For all minor offences, fines are more efficacious than imprisonment and, in the case of the poor, should be replaced by compulsory labour at the discretion of the magistrate. Binding over under a guarantee to make good the injury done, corporal punishment, confinement to the house, judicial reprimands and cautions are applicable to offenders of this type, as is also the system of remitting first offences used in France with great success by Magnaud. Under this system, the offender is sentenced to an adequate penalty, which, however, is only inflicted in the case of recidivation.
An efficacious, and at the same time, more serious method of dealing with criminaloids, is by means of the probation system and indeterminate sentence. The offender is sentenced to the maximum penalty applicable to his particular offence, but it may be diminished after a certain time if he shows signs of improvement. During this interval he is on probation, that is, under supervision, much in the same way as juvenile offenders.
The probation system is extensively and successfully adopted in America, either singly or in conjunction with other penalties, as shown above.
This is an ideal manner of dealing with offenders of a less serious type, minors and criminaloids, who have fallen into bad ways, since, instead of punishing them, it seeks to encourage in them habits of integrity and to check the growth of vices by means of a benevolent but strict supervision. The offender is placed under the guidance of a respectable person, who tries in every way to smooth the path of reform by providing his charge with employment if he has none, or putting him in the way of learning some trade if he is unskilled, by isolating him from bad company, by rewarding any improvement, and reporting progress to the central office, which has to decide whether the period of probation is sufficient, or, in cases where it has not been efficacious, to have recourse to sterner measures.
The only drawback to this system is the difficulty of applying it, because it is not always possible to find in every town a number of persons of high moral standing, who are able and willing to exercise vigilance over offenders. However, to the honour of the United States it must be said that in many States this supervision is organised in a truly admirable manner. At Boston I visited the Probation Office organised and managed by Miss Mary Dewson, which undertakes the supervision of girls and is a model worthy of imitation from the general arrangement down to the smallest details.
