REFORMATORY PRISONS. 



601 



perpetual punishment or even death, or, if the criminal be mad 

 or a mattoid, put him into the criminal lunatic asylum. If his 

 offense be political or religious, his punishment must last as long 

 as public opinion is opposed to this form of crime." 



Such, in a nutshell, are the theories which Prof. Lombroso has 

 spent his life in expounding in writing and in speech, for when- 

 ever a specially complex case is brought before the law courts of 

 Italy he is called in to give his scientific opinion, and his acute, 

 shrewd, original, and penetrating judgments would, if collected, 

 form a volume of most interesting and instructive reading, that 

 should cause many a judge, and many a private person too, to 

 hesitate ere pronouncing judgment. Not unfrequently he has 

 found those to be innocent who to all appearances seemed guilty, 

 and those to be guilty who seemed the flower of virtue. His theo- 

 ries are deduced from the most careful and minute observations 

 of criminals and madmen, and it is only by studying these at- 

 tentively and analyzing them that we can discover how and why 

 Prof. Lombroso is convinced of the defects met with in all re- 

 formatories and penal houses, and by what process of selection he 

 has arrived at his conclusions with regard to the evil and its 

 remedies. Unfortunately, the professor, while a lucid and bril- 

 liant speaker, is a somewhat involved and arid writer, and it is no 

 easy task to disentangle his ideas from among his voluminous 

 and multifarious writings. Still, the study of criminal therapeu- 

 tics is too interesting and too important to be neglected. 



Now, Lombroso's cardinal point is, that rather than study 

 crime when it is already mature, we should try to forestall it, if 

 not by removing the cause, which might be impossible, at least 

 by lessening its influence. Of course, we can not minimize such 

 influences as the action of warm climates, the result of race, but 

 we must adapt our laws so as to mitigate their effects by various 

 methods, such as the more careful regulation of prostitution ; the 

 more speedy execution of justice, so that it may better impose on 

 impressionable minds which are apt to forget the cause of the 

 punishment if it follows the deed only after a long lapse of time ; 

 the care not to extend northward the laws which are proper to 

 the south, and vice versa, and this latter especially in regard to all 

 offenses committed against persons. Where conditions are still 

 savage these can be much diminished by thinning the forests, the 

 natural houses and fortresses of malefactors, by the opening up 

 of roads, by the founding of cities and villages on sites of ill 

 fame, as has been done in Italy to extirpate the brigands that in- 

 fested certain districts ; by dissolving all such societies as tend to 

 be secret and are usually nurseries of crime (witness some of the 

 Irish-American so-called patriotic associations), and by helping 

 and encouraging the denunciation of evil-doers. Prof. Lombroso 



VOL. XLIII. 43 



