T ~ P Howard Jozirrial Democrag and the Deatb Penalp

similar organisations we notice, in each of the three countries, the introduc- tion of non-professional persons on the bench or as auxiliaries of the court. The appointment of a greater number of qualified probation officers in England already shows a reaction against this method. The unfortunate Russian law of April 7th, 1935, may to some extent be explained in the same way. But instead of bringing back to the ordinary courts the most difficult cases of juvenile delinquency the Russian authorities might have improved the training of the members of the special commissions. The situation may be summed up as follows : legal training having been found inadequate for dealing with juvenile delinquency, certain countries turned to unqualified persons for further assistance. The next logical step would be to have fully and suitably trained persons for these services.

A summary of the methods for re-educating adolescents in the three countries shows a gradual increase in the recognition of the group as a factor of re-education. In Belgium the adolescent is treated in a community but, as far as possible, carefully isolated and individually treated until such time when he becomes well known to those in authority. In England the Borstal boy is placed in a community where he reacts freely but under the guidance of the staff. In Russia-the population of Bolchevo is left alone. The few members of the staff have nothing to do with moral re- education. The community of delinquents does that work by itself. What is the secret of that institution which ignores in its very basis many admitted penological principles and yet apparently is successful

I am unable to give a satisfactory answer to this question.

DEMOCRACY AND THE DEATH PENALTY.’ By JOHN PATON.

It is relevant to remember that the war was perhaps most importantly of all an enormous interruption in the civilising process. I t meant a destruction throughout the whole world of the ordinary habits of social security which had been built up over long years of peace. It is clearly inevitable that a process of that kind must check and stay the tendencies throughout the world making for the protection and security of human life, and even, in many directions, must inevitably make for backward steps. The war-that terrific eruption of violence-quite naturally has brought in its train-as violence always does beget violence-the wave of violent thought that is expressing itself now in all sorts of directions in our modern life. So that when one looks at all the factors and circum- stances abolitionists have every reason for congratulation that their movement has been so well maintained, and that in this country of Great Britain particularly public opinion seems to be steadily advancing towards the achievement of our aim.

1 think it is important to emphasise that in the setbacks to abolition which have taken place in several countries it is impossible in any of them to connect them with anything in the crime statistics of those countries.

I Sunitnary of spccch at Howard League Luncheon on May I i t h , 1935. Reprinted from Tbc I’nia/ Rcfnvwr, July, 1931.

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Democrag and the Death Penalty The Howard Journal’

The case for abolition remains absolutely unshaken. There is in no single one of those countries, in the criminal statistics, anything whatever that lends justification for the changes that have been made in the penal methods of those countries. The causes are not related to crime, but are in their nature political, and that, of course, brings me to the subject of this talk to you here to-day.

When one sets out to speak on a subject like “ Democracy and the Death Penalty ” the question inevitably arises-“ How is it possible to deal with this particular punishment as relating to any particular kind of political system ?

In my view, in democracies where the death penalty still lingers in the criminal code, it lingers there as an anachronism, but in dictatorships where the death penalty is in.the penal code i t is there definitely as a consequence of the form of their government and of the political arrangement of the State. I t persists in democracies as a barbaric survival, not because of any necessity for its existence in such States but definitely in defiance of the principles and the practice upon which democratic States should operate.

Democracy means, in two words; complete tolerance. It is the opposite of intolerance, with its chosen weapon of repression. And it is therefore because democracy is essentially in its basis a complete tolerance and freedom from repression that the death penalty is alien to its basic principles and its practice. It is completely incompatible with the principles of democracy for the democratic State to attempt to express in its practice either sanction or need to repress and to destroy the individual.

The death penalty is the most arbitrary and repressive of all punish- ments. It is the most arbitrary of punishments because in its relation to this crime of murder-a crime, remember, of extraordinary complexity in its causation and in the almost infinite variety of character and circum- stances of the offender, we apply constantly and always in Great Britain the one crudely brutal punishment of hanging. The penalty is predetermined and inflexible. I t permits of no variation whatever and is applied, willy- nilly, to criminals of all kinds who are guilty of the crime of murder.

Besides being the most arbitrary of our punishments i t is also, I think, now the single remaining punishment which embodies the idea of ruthless repression which several centuries ago used to dominate our penal code. \Ye do not to-day talk of “ruthless repression”. We prefer to cover up the ugly thing euphemistically in the terms “ retribution and deterrence,” but the thing that lies behind these terms is exactly the same thing of which Carlyle wrote at one time-

“ There is one valid reason and only one for the punishment of the murderer with death, and that is that nature has planted natural wrath against him in every God-created heart. Caitiff, we hate thee, not with a diabolical hut with a divine hatred. In the name of God, not with joy and exaltation, but with sorrow stern as thine own, we will hang thee on Wednesday next.” That kind of lusty hate is probably much too strong for our queazy

modern stomachs, but let us never forget that when we complacently talk about “ retribution and deterrence ” we are really only using these other terms for this thing of which Carlyle writes-revenge and repression.

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Why Democracy and the Death Penalty ? ” 1 believe that there is a very real reason for the connection.

’1 ’IJP 1 I o n w d Joi~-nul Demcracy and the Death Penal0

This conception of repressive punishment has no place in the democratic community but properly belongs to a different political conception- the conception of the dictatorial State. The death penalty is, of course, the natural instrument of oppressive governments. I t is the chief repression in a system of repressions.

It is very important for us to realise that the death penalty has been restored in Europe only in dictatorial States. I propose to take a brief glance at some of the basic conceptions underlying its operation in the two chief examples of dictatorial States in Europe-the one, Russia, and the other, Italy. It is true that these two States are completely at opposite poles in their objectives, but they meet on common ground in their complete opposition to democracy and any form of tolerance. “ Liberty is a bourgeois dream ” said Lenin. Mussolini, in his more hysterical fashion, shrieks, “ Let it be known once for ever that Fascism knows no idols, nor does it adore fetishes. I t has walked before now over the somewhat putrefying corpse of the goddess Liberty, and should it become necessary it will certainly do it again.” Both these countries, therefore, are completely united in their contempt for democracy and in their complete repression of any dissident voice and action. But while these similarities exist, there arc, of course, enocmous divergencies in objective and in actual practice.

The basic ideas behind the Russian legal system and its practice have been expressed very plainly by Krylenko, who is the People’s Commissar for Justice in the Soviet Union. He says this :

“ Revolutionary law is the instrument wherewith to carry out the policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for, as Lenin pointed out, each law is a political measure, is politics.”

Again :- “ The court is an organ of the proletarian state that applies

compulsion to class enemies and unreliable elements in our midst. Laws and repressive measures are of great importance in this respect.” The same idea was expressed by Postyschev, one of the secretaries

of the (:ommunist International in these words : “ Justice is a power by which t o \uppress class enemies and a forceful weapon of education towards the new discipline and self-discipline of the workers.”

Now here you see expressed quite frankly the Russian conception of law as a weapon in the revolutionary struggle of the classes. The Russians are not concerned as we are in the western democracies with abstract conceptions of justice. They refer to this always contemptuously in the well-known phrase as being merely “ bourgeois ideology.” But what they are concerned with is definitely to use their legal system and their punishments in the pursuit of their revolutionary aims. That is why it is that in some directions the Russian penal code and its practice present a picture of extraordinary tenderness and leniency to offences which in this country would be very severely treated. For instance, such crimes as violence against the person are treated in Russia with very great leniency, but on the contrary a number of crimes exist in Russia which are not recognised as crimes here, and which are extremely severely dealt with. For instance, caielessness at work may be an extremely serious offence which may be ruthlessly dealt with by very severe measures.

The supreme harshness of the Russian penal system is reserved for those who threaten the security of the State, and that is interpreted in an

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I)cmcruC_y and fhc Dcath Pantdty l % e Howard ]o.urnal

extremely wide way. It does not merely mean the revolutionary activities of what are called “ counter-revolutionaries,” but it is made to include a great series of acts which in one way or another may disturb the orderly progress of the State. It is sometimes completely ruthless, as in those cases, for instance, where we have seen railwaymen shot for an act of carelessness which resulted in a collision. This struggle is very important, directed as it is against inefficiency and chicanery, and only two years ago Krylenko said this :-

‘‘ When confronted with the fact that to-day it is impossible to find anywhere a single co-operative or government store free from pilferers, marauders, thieves, speculators, rascals, embezzlers, etc., we are forced to the conclusion that to fight this kind of enemy is of paramount importance at present. In Moscow five death sentences were passed on people of just this type, two of the condemned having been Communists; in Leningrad there were two such sentences and the same number in Kharkov.” But in all this there is a very important difference to be noted between

the ultimate point of view in Russia in comparison with that, say, in the dictatorial Fascist States of Italy and elsewhere. In Russia all this business of ruthless and severe punishment for offences that we ourselves do not recognise is looked upon as being in its nature a temporary measure, compelled, as they claim, by the necessities and circumstances of a revolu- tionary period. Nothing is clearer than their view that they hope eventually to reach a community in which this ruthlessness will not be necessary.

The point of view of Italy with regard to the use of force generally and the death penalty particularly in the Fascist State has been stated by the Italian Minister of Justice in the speech in which he presented the measure in the Italian Legislature for the reintroduction of the death penalty. IHe said this :-

“ . . . The fascist conception, according to which the individual is only an infinitesimal and transitory element in the social organisation, so that, therefore, he must subordjnate his own interests and his vcry existence to this organism and to the State which is its juridical organisation . . . it would be an evident sign of weak juridical sensibility to exhibit aversion to extreme measures of defence against those who display a criminal activity subversive to the essential needs of life and of the political and moral elevation of the State.” So that you see in this Italian view there is a claim for the complete

subordination of individuality and personality to the needs of the dictatorial, totalitarian State. The citizen in this view occupies the rGle of a puppet, denied the responsibilities of free citizenship and subject at all points to the arbitrary will of the dictator. When they talk of “ extreme measures of defence ”, by which they mean the death penalty, they exalt it into an article of the fascist philosophy of the State. They present it as an element in the structure of Fascism, and say that therefore in the Fascist State the death penalty is clearly a necessity, essential to its structure and to its continuance.

But, 4 j o years before the birth of Christ, the Roman State which modern Italy holds up as its example and its inspiration abolished the death penalty for the Roman citizen. About 300 years later an attempt Tvas made to reestablish it, and the greatest of all Roman orators opposed

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The Howard Journal The Prisoner’s Forum

that attempt in words which are the answer to the Italian Minister of Justice to-day. Cicero said this :-

‘‘ Far from us be the punishment of death, its ministers and its instruments. Remove them, not only from the actual operation o n o u r bodies, but banish them from o u r eyes, OUT ears, our thoughts ; for not only the execution, but the apprehension, the existence, the very mention of these things is disgraceful to a free man and a Roman citizen.”

And it is because the death penalty is disgraceful to free men and a free community that it should hold no place whatever in a democratic State.

THE PRISONER’S FORUM. (In this Journal we have regularly published articles by authorities of all kinds on prison problems. In some respects the best authority of all is the prisoner. We shall therefore endeavour, in spite of all the obvious difficulties, to make “ The Prisoner’s Forum ” a regular feature. The writer of this article recently served a sentence of five years’ penal servitude in Maidstone Prison.-Ed., H.J.)

STiZR CONVICTS. F. E. BAKER.

‘‘ Of course I know that the proceedings of the best machine-made humanity are employed with judlcious care and SO on. I am absurd no doubt but still . . . when I pass one of these places . . . did you notice that there is something infernal about the aspect of each individual stone and brick of them, something malicious, as if matter were enjoying its revenge of the contemptuous spirit of man.”

-From Joseph Conrad’s novel Chance.

Maidstone Prison for Star Convicts, which contains a larger per- centage of ‘’ lifers ” than any other prison in England, is a conglomerate mass of buildings, some of them parts of the ancient gaol,

Men have spent many years of their lives there without the sight of an open field or trees. This year a few fortunate “ Special Stage ” men went to Dartmoor for a month‘s haymaking. They came back different creatures, wishing they might have stayed.

The choice of a prison of this description, situated in the centre of a town, for a Star Convict Prison, is typical of the official attitude towards first-ofienders-an attitude which enforces also a stricter discipline than in many of the prisons for recidivists. In one respect our prisons are rather like our public schools. Each has a tradition and a colour of its own. Old practices and bad practices laid down by past officials often survive because it is easier to leave things as they are. I passed through three

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