rds its criminals. The old barbaric idea of revenge is still the
dominant one and any scheme for the betterment of the criminal, even if
it should give unmistakeable signs that it will accomplish his absolute
reform, is carefully investigated to see whether it provides for a
sufficient degree of penal suffering. Suffering which is of an entirely
penal nature, has very little deterrent value and absolutely no
reformative value whatever. And yet our refined and educated men and
women will read the accounts of crimes and, in their own minds, sentence
the actors to five, ten, fourteen or twenty years; even death, as if
criminals were so used to this sort of thing that they thought no more
of it than their self-chosen judges would if deprived of a day's sport
or disappointed over a ball.

"But," as an ex-member of the Justice Department said to me, "do you
know what the wretch has done?" Yes, I do know what he has done, and I
know him personally and well, and I know of what he is capable and such
knowledge brings with it the conviction that society commits a greater
crime than that which he has committed when it undertakes to punish him
for his offence upon a principle of pure vengeance.

"Vengeance is mine," saith the Almighty, "I will repay." Society is not
God any more than is the individual, so that by acting in the collective
capacity no additional plea of justification may be advanced.

The endeavour of this book will be to show that the best interests of
society are not served by the infliction of punishments which are
essentially penal but by the accomplishment of the reform of the
criminal. This latter process is for the criminal himself, infinitely
more severe than the former, but it inflicts a pain which raises the man
to a higher level; it is purgatorial, and not one which, being penal,
leaves him a greater enemy to mankind than ever.

The criminal is not excused for his wrong-doing, he is not regarded as
an automaton, but simply as a creature of capabilities and possibilities
which require the intelligent sympathy of his fellows in order that they
may be properly developed.

There are many persons who regard the reform of the criminal as an
absolutely hopeless task and a waste of time to think over; they
advocate his extermination. They would fling back to the Creator His own
work as having, in their judgment, proved worthless, even mischievous.

Dr Chapple is astounded that the existence, or at least the b