ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book analyzes the efforts to introduce a more severe policy of punishment for social educational reasons and the limits beyond which the Fascist penal program could not go. The futility of severe punishment and cruel treatment may be proven a thousand times, but so long as society is unable to solve its social problems, repression, the easy way out, will always be accepted. It provides the illusion of security by covering the symptoms of social disease with a system of legal and moral value judgments. The social system with its need for rationalization not only restricts the extension of a repressive penal policy but also sets narrow limits to the reform program. The penal system is an integral part of the whole social system, and shares its aspirations and its defects.
