ABSTRACT
Emile Durkheim has tried to substantiate the thesis that the severity of a penal system depends upon the degree of uniformity and unanimity within the community concerned as well as upon the power of its central authority, i.e. the greater the uniformity and unanimity among its members and the absolutism of its ruler, the greater its severity towards the lawbreaker. The aim of punishment is not so much revenge or reformation or compensation, but the preservation of the existing unanimity of conscience. The prison visitors and prison teachers movement, admirable as it is, can tackle the problem only from one side; it introduces into the institution persons of a character superior to the average prisoner in social standing and education, persons who are supposed to spend only a small fraction of their time with the inmate and can thus provide the jam, but not the bread and butter of daily life.
