led to
other definitions of punishment. Punishment, it is said, is not
inflicted on the offender as a retribution for his misdeeds, it is
inflicted for the purpose of protecting society against its enemies.
Such a view leaves moral considerations entirely out of account; it
leaves no room for the just indignation of the public at the spectacle
of crime. It is defective in other ways. For instance, a criminal has
a particular animosity against some single individual; it may be he
murders this person, or does him grievous bodily harm. Such an
offender has no similar animosity against any one else; as far as the
rest of the community is concerned he is perfectly harmless. On the
supposition that punishment is only intended to protect society
against the criminal, a man of this description would escape
punishment altogether. Or supposing a man (and this often happens),
after committing some serious crime for which he is sent to penal
servitude, sincerely and bitterly repented of it, and would be, if
released, a perfectly harmless member of the community, such a man,
according to the theory we are now discussing, should be released at
once. The certainty that the public conscience would tolerate no such
step shows that punishment has a wider object than the mere attainment
of social security.

Punishment is only a means say some; its real end is the reformation
of the offender. The practical application of such a principle would
lead to very astonishing results. It is perfectly well known that
there is no more incorrigible set of offenders than habitual vagrants
and drunkards. And on the other hand, the most easily reformed of all
offenders is often some person who has committed a serious crime under
circumstances which could not possibly recur. According to the theory
that reformation is the only end of punishment, petty offenders would
be shut up all their lives, while the perpetrator of a grave crime
would soon be set free. An absurd result of this kind is fatal to the
pretention that punishment is merely a means and not also an end.

Is it the end of punishment to act as a deterrent? We are often told
from the judicial bench that a man receives a certain sentence as a
warning and example to others. If such is the end of punishment it
lamentably fails in its purpose, for in a number of cases it neither
deters the offender nor the class from which the offender springs. It
was under the influence of this idea that crimina