The Positive School of Criminology

studies the painful and dangerous phenomena of criminality. We must now draw the logical conclusions, in theo

la "Science for life's sake." For it would be useless for the human mind to retreat into the vault of philosophical concentration, if

re, but has produced but a few pages on the prevention of criminality." The historical mission of that school consisted in a reduction of punishment. For being born on the eve of the French revolution in the name of individualism and natural rights, it was a protest against the barbarian penalties of the Middle Ages. And thus the practical and glorious result of the classic school was a propaganda for the abolition of the most brutal penalties of the Middle Ages, such as the death penalty, torture, mutilation. We in our turn now follow up the practical and scientific mission of the classic school of criminology with a still more noble and fruitful mission by adding to the problem of the diminution of penalties the problem of the diminution of crimes. It is w

ute justice has the right to punish, but a right modified by the interests of civilized life in present society. This is the point discussed in Italy in the celebrated controversy between Pasquale Stanislao Mancini and Terencio Mamiani, in 1847. This is in substance the theory followed by the classic criminologists who revised the penal code, which public opinion considers incapable of protecting society against the dangers of crime. And we have but to look about us in the realities of contemporaneous life in order to see that the criminal code is far from being a remedy against crime, that it remedies nothing, because either premeditation or passion in the person of the criminal deprive the criminal law of all prohibitory power. The deceptive faith in the efficacy of criminal law still lives in the public mind, because

ent expression of the forces of the intellect and pervades so large a part of human life, is certainly to blame for the fact that mankind chooses to use belated remedies rather than to observe the laws of health, which demand a greater methodical control of one's actions and more foresight, because the remedy must be applied before the disease becomes apparent. I say occasionally that human society acts in the matter of criminality with the same lack of forethought that most people do in the matter of tooth-ache. How many individuals do not suffer from tooth-ache, especially in the great cities? And yet any one

ers in society. When crimes become manifest, the legislator knows no other remedy but imprisonment in order to punish an evil which he should have prevented. Unfortunately this scientific conviction is not yet rooted and potent in the minds of the legislators of most of the civilized countries, because they represent on an average the backward scientific convictions of one or two previous generations. The legislator who sits in p

eria, tuberculosis, etc, more or less absurd remedies were demanded of the science of medicine. I remember, for instance, that I was compelled in my youth, during an epidemic of cholera, to stay in a closed room, in which fumigation was carried on with substances irritating the bronchial tubes and lungs without killing the cholera microbes, as was proved later on. It was not until the real causes of those infectious diseases were discovered, that efficient remedies could be employed against them. An aqueduct given to a center of population like Naples is a bet

no better remedy than an intensification of punishment meeted out by the penal code. If one year of imprisonment is not enough, we'll make it ten years, and if an aggravation of the ordinary penalty is not enough, we'll pass a law of exception. It is always the blind trus

f repressive justice. The classic school has for a cardinal remedy against crime a preference for one kind of punishment, namely imprisonment, and gives fixed and prescribed doses of this remedy. It is the logical conclusion of r

itable in spite of the application of the rules of social prevention, should be widely dif

has become a laughing stock, because this victim is systematically forgotten. The whole attention of the classic school has been concentrated on the juridical entity of the crime. The victim of the crime has been forgotten, although this victim deserves philanthropic sympathy more than the criminal who has done the harm. It is true, every, judge adds to the sentence the formula that the criminal is responsible for the injury and the costs to another authority. But the

entence of 1000 lire by 100 days in prison, and in the meantime the innocent family that tearfully waits for him outside, would be plunged into desperate straits. Compensation for damages should never take place in any other way than by means of the labor of the prisoner to an ext

al criminals, of by persons inclining toward crime from acquired habit or mental alienation, the positive school of criminology reserves segreg

h truth in it, that even the most orthodox of the classic school admit it, for instance in the case of criminals under age. Now, if an indeterminate sentence is a violation of the principles of the classic school, I cannot understand why it can be admitted in the case of minors, but not in the case of adults. This is evidently an expedient imposed by the exigencies of practical life, and only the positive school of criminology can meet them by a logical systematization. For the rest, indefinite segregation, such as we propose for the most dangerous atavistic criminals, is a measure which is already in use for ordinary lunatics as well us for criminal

ct him to surveillance by the police, and send him to prison from whence he will go out more corrupted than he was on entering it. It is absurd to impose segregation in prison for small errors. Compensation for injuries is enough. For the segregation of the graver criminals, the management must be as scientific as it is now in insane asylums. It is absurd to place an old pensioned soldier or a hardened bureaucrat at the head of a penal institution. It is enough to visit one of those compulsory human beehives and to see how a military discipline carries a brutal hypocrisy into it. The management of such institutions must be scientific, and the care of their inmates must be scientific, since a grave crime is always a manifestation of the pathological condi

sed to do. Dr. Algieri, the director of this asylum, showed us among others a very interesting case. This was a man of about 45, whose history was shortly the following: He was a bricklayer living in one of the cities of Toscana. He had been a normal and honest man, a very

honest in his family life, and was finally sentenced for a grave assault in a saloon brawl. He was condemned as a common criminal to I don't know how many years of imprisonment. But in prison, the exceptional conditions of seclusion brought on a deterioratio

pileptic fits ceased, his moral condition became as normal as before, and this bricklayer (how about the free will?) was dismissed from the asylum, for he had given proofs of normal behavior for about five or six months, thanks to the wisdom of the doctor who had relieved him of the lesion which had made him epileptic and immoral. If this asylum for insane criminals had not been in existence, he would have ended in a padded cell, the same as another man whom I and my students saw a few years a

he had some days in which he was not master of himself, but he recognized that he was good whenever the attacks of temper were over. Without saying so, he thus invoked the wisdom of human psychology for better treatment. There is indeed a physician in those prisons, but he treats generally only the ordinary diseases and is not familiar with special psychological knowledge. There ma

then render humane even the treatment of those grave and dangerous criminals, whose co

upon it, an inevitable result of the positiv

ality, but waits until the crime is about to be committed. That is police prevention. There is on the other hand a social prevention which has an indirect and more remote function, which does not wait until crime is about to be committed, but locates the causes of crime in poverty, abandoned children, trampdom, etc, and seeks to prevent these conditions by remote and indirect means. In Italy, prevention is anonymous with arrest. That is to say, by repression is understood only police repression. Under these circumstances, it is well to take it for granted that some of the expected crimes will be carried out, for cr

hich I have called "substitutes for punishment," and which prevent, the develo

ime, because they stopped too often at the inns. Fines were imposed, imprisonment was resorted to, yet the drivers arrived late. The penalties did not accomplish any results so long as the causes remained. Then the idea was conceived to carry passengers on the post

were caught they were condemned to the most terrible forms of death. Yet piracy continued. Then came the application of steam navigation, and piracy disappeared as by magic. And robbery and brigandage? They withstood the

cause it is connected with geographical conditions. Use on the other hand the instrument of civilization, without sentencing any one, and brigandage and robbery will disappear before its light. And if human beings in large industrial centers are herded together in tenements and slum hotel

he near or far future of humanity crimes can ever be wholly eradicated. Even Socialism, which looks forward to a fundamental transformation of future society on the basis of brotherhood and social justice, cannot elevate itself to the absolute and naive faith that criminality, i

, in order to remove the cause and do away with the effects. The same problem confronts us in criminology. In the society of the future we shall undertake this work of social hygiene, and thereby we shall remove the epidemic forms of criminality. And nine-tenths of the crimes will then disappear, so that nothing will remain of them but exceptional cases. There will remain, for instance, such cases as that of the bricklayer which I mentioned, because there may always be accidents, no matter what may be the form of social

inality known as the Camorra in this city, which has taken root here just as stabbing affrays have in certain centers of Turin, and the Mafia in certain centers of Sicily. In the first place, we must not be wilfully blind to facts and refuse to see that the citizens will protect themselves,

. But can we believe that the courageous work of a few public writers has touched the roots of the Camorra in this city? It would be

nward march of civilization, which will paralyze the historical manifestations of social criminality. Here, then, we have a city in which some hundred thousand people rise every morning and do not know how to get a living, who have no fixe

, a military discipline held the members of the tribe together. But war, while useful in primitive soci

truments of production is displaced by communal property, family property, and finally individual property. During these stages, humanity passes from individual and isolated labor in collective, associated, co-ordinated labor. The remains of the neolithic epoch show us the progress of the first workshops, in which our ancestors gathered and fashioned their primitive tools and arms. They give us an idea of associated and common labor, which then becomes the great uplifting energy, because, unlike war, it does not carry within itself a disdain or violation of the rights of others. Labor is the sole perennial energy of mankind whi

Unless the remedy of social reforms accompanies the development and protection of labor; unless justice is assured to every member

s not adequate to cure such a natural and social phenomenon as crime, which has its own natural and social causes. The measures for the preservation of society against criminality must be

ion to every high ideal, I tender you my sincere thanks. As a man and a citizen, I thank you, because these three lectures have been for me a fountain of youth, of faith, of enthusiasm. Thanks to them I return to the other fields of my daily occupation with a greater