The deceptive faith
in the efficacy of criminal law still lives in the public mind, because
every normal man feels that the thought of imprisonment would stand in
his way, if he contemplated tomorrow committing a theft, a rape, or a
murder. He feels the bridle of the social sense. And the criminal code
lends more strength to it and holds him back from criminal actions. But
even if the criminal code did not exist, he would not commit a crime, so
long as his physical and social environment would not urge him in that
direction. The criminal code serves only to isolate temporarily from
social intercourse those who are not considered worthy of it. And this
punishment prevents the criminal for a while from repeating his criminal
deed. But it is evident that the punishment is not imposed until after
the deed has been done. It is a remedy directed against effects, but it
does not touch the causes, the roots, of the evil.
We may say that in social life penalties have the same relation to crime
that medicine has to disease. After a disease has developed in an
organism, we have recourse to a physician. But he cannot do anything
else but to reach the effects in some single individual. On the other
hand, if the individual and the collectivity had obeyed the rules of
preventive hygiene, the disease would have been avoided 90 times in 100,
and would have appeared only in extreme and exceptional cases, where a
wound or an organic condition break through the laws of health.
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