Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Chapter. On the application of the penitentiary system in Sweden
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So long as the criminal legislation favours
chiefly ihe principle of corporal-punishment, the
possibility of improving the offender is scarcely to
be thought of. To erect houses of correction and
retain ignominious public punishments, is about
the same as building hospitals at a great expense for
those on whom we have first inflicted incurable
wounds.
More rigid regulations respecting the want of
protection (försvarslöshet) and vagrancy, have created
a new kind of prisoners, who — not to atone for
crimes committed, but for the prevention of those
it was feared they might commit, — have been
sent to the houses of correction, the numerous
inmates of which, crowded into common bedrooms
and workshops, it has been impossible to subject
to classification, much less to any eflicacious
penitentiary treatment.
This mixing of degenerate idlers with hardened
criminals, of individuals condemned for a
certain number of years, or given up to public works
for an undecided period, must cause a dangerous
reciprocal effect of vicious examples and
criminal doctrines, to which might be applied the
renowned J. Bentham’s eloquent description of the
deep destruction that is produced within those
prisons, the arrangement and organisation of which
do not admit of a strict but improving discipline.
“Such a prison,” says he, “forms a school, where
crime is taught by means far more eflicacious than
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