Jain Journal 1980 10

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

Page 30

68
(4) "In a good system of administration of justice, pre-sentence investigation may be of great sociological value. Throughout the world humanitarianism is permeating into penology and the courts are expected to discharge their appropriate roles."'35
JAIN JOURNAL
(5) "We cannot do better than say that the directive principle contained in Article 42 of the Constitution that 'the State shall make provision for securing just and humane conditions of work' may be benevolently extended to living conditions in jails. There are subtle forms of punishment to which convicts and under-trial prisoners are sometimes subjected but it must be realized that these barbarous relics of bygone era offend against the letter and spirit of our Constitution."36
All penal codes with their innumerable offences and penalties, from the mild admonition to the cruel death-sentence, are but as many social acknowledgements of the proclaimed failure to cure the individual human mind of its gullible (criminal) tendency. Combat at psychic and psychological levels to treat deviance so as to make the human conduct conform to the social norms is still at an experimental and investigational stage. Before the outcome of this treatment method is known, the sociological theorists, denouncing all the efforts at correctionalism, insist upon social rearrangement with fundamental social change where there should be no opportunity for committing crimes. Visualizers of this dreamland do, however, admit: "It is failing in Sociological Theory that it has rarely examined concepts such as guilt and conscience."37 This single but solid confession has brought the ship of penology safely to the shores, from the gusty winds seeking fundamental social changes over the turbulent waters of punishment and waves of treatment. Now the ship can easily sail into the deep waters of religious philosophy and in the right direction towards the infinite realms of conscience, veiled and clouded as it is by karmas.
Jaina penology is the child of Karma philosophy. The criminologists know karma in its retributory and retaliatory role. Association of karmic atoms forming a karmic body (kärmaṇa sarira) gloss over conscience of non-liberated souls since eternity. As it obstructs the innate qualities of soul, karma is the enemy of conscience, number one. A
35 1976 Criminal Law Reporter, SC, 33 Ramashraya Chakravarty Vs State of Madhya Pradesh, per P. K. Goswami & N. L. Untwalia JJ.
36 1974 Cr Law Reporter, SC, 605, D. Bhuvan Mohan Patnaik Vs State of Andhra Pradesh and Others per Mr Chandra Chuda (now CJ) J, p. 610.
37 The New Criminology for a Social Theory of Deviance, p. 52.