Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/473

Rh crimes and criminals. The very notoriety gained compensates and so shields the shallow characters from any painful feeling of disgrace. His insensibility and sangfroid are further ministered to by the effect of long-delayed trials and the character of the trial; illuminated newspaper detailed accounts of the prisoner's personal appearance and bearing; the gladiatorial show of the legal combat of which the prisoner forms the central figure; the artifice and insincerity of the defense; the excusing and even extolling address of the defending counsel; these together with the chummy attention of jail and court servitors, jail visitors, and salvation seekers, excite the prisoner's self-importance—a new and gratifying consciousness perhaps—displacing the imaginary feeling of disgrace which the inexperienced onlooker himself seems to see. All this show has, too, an evil influence on the common observant crowd. Deterrence is also diminished or destroyed by the previous habitual associations of the average prisoner. In his accustomed haunts, arrests, police-court arraignment, station-house and jail confinement are jokingly mentioned and often considered an interesting personal distinction. Even a color of the heroic tinges the habitué who has actually "done time."

Increased severities either of statutory penalties or conditions of imprisonment cannot evoke and entail a salutary deterrent influence. The history of criminal punishments, the world over, shows the most of crimes accompanying greatest severity and a diminishing volume as mitigation took place. Only transitory effects are produced by severities. The public sense as it becomes familiar rises, in due time, to the new conditions—automatically adjusts itself, thus neutralizing the intended effect. And mere severity of the prison regime reacts upon the prisoners with actual, if unconscious, brutalizing effect with diminishing consciousness of apparent discomfort. Beyond the possible temporary stimulation of alternative pain and pleasure experiences, deterrent measures are disused and the deterrent principle itself is disesteemed.