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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAPTER III.: OF RESTRICTIVE PUNISHMENTS—TERRITORIAL CONFINEMENT. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 1 (Principles of Morals and Legislation, Fragment on Government, Civil Code, Penal Law)

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Subject Area: Law

CHAPTER III.: OF RESTRICTIVE PUNISHMENTS—TERRITORIAL CONFINEMENT. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 1 (Principles of Morals and Legislation, Fragment on Government, Civil Code, Penal Law) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 1.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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CHAPTER III.

OF RESTRICTIVE PUNISHMENTS—TERRITORIAL CONFINEMENT.

Restrictive punishments are those which restrain the faculties of the individual, by hindering him from receiving agreeable impressions, or from doing what he desires: they take from him his liberty with respect to certain enjoyments and certain acts.

Restrictive punishments are of two sorts, according to the method used in inflicting them. Some operate by moral restraint, others by physical restraint. Moral restraint takes place when the motive presented to the individual, to hinder him from doing the act which he wishes to perform, is only the fear of a superior punishment; for, in order to be efficacious, it is necessary that the punishment with which he is threatened must be greater than the simple pain of submitting to the restraint imposed upon him.

The punishment of restraint is applicable to all sorts of actions in general, but particularly to the faculty of locomotion. Everything which restrains the locomotive faculty, confines the individual; that is to say, shuts him up within certain limits, and may be called territorial confinement.

In this kind of punishment, the whole earth, in relation to the delinquent, is divided into two very unequal districts; the one of which is open to him, and the other interdicted.

If the place in which he is confined be a narrow space, surrounded with walls, and the doors of which are locked, it is imprisonment: if the district in which he be directed to remain is within the dominions of the state, the punishment may be called relegation: if it be without the dominions of the state, the punishment is called banishment.

The term relegation seems to imply, that the delinquent is sent out of the district in which he ordinarily resides. This punishment may consist in his confinement in that district where he ordinarily resides, and even in his own house. It may then be called quasi imprisonment.

If it refers to a particular district, which he is prohibited from entering, it is a sort of exclusion, which has not yet a proper name, but which may be called local interdiction.

Territorial confinement is the genus which includes five species:—imprisonment, quasi imprisonment, relegation, local interdiction, and banishment.