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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: and this renders recidivism possible even in murder. But it is
clear that what we ought to abolish is not perpetual separation,
but only the stupidly harsh form of isolation in cells--and this
not only in life sentences, but in all sentences.
Cellular imprisonment is inhuman, because it blots out or weakens,
in the cases of the least degenerate criminals, that social sense
which was already feeble in them, and also because it inevitably
leads to madness or consumption (by onanism, insufficient
movement, air, &c.). Hence it drives the prison authorities, in
order to avoid these disastrous consequences, to the injustice of
building cells for murderers which are decidedly comfortable, and
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