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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: I end with a modification of an old comparison which has been much
abused. Crime has been compared to an impetuous torrent which
ought to be enclosed between the dykes of punishment, lest
civilised society should be submerged. I do not deny that
punishments are the dykes of crime, but I assert that they are
dykes of no great strength or utility. All nations know by sad
and chronic experience that their dykes cannot save them from
inundations; and so our statistics teach us that punishments have
but an infinitesimal power against the force of criminality, when
its germs are fully developed.
But as we can best protect ourselves against inundations by
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