Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Metaphysical Magazine, Vol. 21: Punishment or Reform; May, 1907
What is a criminal? The dictionary says: A person who has committed an o?ense against public law; a violator of law, divine or human. More particularly, a person indicted or charged with a public crime and who is found guilty by verdict, confession or proof. Written laws provide that the commission of certain acts Shall constitute crime; that the person convicted of any of these offenses is a criminal, and fix the penalty to be in?icted for the crime of which such person has been found guilty; the penalty decreed for the several crimes varying in severity from a mere fine or a short term of imprisonment to death upon the scaffold or in the electric Chair. The act is crime, the person convicted of it the crim inal, and the nature of the punishment and the minimum of it that shall be in?icted are definitely fixed by the law.
If the circumstances under which all infringements of the law are committed were similar; the environment, nature, heredity and temptation of all the culprits exactly alike; then, perhaps, the results Of the enforcement of this code would be less subversive of the end desired and more in accordance with even-handed justice.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
