THE NEW CRIMINOLOGY 867 



crime, nor does it propose to coax criminals to amend their ways by 

 resorting to the use of flowers, confectionery, and attar of roses. 

 The government is bound to maintain order and to protect life and 

 property. The menace implied in all law-breaking must be met 

 with stern determination to compel obedience to law. The incor- 

 rigible recalcitrant must be eliminated; he must be shorn of his 

 power to injure his fellows. What the new criminology stands for 

 is, in the first instance, discrimination between wrongdoers, and 

 patient tolerance, under surveillance, of such as do not manifest 

 marked or habitual criminal tendencies, and of whose amendment 

 without incarceration there is reasonable hope. This would be se- 

 cured by the more general use of probation of youthful first offenders. 

 It then demands that those who cannot be restrained by purely 

 moral influence exerted outside of prison walls shall be committed 

 for treatment under the indeterminate sentence, not in the spirit of 

 retaliation and revenge, but in order that they may be subjected to an 

 appropriate reformatory discipline, in their own interest and in that 

 of society. It by no means holds that such discipline, however skill- 

 fully devised and applied, is a panacea for crime. It entertains no 

 unsound, sentimental notions of criminal character, conduct, and 

 accountability. It cherishes no illusive expectation that the methods 

 employed will accomplish the impossible ; that all prisoners will yield 

 to them, or that the change actually effected in any individual will 

 transcend certain fairly well-defined limits. But it insists that the 

 convict is entitled to his chance, a chance which possibly he never 

 before had, and that it is the duty of the government to resort to all 

 practicable means for his restoration and rehabilitation. A reform- 

 atory discipline is not a weak and vacillating but an heroic discipline. 

 Of all forms of discipline, it is precisely that which the criminal by 

 choice and not by chance most hates and dreads. The change of 

 habits which it seeks to bring about can only be effected by a judicious 

 mixture of persuasion and compulsion, in which compulsion often 

 must be the chief ingredient. It is bitter to the palate, but it is 

 medicine. 



When persuasion and compulsion both fail, when it becomes 

 apparent that the perversity of the criminal is ineradicable by educa- 

 tion, instruction, or an appeal to his religious beliefs, hopes, and fears, 

 that the law has no terror for him, that he is in love with evil, and that 

 he proposes to return, when released, to his former criminal courses, 

 then, for social protection, but not as a penalty for crime, the new 

 criminology recommends his permanent detention in custody, or for 

 so long at least as he is and continues to be a social peril. 



Strangely enough, it is this feature of the indeterminate sentence 

 which excites prejudice and hostility; which renders judges, steeped 

 in the traditions of a retaliatory penal code, averse to pronouncing it, 



