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• 1 media/Thumb128.png 2024-11-08T11:56:26-05:00 "Variety: On Criminality" 21 Dr. Vernial argues against criminal castration. plain 2024-12-03T17:18:04-05:00 09-02-1890 Translation:
  The ideas, emitted by the Congress of Criminal Anthropology which took place last year, seem to have come out of a purely speculative domain; and the scientific discussions, the oratorical jousts between Messrs. Lambroso and Manouvrier, on the topic of the responsibility of criminals, will decidedly enter into a practical track. Here, indeed, is some news that has come to us from California:
  
  A California doctor has just proposed castration as a legal punishment. He proposed the castration of criminals and certain mental patients. This process, he believes, would be more useful than prison for improving the human race, and particularly for avoiding criminal heredity. He believes that the well understood interest of the Society authorizes this method of intervention, since it it were adopted, the number of degenerates would decrease rapidly along with the number of crimes.
  
  This idea of a new penalty could only have come from the New World. Europe is too "old-fashioned" now, and must cede its place to the new generations. Young societies will come up with new ideas; and in this regard America often comes up with ideas that are, if not brilliant, at least original: that of our colleague can be classified in this category.
  
  The goal proposed by this doctor—whose name I unfortunately do not know—in proposing this "restrictive" law, is evidently praiseworthy: Prevent criminals from making a social strain, cut off evil at the root.
  
  Physical and moral heredity is currently an acknowledged scientific fact and one that is difficult to deny. Just as a father transmits to his children his physical characteristics, resemblances, distinguishing features, he even transmits his illnesses or his organic vices, just as his children inherit from him the involuntary function of the organs. If the father's cranial cavity is misshapen, if the brain inside of it develops irregularly because of this malformation, these characteristics will also appear in his children; and, consequently, the functions of the brain, its penchants, its irresistible impulsions—consequence of this vicious organism—will also be transmitted. It thus seems logical to prevent a man from procreating a poor fatally condemned being, who, by birth, has a defective physical and moral organism.
  
  In France, our way of dealing with criminals is quite different, however, of this way of seeing. To New Caledonia, this Eden, so hoped for by criminals, we regularly send houris to charm the stay of these condemned and transform, on earth, into a joyful reality, their dreams of paradise. When a condemned person wants to break from the monotony of his solitary existence, he chooses, from among the feminine troupe sent and maintained by the French government, the woman whom he wants to make his companion, and with no additional ceremony, a priest blesses the union, and calls for the grace of the All Powerful on the new household, hoping for happiness and prosperity. What becomes of the children of such parents, of inveterate criminals, born criminals? Here we have a little known question, and one that would be very useful, from the democratic and social point of view, to clarify.
  
  In any case, our French law giving those condemned of common law crimes the chance to marry women who also present all of the anthropological characteristics of criminality, this is a long way from agreeing with the ideas proposed by our eminent colleague in sociology and moral reasoning.
  
  Where is the truth, the utility in this question? Is it suitable for our laws to keep up the variety of criminals? Is it, conversely, within the radical means, isolating the guilty in human Society? We believe that to answer this question, one must not seek the answer in the extreme limits either of law or of defence.
  
  Physical heredity is an indisputable fact; but human perfectibility is equally undeniable.
  
  The adoption of the far-fetched idea of penal castration would have the greatest disadvantages. First, human justice is not infallible; examples of judicial errors are numerous and almost daily. Justice is not only and always lame, it is also often blind. In the case of an error, she must make reparations with the one who was unjustly harmed; but the reintegration to all political and social rights, and even a pecuniary indemnity, would it suffice as a reparation for the victim of the Californian law? A platonic satisfaction would seem quite vague to the poor Abelard, who would have the right to demand the integrity of his being. And then, and this is the really serious point, neither history nor statistics have proven that the son of a murdered will certainly be a murderer. On the contrary, there are many examples of a son who sought to erase, through an exemplary life, the stain on his family name.
  
  Until numerous and undeniable facts have demonstrated that criminality is fatally and always transmitted hereditarily, and that this vice of birth is irrevocable and ineradicable, we will be guilty of applying brutal methods to counter inconveniences that are somewhat uncertain, and that are still in the domain of theory.
  
  Must we, on the other hand, approve of our French system that consists of encouraging unions between criminals? We do not thinks so. A simple tolerance seems better than an official approval.
  
  A State concerned with blocking the continued growth of criminality should only work toward one goal: the moral perfectibility of its subjects; caring for their moral needs as well and even more than their physical needs. To this end, the education of children must be their constant preoccupation. The milieu in which they are raised, the examples that they have before their eyes, the daily guidance, etc.... these are the only elements from which children draws the rules for their future conduct. A well-directed education can correct and even totally erase the rising traces of vices imprinted by atavism.
  
  What must be done is, from birth, to give children's malleable brains the indelible imprints of virility and virtue, which, certainly, require more patience and know how than the radical methods proposed by the Californian doctor, but which also give better results from the humanitarian and from the social point of view.
  
  Dr. Vernial
  
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