Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-09-19
PURPOSE OF PENALTIES
WHEN PUNISHMENT SUCCEEDS
AND WHEN 1T FAILS.

CHICAGO, September 19.-The sessions
of the National Prison Congress were held
yesterday at the University of Chicago.
They consisted, on previous days of
number of papers and addresses relative
to the management of jaiis and prisons.
The chief address was that of Attorney
General Bonaparte, who said:
The primary purpose of punishment Is
to assure obedience to the law: when in
ficting punishment the state looks, not to
the past, but to the future; not to the in
dividual, who has disobeyed and now suf-
fers, but to all the individuals in Ike cases
with him who may hereafter fear to dis
obey by reason of his suffering. The well
fare of society depends, not what hap
pens to those convicted of crime, but
what happens as the result of their con-
viction and chastisement to its innocent
members. The efficacy of any form of pun
ishmcnt, the merits of any accepted prin
ciple or method of criminal law, must
be judged by its results to the community
at large: if 1t diminishes crime and makes
obedience to the law more prompt and
general, then 1t is good thing; its eff
fects on the lawbreakers while worthy
OF note, are of vastly less moment.
When Punishment Fails.
Nevertheless, it is true that punish
ment fails If the criminal remains as dan
gerous to society after he has suffered it
as he was before While the chastisement
OF each particular offender looks to the
betterment, or, at least. the diminished
harmfulness of all possible wrongdoers.
still, as he is himself one of them, and
that one most directly affected by the pen
atty, its effect upon him must have due
weight In considering it's merits.
I'VE have developed a class of men, few,
doubtless, in proportion to the aggregate
population. but, nevertheless. far too many
for our credit or our safety, who pass
very large part of their adult years in one
of liberty only to devise and perpetrate
new crimes, and their periods of confne-
ment only to debauch their fellow prisoners
and to perfect their own education in dew
iltry. The 'habitual criminal Is a product
of modern civilization: our ancestors would
have hanged him for his first felony, or If
by any chance he escaped this fate, he
would have almost surely died of some of
the maladies then endemic in prisons while
awaiting trial for the second.
L would not have men hanged today for
a trifiing theft, nor our prisons dens of
filth and hotbeds Of disease; but I would
have modern society cease to nourish and
shelter its proved and inveterate enemies.
Some years since, in a magazine article on
certain defects in our criminal law, l sug
gested that an attempt to commit capital
crime ought to be made itself capital, when
this should seem proper to the trial Judge,
and also that, when a man has been al
ready thrice convicted of major crimes
upon his conviction for his fourth offense
of the like grade he should be liable, again
in the discretion Of the court. to the death
penalty. AT the time these suggestions ap-
peared to crate upon the nerves of some
among my critics, but l have seen no rea-
son to repent of them.
Severity Often Needful.
Another error is that punishment should
be always measured by the moral guilt of
the offense or, in other words, that in
every case the greater the sin the greater
the crime and the greater the merited pen
atty. This view overloOks the purely ut:li-
tartan purpose of the criminal law; it aims
not to make men virtuous, but to make
them obey the sovereign. The essential
immortality of all crime consists in DISC
bedience to law: he who is called upon to
obey any particular statute may think it
just, wise and beneficent, or he may think
it oppressive foolish and hurtfUl: but his
duty to obey is no less clear and peremp-
tory in the one case than in the other.
Indeed, greater severity of punishment
may be, and often is, needful to assure ODE
dience to a statute whereof many disap-
prove than to a statute heartily sustained
by an undivided public opinion. and 1t is
not infrequently true that the appropriate
punishment is in inverse ratio to the gener-
ally recognized guilt of Che crime; severe
must be threatened, and, when
needful, be inflicted, just because so many
people feel little no scruple of conscience
in committing the offense.
The power to pardon exists and can be
exercised only for the public ben
eft The personal sympathies and inclina-
tons of the officer discharging this duty are
entitled to no consideration whatever; he Is
not forgiving his own debtor, one who has
against him, but public debtor
whose trespass has impaired or endangered
the happiness of the whole community. If
l We're conscious that l had ever advised
I no tn
better reason that because 1 felt sorry for
the prisoner those interested in him,
should feel that my conduct had differed
indeed in degree but not in kind, from
what it would have been had I given such
advice for bribe in money