Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation (Volume 3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT FROM THE COMPARATIVE POINT OF VIEW.1 (Contributed by Montague Crackanthorpe, Esq., K.C.] The Need of Self-Criticism.?In the current number of the Nineteenth Century?and After, Dr. Robert Anderson, the Assistant Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis and Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, informs the public that " our system of punishment is absurd and mischievous," that " our law is daily brought into contempt with those to whom it ought to be a terror," and that " in the matter of crime neither science nor common sense is allowed a hearing." These startling statements, although to my thinking overdone, deserve serious attention, coming from the quarter they do, and, whether we agree with them or not, may be turned to a profitable account. To begin with, it is not a bad thing to have our self-complacency ruffled, our comfortable optimism disturbed, if we are thus led to review our established methods, and to seek some means of improving them. Again, when we are told by a competent authority that our system of punishment is " absurd," we may usefully enquire whether it is better or worse than it was, and in what respects it differs from the systems pursued elsewhere. To inaugurate such an enquiry is the object of this paper, holding, as I do, that the policy of splendid isolation is as foolish in criminology as it is in the conduct of foreign affairs. The time allotted to me being limited, the field I shall traverse must be limited also, and you must expect to note many gaps and shortcomings which will have to be made good on some future occasion. Modern Penal Law: Its Double Aspect.?Modern Penal Law of the best type may be not inaptly described as " a weapon of social defence, tempered by justice to the individual criminal." Which ...