PENOLOGY (from Lat. prrna, punishment Gk. Xrryia, -logia, account, from leqein, to say). A term defined by Dr. F. H. Wines, one of the foremost penologists of the United States, as the treatment of crime for its repression and prevention, and of criminals for their extirpation or rehabilitation. The oldest form of the forcible repression of crime and treat ment of criminals is execution. The death penalty naturally suggested itself to primitive peoples as the simplest, surest means of ridding society of its dangerous members. With the advance of civil ization, however. the number of offenses for which the death penalty is inflicted has steadily de creased. (See CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.) A later important form of forcible repression is that of transportation. or the establishment of penal col onies, to which criminals are removed. England. Russia, and France have enipb)yed this system with more than doubtful success. in deed. has abandoned it. i Sec TRA SPoRTAT loNS PENAL.) A third and later form is the prison. The idea of punishment by imprisonment does not seem to have entered the mind of the rulers of antiquity, although the prison was as a matter of fact, from its crowded and filthy condition. its Want of ventilation. the foul fevers and plagues engendered there, and the starvation inflicted upon its hapless inmates. a place of torture and speedy death. it was primarily a place for the seques tration of persons obnoxious to the despotic ruler, as well as of debtors, and for the detention of persons charged with other crimes, until they were tried. It is only in comparatively recent times that the prison itself has come to be re garded as a place of punishment. a place for the confinement of condemned persons: and the name 'jail' is now generally employed to designate the place where persons under accusation are com polled to abide pending the determination of their guilt or innocence. Of all the institutions of this kind in the United States the county jails are the most unsatisfactory; they are generally breeding places of crime and licentiousness, because pris of all grades, of all ages. and sometimes even of both sexes. are herded together.
The idea of reformation has for a century played an increasingly important part in our modern prison systems. In 1773 John Howard, an English country gentleman, having been ap pointed high sheriff of Bedford, found so many abuses in the jails of his county that he was moved to call the attention of all England to its prisons everywhere. Up to this time the man agement of jails in England was under no public supervision whatever. It was the custom of the jailer. who was not even paid by the community for the performance of his duties, to collect his fees from the prisoners in his custody. Howard's life was henceforward spent in attempts tw.im prove the conditions of the prisoner, but his re forms were mainly those which looked to the humane treatment rather than to the reformation of the criminal.
The problem of the restoration of the criminal to society is a later work of the penologist. As to the method of its solution penologists do not all agree. Two distinct systems of prison disci pline. which are commonly lmown as the Penn sylvania. or Philadelphia, and Auburn systems, have grown up in the United States. The first, or 'separate system,' insists upon the separation of prisoners by day and by night; the second, by night only. From these two a third has been evolved, which is in a certain sense a combination of the two, but has also distinct features of its own. It is known as the Irish system, because it has been most fully and successfully applied in Ireland, under Sir Walter Crofton.
The essential principle of the separate system is the complete physical separation of prisoners. It rests upon the conviction that mutual contact between them is necessarily corrupting, and that classification upon any basis except that of indi vidual character is impossible. At first, solitary confinement, without labor or recreation or men tal contact with any human being, even with the officers of the prison, except in case of necessity, was the form which this experiment assumed. But the severity of this rule has been relaxed on account of the injury which it wrought in some cases both to the body and the mind of the sub ject. Now the prisoner is not excluded from a degree of companionship with the prison officials and authorized visitors. The convict, however, sleeps. eats. and works in his cell alone, and takes his exercise in an adjoining space outside. It is claimed for this system that it removes a man from evil associates; trains him as an indi vidual, and increases the personal influence of the authorities and teachers: tlilit it gives greater opportunity for reflection; that the convict who reforms under it cannot afterwards be identified 1w professional criminals and so led hack to evil ways; and that discipline may be varied accord ing to the needs of individual convicts. The ob jections to this system are: that it necessitates a large ground area and costly buildings: that it unfits a man for ordinary methods of work, be cause he has worked alone. and under exceptional conditions, such as do not prevail in the outside world where men coiiperate; that loneliness is in jurious to morals and to mental and physical health. It is claimed, however, that this system has produced excellent results; its friends main tain that, more than any other system, it reduces the number of recidivists, that is, of discharged convicts who lapse again into crime. The Inter national Prison Congress of 1900 reached the conclusion that this method must be regarded with favor as having checked criminality.