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Penology and Jaina Scriptures
Ramesh C. Lalen
The dearest and yet probably the ever-escaping ideal of every human society is to become an enlightened and a crimelessl society. Sociologists, not apparently satisfied with social reforms, find fault with the social arrangements and seek "fundamental social change".2 Ranging right from the archaic Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the chain of penal codes has obviously failed to capture the genii of mens rea. Religion, the elevator for the human beings to the divine and the sole champion of moral and ethical values, has witnessed a number of crimes committed in its name. Education, the vehicle of discipline, training and dedicated service to humanity, is in a predicament when confronted with enormous problems of students' indiscipline, vices and malpractices. After all, a serious doubt arises about the progress of centuries whether it is towards enlightenment or towards criminality !
Penology starts with the definition of punishment and ends ironically with a plea for total abolition of punishment, suggesting a substitute therapy of treatment, correction, reformation, rehabilitation and resocialization of the so-called 'criminal', 'delinquent', 'deviant who cannot conform to the social norms' and 'client for the correctional apparatus'. It means "the science of punishment of crime in both its deterrent and its reformatory aspects ; the science of management of prison" and "the study of problems of legal punishment”.4 Definition of penology is conspicuous by its absence in the standard text-books of recent authors.5
1 Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jack Young, The New Criminology : for a Social
Theory of Deviance, 1973, London, p. 281. 2 Ibid. 3 The Random House Dictionary of English Language, College Edn, 1977, Allied
Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Bombay-New Delhi-Calcutta-Madras, p. 993. 4 The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, 2nd Edn, The English
Language Book Society and Oxford University Press, p. 719. 5 Howard Jones, Crime and Penal System, 1962, London, p. 1: Robert G. Cald
well, Criminology, 1956, New York, p. 1.
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