That is very natural. If you consider the great reform
carried by the ideas of Cesare Beccaria into the criminal justice of
the Middle Age, you will see that the great classic school represents
but a small step forward, because it leaves the penal justice on the
same theoretical and practical basis which it had in the Middle Age and
in classic antiquity, that is to say, based on the idea of a moral
responsibility of the individual. For Beccaria, for Carrara, for their
predecessors, this idea is no more nor less than that mentioned in books
47 and 48 of the Digest: "The criminal is liable to punishment to the
extent that he is morally guilty of the crime he has committed." The
entire classic school is, therefore, nothing but a series of reforms.
Capital punishment has been abolished in some countries, likewise
torture, confiscation, corporal punishment. But nevertheless the immense
scientific movement of the classic school has remained a mere reform.
It has continued in the 19th century to look upon crime in the same way
that the Middle Age did: "Whoever commits murder or theft, is alone the
absolute arbiter to decide whether he wants to commit the crime or not."
This remains the foundation of the classic school of criminology. This
explains why it could travel on its way more rapidly than the positive
school of criminology. And yet, it took half a century from the time of
Beccaria, before the penal codes showed signs of the reformatory
influence of the classic school of criminology.
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