IMPRISONMENT, as a legal term imprisonment denotes any involuntary restraint of the liberty of an individual whether he be confined within bounds, as in a jail or prison, or merely sub jected to arrest and detention in his home or even in a public place. Such detention, if not warranted by law, constitutes the crime of false imprisonment, punishable as such and also by an action for damages prosecuted by the injured party.
As a legal process the primary object of imprisonment is to enforce obedience to an order of a court or to assure the presence of an alleged or convicted offender for questioning or for such disposition of him as may be deemed necessary, whether his indictment or trial or the execution of the judgment that may be pronounced against him. The wide range of the judicial power of commitment to prison is illustrated by the fact that in many cases not only persons under suspicion of criminal misconduct, but necessary witnesses whose presence cannot otherwise be assured, defaulting debtors and children brought into court for their protection and safe-keeping may be thus confined. It is only in recent years, little more than a century, that, with the gradual abolition of the death penalty, of branding, mutilation and other methods of corporal punishment as the usual penalties for crime, imprisonment has come, in itself, to be employed as a punishment. It is now, in the several countries of western Europe as well as in the United States, the common penalty for criminal misconduct of every description. From this point of view, imprisonment presents itself as an important phase in the slow development of humanitarian sentiment in the Western world. But its story, as related elsewhere (see PRlsoN), creates the hope that it is not the last word in society's treatment of the offender. Certain it is that the convict prison has betrayed the humanitarian impulse to which it owes its existence.
In this latter phase of its development, imprisonment may be said to have a double object ; first, that of inflicting upon the offender the suffering that he has earned by his crime and, second, that of protecting the community from further depredations by his close confinement. To secure the former of these aims the life of the prisoner was made as hard and revolting as he could endure; to secure the latter he was immured in stone or steel cells behind bars and formidable walls, in structures of the bastille type, under the constant observation of armed guards. It can be said that, upon the whole, these two objectives of penal imprison ment have been adequately secured. A third aim of the system, which has incongruously mingled with its more immediate pur poses, is that of reforming the character of the prisoner. This purpose has, however, been completely defeated by the sordid and demoralizing conditions of prison life.
The principal object of prison reformers from John Howard down to the present time has been to ameliorate these conditions and the last few years have witnessed several hopeful experiments —notably that of Thomas Mott Osborne at Auburn and Sing Sing prisons in the United States—to make the term of imprison ment a period of schooling in character and citizenship. This is, indeed, the avowed aim of many if not of most of the correctional institutions for children, as well as of the State reformatories for youthful offenders in the United States and of the Borstal institu tions in England. If the system of imprisonment is ultimately to justify itself, it can be only through the successful outcome of these efforts.
The period of imprisonment imposed, as a penalty for de linquency, varies from a few days in the case of commitments for trifling offences to the life of the offender in the case of wilful murder and sometimes of other crimes of the graver sort. In a few instances the penalty is definitely prescribed by law, but in all but a few cases the term to be served rests in the discretion of the court in which the judgment of conviction was given within minimum and maximum limits fixed by statute. As an incentive to good conduct on the part of the prisoner most of the American States have adopted some form of indeterminate sentence, the date of release being determined by the prison authorities or by an independent board of parole within limits prescribed by law or by the sentencing court. After such release on parole and up to the expiration of his maximum sentence the parolee is still a quasi prisoner, being at large under the supervision of the prison authorities and subject to be recalled by them to finish his term in confinement. See CONVICT; PAROLE; PUNISHMENT.
(G. W. KI.) IMPROMPTU, a short literary composition which has not been, or is not supposed to have been, prepared beforehand, but gains its merit from the ready skill which produces it with out premeditation. The word seems to have been introduced from the French language in the middle of the 17th century. Poets have, from earliest ages, made impromptus, and the very art of poetry, in its lyric form, is a modified improvisation. Many of the epigrams of the Greeks, and still more probably those of the Roman satirists, particularly Martial, were delivered on the mo ment, and gained a great part of their success from the evidence which they gave of rapidity of invention. But it must have been difficult then, as it has been since, to be convinced of the value of that evidence. Who is to be sure that the impromptu-writer has not, like Mascarille in Les Precieuses ridicules, employed his leisure in sharpening his arrows? Voltaire was celebrated for the savage wit of his impromptus, and was himself the subject of a famous one by Young. Less well known but more extempora neous is the couplet by the last-mentioned poet, who being asked to put something amusing in an album, and being obliged to bor row from Lord Chesterfield a pencil for the purpose, wrote : Accept a miracle instead of wit,— See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.
The word "impromptu" is sometimes used to designate a short dramatic sketch, the type of which is Moliere's famous Im promptu de Versailles (1663), a miniature comedy in prose.
In music any extemporised composition might be regarded as an impromptu, but in actual usage the name is applied only to written compositions of an indeterminate and, as it were, impro visatory character. The finest and most famous are those of Chopin, four in number.