ould be
avoided and other penalties substituted for petty offences against
police regulations, cheating the Customs, etc., when committed by
criminaloids who are not recidivists and have no accomplices. A short
term of imprisonment, which brings this type of offender into contact
with habitual criminals, not only does not serve as a deterrent, but
generally has an injurious effect, because it tends to lessen respect
for the law, and, in the case of recidivists, to rob punishment of all
its terrors; and because criminaloids, when once branded with the infamy
of prison and corrupted by association with worse types, are liable to
commit more serious crimes.

For all minor offences, fines are more efficacious than imprisonment
and, in the case of the poor, should be replaced by compulsory labour at
the discretion of the magistrate. Binding over under a guarantee to make
good the injury done, corporal punishment, confinement to the house,
judicial reprimands and cautions are applicable to offenders of this
type, as is also the system of remitting first offences used in France
with great success by Magnaud. Under this system, the offender is
sentenced to an adequate penalty, which, however, is only inflicted in
the case of recidivation.

An efficacious, and at the same time, more serious method of dealing
with criminaloids, is by means of the probation system and indeterminate
sentence. The offender is sentenced to the maximum penalty applicable to
his particular offence, but it may be diminished after a certain time if
he shows signs of improvement. During this interval he is on probation,
that is, under supervision, much in the same way as juvenile offenders.

The probation system is extensively and successfully adopted in America,
either singly or in conjunction with other penalties, as shown above.

THE PROBATION SYSTEM

This is an ideal manner of dealing with offenders of a less serious
type, minors and criminaloids, who have fallen into bad ways, since,
instead of punishing them, it seeks to encourage in them habits of
integrity and to check the growth of vices by means of a benevolent but
strict supervision. The offender is placed under the guidance of a
respectable person, who tries in every way to smooth the path of reform
by providing his charge with employment if he has none, or putting him
in the way of learning some trade if he is unskilled, by isolating him
from bad company, by rewarding any improvement,