They have forgotten
the personality of the criminal and occupied themselves exclusively with
crime as an abstract juristic phenomenon. In the same manner, the old
style medicine occupied itself with disease as such, as an abstract
pathological phenomenon, without taking into account the personality of
the patient. The ancient physicians did not consider whether a patient
was well or ill nourished, young or old, strong or weak, nervous or
fullblooded. They cured fever as fever, pleurisy as pleurisy. Modern
medicine, on the other hand, declares that disease must be studied in
the living person of the patient. And the same disease may require
different treatment, if the condition of the patient is different.
Criminal justice has taken the same historical course of development as
medicine. The classic school of criminology is still in the same stage,
in which medicine was before the middle of the 19th century. It deals
with theft, murder, fraud, as such. But that which claims so much of the
attention of society has been forgotten by the classic school. For that
school has forgotten to study the murderer, the thief, the forger, and
without that study their crimes cannot be understood.
Crime is one of the conditions required for the study of the criminal.
But, the same crime may require the application of different remedies
to the personalities of different criminals, according to the different
anthropological and social conditions of the various criminals.
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