THE PROMPTNESS OF PUNISHMENTS.
The more speedily and the more nearly in connection with the crime
committed punishment shall follow, the more just and useful it will be.
I say more just, because a criminal is thereby spared those useless and
fierce torments of suspense which are all the greater in a person of
vigorous imagination and fully conscious of his own weakness; more just
also, because the privation of liberty, in itself a punishment, can only
precede the sentence by the shortest possible interval compatible with
the requirements of necessity. Imprisonment, therefore, is simply the
safe custody of a citizen pending the verdict of his guilt; and this
custody, being essentially disagreeable, ought to be as brief and easy
as possible. The shortness of the time should be measured both by the
necessary length of the preparations for the trial and by the seniority
of claim to a judgment. The strictness of confinement should be no more
than is necessary either for the prevention of escape or for guarding
against the concealment of the proof of crimes. The trial itself should
be finished in the shortest time possible. What contrast more cruel
than that between a judge’s ease and a defendant’s anguish? between
the comforts and pleasures of an unfeeling magistrate on the one hand,
and the tears and wretchedness of a prisoner on the other? In general,
the weight of a punishment and the consequence of a crime should be as
efficacious as possible for the restraint of other men and as little hard
as possible for the individual who is punished; for one cannot call that
a proper form of society, where it is not an infallible principle, that
its members intended, in constituting it, to subject themselves to as few
evils as possible.
I said that the promptness of punishment is more useful, because the
shorter the interval of time between the punishment and the misdeed,
the stronger and the more lasting in the human mind is the association
of these ideas, crime and punishment, so that insensibly they come to
be considered, the one as the cause and the other as its necessary and
inevitable consequence. It is a proved fact that the association of
ideas is the cement of the whole fabric of the human intellect, and
that without it pleasure and pain would be isolated and ineffective
feelings. The further removed men are from general ideas and universal
principles, that is, the more commonplace they are, the more they act
by their immediate and nearest associations, to the neglect of remoter
and more complex ones, the latter being of service only to men strongly
impassioned for a given object of pursuit, inasmuch as the light of
attention illuminates a single object, whilst it leaves the others
obscure. They are also of service to minds of a higher quality, because,
having acquired the habit of running rapidly over many subjects at a
time, they possess facility in placing in contrast with one another many
partial feelings, so that the result of their thoughts, in other words,
their action, is less perilous and uncertain.
The close connection, therefore, of crime and punishment is of the
utmost importance, if it be desirable that in rough and common minds
there should, together with the seductive idea of an advantageous crime,
immediately start up the associated idea of its punishment. Long delay
has no other effect than the perpetual separation of these two ideas;
and whatever the impression produced by the punishment of a crime, it
produces it less as a punishment than as a sight, and only produces it
when the horror of the particular crime, which would serve to strengthen
the feeling of the punishment, has been weakened in the minds of the
spectators.
Another principle would serve admirably to draw still closer the
important connection between a misdeed and its punishment, and that is,
that the latter should as far as possible conform to the nature of the
crime. This analogy facilitates marvellously the contrast that ought to
exist between the impulse to the crime and the counter-influence of the
punishment, the one, that is, diverting the mind and guiding it to an end
quite different from that to which the seductive idea of transgressing
the law endeavours to lead it.
Persons guilty of lesser crimes are usually either punished in the
obscurity of a prison, or transported, as an example to nations who have
given no offence, to a distant and therefore almost useless servitude.
Since the gravest crimes are not those which men are tempted to commit
on the spur of the moment, the public punishment of a great misdeed will
be regarded by most men as strange and of impossible occurrence; but the
public punishment of lighter crimes, to which men’s thoughts more readily
incline, will make an impression, which, at the same time that it diverts
the mind from them, will restrain it still more from crimes of greater
gravity. Punishments should not only be proportioned to one another and
to crimes in point of force, but also in the mode of their infliction.