On the
other hand, solitary confinement came in with the second current of the
classic school of criminology, when at the same time, in which Beccaria
promulgated his ideas, John Howard traveled all over Europe describing
the unmentionable horrors of mass imprisonment, which became a center of
infection for society at large. Then the classic school went to the
other extreme of solitary confinement, after the model of America,
whence we adopted the systems of Philadelphia and Harrisburg in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Isolation for the night is also
our demand, but we object to continuous solitary confinement by day and
night. Pasquale Mancini called solitary confinement "a living grave," in
order to reassure the timorous, when in the name of the classic school,
whose valiant champion he was, he demanded in 1876 the abolition of
capital punishment. Yet in his swan song he recognized that the future
would belong to the positive school of criminology. And it is this
"living grave" against which we protest. It cannot possibly be an act of
human justice to bury a human being in a narrow cell, within four walls,
to prevent this being from having any contact with social life, and to
say to him at the end of his term: Now that your lungs are no longer
accustomed to breathing the open air, now that your legs are no longer
used to the rough roads, go, but take care not, to have a relapse, or
your sentence will be twice as hard.
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