Jain Journal 1980 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 27

OCTOBER, 1980
away with the variety of prisons, jails, reformatories, penitentiaries, colonies, camps, training schools, borstals, centers, etc.
65
This New Penology which aspires to liberate the human corpus from the shackles of prison walls19 has yet before itself a tremendous task, namely, to evolve the correctional apparatus for reformation of the offender, to rehabilitate the offender sociologically and psychologically and to train for that purpose selfless and devoted psychiatrists, probationofficers, social-workers and other personnel whose active participation will be indispensable in the process of 'treatment'. The magnitude of the problem is well acknowledged by leading criminologists. Leon Radzinowick poses a querry: "According to leading American Criminologists crime is deeply embedded in the very texture of American society. If this is so, how substantial and lasting can the influence of the community programmes be, even if it is acknowledged as it should be, that they may succeed in raising the general standards of life, in strengthening supportive and remedial arrangements; and in disseminating information about the measures hitherto adopted in dealing with it ?"20 John P. Conrad has been frank enough to admit : "For the clients of correctional apparatus, we cannot yet point out a procedure which can be reliably applied to any group in any typology yet conceptualized."21 The warning of Charles Merciers: "With exception of logic, there is no subject on which so much non-sense has been written as this of criminality and the criminal,"22 eventhough sounded in 1919 still rings true and should put on alert all those penologists and the criminologists who prescribe new remedies fastidiously when "no serious or systematic study has ever been made till now on the effects of punishment on prevention."23 The admonition of the great author is to be noted specifically in this age when white-collar crime has pervaded every walk of life, leaving little scope for honesty in any trade, profession or calling and robbing the State Exchequer by millions every year without even detection.
It is true that "the emphasis has now shifted from deterrence to reformation, from punitive vengence to education and from State's right to punish to its duty to socialize"24 and thus "modern social defence aims
19 Giles Playfair and Derrick Sington, Crime, Punishment and Cure, 1965, London, p. 333 Summary of Proposals: 1.
20 Leon Radzinowick, In the Search of Criminology, p. 147.
21 Crime and its Correction, p. 55.
22 Quoted by Richard R. Korn and Llyod W. Macorckle, Criminology and Penology, p. 309.
23 Criminology A Cross Cultural Perspective, Vol I, p. 330.
24 R. Deb, Principles of Criminology, Criminal Law and Investigation, Vol I. 1973, 2nd Edn, p. 5.