Crime and Punishment: The Mark System, Framed to Mix Persuasion with Punishment, and Make Their Effect Improving, Yet Their Operation Severe |
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advantages adversity in ordinary apparatus asylums Bagnes BEAUFORT HOUSE become beneficial Captain Maconochie replies cent central prisons character charge coercive conduct contended contrary convict communities corrupt CRIME AND PUNISHMENT criminals Demetz deteriorating deterring Diemen's Land direct directly DISCHARGED PRISONERS doubt early crime earned effect employed enfeebling equally establishment evil exertion existing expense favour fixed gratuitous forms gaol give given habits hard labour imposed imprisonment improved industry inflicted injurious interest judicious labour-sentence Liverpool Maconochie's mark sentences Mark System means ment Mettray misconduct moral moral character Norfolk Island object obtained offence opposed otherwise parties penal arrangements penal colonies penal discipline Penal farms penal settlement persuasion position present principle proportion proposed re-con received recommended reform regard result secondary punishment self-command separate cells severe out-door labour social society stimulate suffering tendencies three kingdoms time-sentences tion transportation tread-wheel Van Diemen's Land vidual views virtues voluntary whole workhouses
Popular passages
Page 43 - ... with a view to them, and restores to prosperity, through lapse of time, without evidence that such restoration is deserved. Yet this is our present system of secondary punishment. What improves, on the contrary, is a condition of adversity from which there is no escape but by continuous effort — which leaves the degree of that effort much in the individual's own power, but if he relaxes, his suffering is deepened and prolonged, and it is only alleviated and shortened if he struggles manfully...
Page 41 - The best plan, as it appears to me, would be, instead of sentencing men to imprisonment for a certain time, to sentence them to render a certain amount of labour. A fixed daily task may be imposed on them, but with power to exceed this at their own discretion, thereby shortening their period of detention. The effect would be, not only that criminals would thus acquire habits of labour, but of attaching an agreeable idea to labour. By each additional step they took on the treadwheel they would be...
Page 5 - There is no lesson more important in social science, nor more wanting at present in penal science, nor to which the perfection of both will be found more directly to tend, than that the common interest is the interest of each and all, not of any section merely ; and that when beyond all question individuals are sacrificed, the public also indirectly suffers.
Page 41 - ... be made to measure the time. This idea is not peculiar to it. In his letter to Earl Grey the Archbishop of Dublin uses these words : " The best plan, as it appears to me, would be, instead of sentencing men to imprisonment for a certain time, to sentence them to render a certain amount of labour. A fixed daily task may be imposed on them, but with power to exceed this at their own discretion, thereby shortening their period of detention. The effect would be, not only that criminals would thus...
Page 29 - System, and to which too much importance cannot be attached, between the objects of military and improved penal discipline. " The ultimate purpose of military discipline is, to train men to act together : but that of penal discipline is, to prepare them advantageously to separate.
Page 47 - ... because the virtues of industry and self-command which it will be its great aim to foster will equally bring about both results. The practical change may be thought a small one on which to found such anticipations — the change from measuring labour by time to that of measuring time by labour — or, in other words, from giving our criminals time-sentences to allotting them tasks : — but the one course is the direct reverse of the other, and the difference may be thus the whole difference...
Page 26 - ... for which need not wear any aspect of indulgence. And we are thus as unwise in our consideration for them as inhuman in our want of it. 3. The primary object of secondary punishment should, then, be to reform by means of severity. Nothing can sanction indifference to reform ; but, on the other hand, the idea of punishment should be indissolubly allied with that of suffering...
Page 44 - To make the resemblance to ordinary life still closer, and at the same time promote kindly and social, as opposed to selfish, feeling, it is further proposed that during a portion of their entire period of detention criminals be distributed into parties or families of six, with common interests and accounts, rising or falling together, and thus all interested in the good conduct of each. By this means a strong physical check would be laid on crime in prisons, with a yet stronger moral one ; and an...
Page 30 - ... rather than otherwise prevent, misconduct ; it charges in them for supplies issued, in order to create an interest in voluntary moderation ; and it promises the recovery of liberty only to a definite accumulation of them, over and above all that may be thus expended, thereby affording the strongest stimulus to systematic exertion, prudence, and self-command, the virtues best suited to sustain men against external temptation after discharge. The qualities of immediate obedience and submission...
Page 50 - ... to imprisonment or transportation, measured thus by months or years, Captain Maconochie recommends sentences to an amount of labour, measured by a given number of marks, to be placed to the debit of the convict in books to be kept for the purpose. This debit to be from time to time further augmented by charges made in the same currency for all supplies of food and clothing, and by any fines that may be imposed for misconduct. The duration of his sentence will thus be made to depend on three circumstances...