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1 Arthur MacDonald, Death Penalty and Homicide 88 (1910)

handle is hein.death/dthphmc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Reprinted from THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. XVI, No. I, July, ,tg DEATH PENALTY AND HOMICIDE ARTHUR MACDONALD Washington, D.C., Honorary President of the 3d International Congress of Criminal Anthropology History shows that man has become less and less cruel. When one reads of the enormous sacrifice of lives for seemingly small offenses, there is not only a sense of horror, but a feeling of impatience, that such things should ever have occurred. In one year (I82O), forty-six persons were hanged for forging Bank of England notes, some of which were afterwards said to have been good. According to Plato, crime is a disease, and the incurable criminal should either be banished or put to death, and thus deliver the republic from a great danger and the criminal him- self from a very sad existence. As society has become more humane, it fortunately has de- veloped a horror of the shedding of blood, until now the death penalty is applied in practically few cases. In France, for instance, murder must be premeditated, or accompanied with other crime, if punished by death penalty. The increasing and frequently excessive indulgence of magis- trates has lessened the fear of the law, and as a consequence criminals have become more bold in their misdeeds. While penalties have become less severe, public security from the crim- inal has not increased. In some cases the criminal is doubtless diseased, as Plato states, but in most instances, he is a wilful enemy of society, and severity and certainty of punishment restrain him. Viewing the world as a whole, the official statistics of leading countries' show a general increase of crime in the last thirty 'Man and Abnormal Man, including a study of children, in connection with bills to establish laboratories under state and federal governments in the study of the criminal pauper, and defective classes, with bibliographies. Senate Docu-

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