Modern theories of criminality / by C. Bernaldo de Quirós; translated from the Spanish by Alfonso de Salvio, with an introduction by Wm. W. Smithers, esq.

  • Bernaldo de Quirós, Constancio, 1873-1959.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern theories of criminality / by C. Bernaldo de Quirós; translated from the Spanish by Alfonso de Salvio, with an introduction by Wm. W. Smithers, esq. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH VERSION. The science of criminology is a secondary evolutional con- sequence of the study of penology. The early writers who from humanitarian impulses condemned the severities attending the administration of criminal law in both its evidential and punitive features had no thought of creating a new science. While they secured great penological reforms they never departed from the traditional theory that a law broken meant that there was a wilful trans- gressor, who deserved to suffer retributively. The con- ception of imposing punishment was as impersonal as it was instinctive. Only in degree was there any ameliora- tion of the ancient savagery. From the time when Mon- taigne wrote How many sentences I have seen more criminal than the crimes themselves! until Servan, the great French jurist, declared Humanity is a sixth sense/' although in the interim D'Aguesseau, Montesquieu, Beccaria and Blackstone had written, the offense, — the manifestation of contempt for the majesty of the law — continued to be the pole-star of all criminal law. Even after Howard, Bentham, and Romilly had secured substantial prison reforms in England, evidential torture had ceased on the Continent, and through the efforts of Rush, Vaux, and Livingston the Pennsylvania system of penitential incarceration had become generally recognized in this country as the most rational and humane the world had until then known, still criminology was so inextricably entwined with penology that its true principles were over-