h simply defies all calculation
against the possibility of reform or recovery.

Where charitable effort in the past has not succeeded it is because it
has not gone far enough. Building institutions is sometimes due to a
craze and not charity. Thus evils are sometimes accentuated and not
mitigated. Such failures must spur to redoubled effort. Hope was never
larger than at present.

Chapter VII.

THE NEW PENOLOGY.

The old method of dealing with criminals was based entirely upon a
doctrine of vengeance. The criminal was regarded as being in every way a
normal man, a man who deliberately chose to be a criminal. The
possibility of a criminal's moral sense being defective, of his not
being able to bring his actions under the control of his will, or of
some other sad handicap existing, was never contemplated. His crime was
looked upon as a desperate act, for the committal of which he was
absolutely without any excuse. The consequence was that an elaborate
system of torture was devised in order to deal with him. Readers who are
familiar with such books as Marcus Clark's "For the term of his natural
life," and Charles Reade's "It is never too late to mend," will require
no further description of the horrors of "the vengeance system" which
was supposed to be the only rational method of dealing with criminals in
the days of the convict settlements.

Since then, popular vengeance has considerably relaxed and the devising
of painful forms of punishment has become almost a lost art. The
new-born science, with its first powers of articulation, loudly repeat
the words of Revelation, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the
Lord." A system of vengeance instituted by man against man is
impossible. As has been stated in a previous chapter, the new penology
repudiates all such systems. The amount of pain which an individual is
to be called upon to suffer may well be left to the higher tribunal. The
obvious duty of man to his fellow-man who is depraved, is to endeavour
to recover him. There is no satisfaction in punishing him, but there is
every satisfaction in reforming him.

The new penology covers the investigation and study of every
circumstance surrounding the criminal as such. No circumstance is so
trifling as to be passed by, every detail is carefully studied with the
object of discovering what the criminal is and how he came to be such,
what are his possibilities, and by what methods those possibilities may
be re