41 - How to prevent crimes

Summary

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. This is the principal goal of all good legislation, which is the art of guiding men to their greatest happiness, or the least unhappiness possible, taking into account all the blessings and evils of life. But the means hitherto employed have been mistaken or opposed to the proposed goal. The chaos of men's activities cannot be reduced to a geometric order devoid of irregularity and confusion. Just as the constant and very simple laws of nature do not prevent the planets being disturbed in their orbits, so human laws cannot prevent disturbances and disorders among the infinite and very opposite motive forces of pleasure and pain. Yet this is the fantasy of limited men when they have power in their hands. To forbid a large number of trivial acts is not to prevent the crimes they may occasion. It is to create new crimes, wilfully to redefine virtue and vice, which we are exhorted to regard as eternal and immutable. What a state would we be reduced to if we were forbidden everything which might tempt us to crime? It would be necessary to deprive a man of the use of his senses. For every motive which urges a man to commit a real crime, there are a thousand which urge him to perform those trivial actions which bad laws call crimes.