" However, we positivists give
to this statement a less fatalistic interpretation, since we have
demonstrated that crime is not our immutable destiny, even though it is
a vain beginning to attempt to attenuate or eliminate crime by mere
schemes. The truth is that the balance of crime is determined by the
physical and social environment. But by changing the condition of the
social environment, which is most easily modified, the legislator may
alter the influence of the telluric environment and the organic and
psychic conditions of the population, control the greater portion of
crimes, and reduce them considerably. It is our firm conviction that a
truly civilized legislator can attenuate the plague of criminality, not
so much by means of the criminal code, as by means of remedies which are
latent in the remainder of the social life and of legislation. And the
experience of the most advanced countries confirms this by the
beneficent and preventive influence of criminal legislation resting on
efficacious social reforms.
We arrive, then, at this scientific conclusion: In the society of the
future, the necessity for penal justice will be reduced to the extent
that social justice grows intensively and extensively.
III.
In the preceding two lectures, I have given you a short review of the
new current in scientific thought, which studies the painful and
dangerous phenomena of criminality.
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