CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND JURISPRUDENCE 523
of crime in punishment rather than giving a historical survey. The fourth period — that of prevention — is just dawning, and it is not safe to say that it is well out of the meshes of the idea of reformation. The idea of reform is still the dominant one, and is but slowly developing into reform as a means of prevention. To prevent the commission of crime is novel, and is very far removed from our hasty survey of vengeance. Prevention differs from reformation in this : the object is the good of society, the individual being but slightly considered in the former. In the latter society is considered, but the individual also is an important element. If society is best benefited by reform- ing the criminal, this is the better method ; but if incapable of reform, then permanent incarceration or extermination — which is prevention. In preventing crime, the criminal and causes of crime are studied, and an attempt made to remove the latter; if this is not possible, then of necessity the criminal must be removed. Whatever the causes, he must not be permitted to continue a probable career of crime or beget a family of paupers, idiots, or criminals. . Criminal anthropology may be said to be the herald of this idea of preventing crime, but it is certain that the idea is becoming a firmly rooted one. Reformatories and prisons are necessary elements of this system, but they are places for discipline and education, not for punishment. A system of scientific jurisprudence is essential to any prevention of crime, and all of the reforms proposed by criminal authropologists are characteristic of this period. All the suggested changes in criminal law are based upon this idea of prevention.
Criminal-law legislation, as enacted at present, is upon the basis of reform, and remains upon the same foundation as was primitive law — that in its application the act and not the individual should be the object to which attention was directed. The idea dominating the repressive system has been outlined in the discussion of the work of the criminal anthropologists. It is not a mere revision of the system of criminal law and procedure, but that legislation may be influenced in many other lines. It is necessary that the great causes of crime should be reached, and until then the criminal must be kept from them. The basis of the preventive system is a consideration of the individual rather than of his act, and of his relation to the social whole. This is a radical departure from the dominant idea in criminal-law legislation during the previous three periods. The ideas of vengeance, repression, and reform have been logical developments into each other, and have been upon the common legal theory. They are closely related, and
