nothing 

 more to fear in the way of criminal offenses, after having taken all 

 necessary precautious for those who are to remain under surveillance 

 and possible return, it is necessary to take steps for those individuals 

 who are by nature rebels and refractory, who reject all ordinary means 

 of reformation, who are delinquents by habitude, and are instinctive 

 criminals. For these individuals their detention, even to solitary con- 

 finement, with severe and hard labor, should be kept up until they give 

 proof of their repentance. If this is refused then we in France and on 

 the continent can only relegate them to a penal colony in a distant 

 ocean or else to vsolitary confinement in one of our home penitentiaries. 

 The relegation of a recidivist or an incorrigible to a penal colony, soli- 

 tary confinement, or some other form of severe punishment, or else 

 treating him as sick or insane and sending of him to a prison asylum ; 

 these are the logical corollaries of the propositions for conditional lib- 

 eration. 



The criminal, conditionally liberated, should be required to report 

 for examination whenever needed, and thus the prisoners who are under 

 condemnation of the law would become physical subjects for the study 

 of crime in its psychologic as well as anthropologic phases, and the 

 prison become as well an asylum and a hospital, affording a clinic for 

 the lawyer, for the doctor, the judge, and the lawniaker. 



M. Alimena called the attention of the congress to the fact that this 

 question liad been discussed for a long time and iu many places by 

 legislators and jurists, and he referred to the first congress of the Inter- 

 national Union of Criminal Law, held at Brussels, in 1889, where the 

 discussion took place upon the thesis presented by Senator Michaud 

 on the law of pardon. He said three methods had been proposed — the 

 conditional sentence, which was enforced iu Belgium ; the suspension of 

 judgment, which was i)racticed in England, America, and Australia ; 

 and finally that of blame, set forth iu the German code, the Kussian, 

 Spanish, Portugese, and in some of the cantons of Switzerland and 

 l)rovinces of Italy, 



M. Drill remarked that the sj'stem of conditional liberation required 

 theexercise of two functions — that of thejudgmentof the court passing 

 upontheguilt of the criminal, and the ulterior or subsequent treatment of 

 the criminal, and that these were functions entirely different and ought 



