258 CHARLTON T. LEWIS 



ether in his pocket without proof that he had no intention of 

 improperly administering it as an anesthetic; each of these is 

 a criminal before the law. If such statutes are enforced, they 

 confound the public sense of justice, and become intolerably 

 oppressive. But they can not be generally enforced, and their 

 empty threats of severity bring law itself into contempt. The 

 constant increase in the list of such offenses, however, adds 

 materially to the number of moral and social victims of the 

 local jails. 



In our modern penal codes, imprisonment has become the 

 usual mode of punishment for almost every crime. The old 

 fashioned spirit of vindictiveness which dictated the infliction 

 of suffering upon offenders has passed away under humane 

 influences. The whipping post, the pillory, mutilations of 

 various kinds, have been superseded by terms of imprisonment, 

 and the tendency of what is called scientific penal legislation is 

 more and more to limit legal penalties to confinement of more 

 or less severity and of greater or less duration. The question of 

 what value there is in imprisonment, therefore, is of pressing 

 importance, yet it can not be said ever to have been satis- 

 factorily investigated. 



If imprisonment on the whole does good, it must be either, 

 first, as a just retribution, the infliction of which satisfies the 

 moral sense of the community; or, secondly, as disarming the 

 enemy of society and so protecting the community against 

 him; or, thirdly, as tending to the conciliation of the character 

 at war with men, by making him fit for citizenship. A proper 

 study of the subject will address itself to the actual efficiency 

 of imprisonment as an agency for each of these three purposes. 



The conception of just punishment, though loosely held 

 and associated vaguely with other ideas, is doubtless the foun- 

 dation of penal law in the minds of most men. Incidentally it 

 is at times insisted that the chief practical value of punishment 

 lies in its deterrent influence. The fear of the penalty is sup- 

 posed to prevent crime. This consideration often influences 

 legislation, and sometimes shapes the sentences passed by 

 courts; but all experience has shown that the real deterrent 

 effectiveness of even the severest penalties is insignificant in 

 its influence upon the volume of crime at large. In fact, it is 



