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Show TREAT CRIMINAL AS INDIVIDUAL By DR. NATHAN CANTOR, University of Buffalo. American criminology has failed to keep step with the rapid progress prog-ress of psychology and related sciences. It has made very little use of our new knowledge of human nature and conduct. For the past 30 years or so a great deal of information has been laboriously gathered much of which is uniformly accepted by neurologists, physiologists and psychologists. psycholo-gists. This could all be applied to the field of crime. Instead, our statesmen, lawyers, clerics and respectable people in general ignore, overlook or deny the far-reaching changes implied by altered views of the growth of human personality. Our treatment of criminals reflects this contrasting point of view. Instead of treating each defendant as an individual whose social, economic eco-nomic and psychological background is quite unlike every other defendant's, defend-ant's, we convict and punish criminals according to the crime committed. The prevailing psj'chologieal philosophy is the reform of the criminal, crim-inal, while practically it is the revenge of society against the criminal. It is punishment, not reform. |