with an interest that may be characterized as intense, -the problem how to secure the reabsorption of released prisoners into society, without a relapse into crime. Thousands upon thousands, intent on a better life on their emergence from prison walls, fall back into transgression simply because the ban of society is upon them; nobody trusts them, nobody will give them work, nobody will permit them to earn and eat honest bread. The solution of the problem stated above, so vital and yet so hidden, so important and at the same time so perplexed, lies in the direction of this principle-lies, in fact, in a successful application of this principle, as a living and indispensable part of a prison system. The discharged convict, though reformed and resolved to live honestly, fails to get work; and he fails so generally, that failure is the rule and success the exception. Why is this? It is not that society is hard-hearted; that it has no sympathy with misfortune; that it is vindictive and cruel; that it tramples upon a man merely because he is down. Far from it; but society distrusts the liberated prisoner; it has no confidence in him; and, what is yet more to the purpose, it has no guaranty for its confidence. It is this want of a guaranty that builds a wall of granite between the convict on his release and remunerative employment. Conquer the distrust of society, replace that distrust with confidence, furnish the needed guaranty that the man is trustworthy, and every difficulty will vanish; every shop, every factory, every farm, every avenue of honest toil, will be open to his entrance. But the problem is, how to abate the prejudice which society feels toward the liberated convict; how to overcome the dread which it has of him; how to allay its fears; how to win for him its confidence and conciliate its regard? There is but one way to accomplish this result. The convict must furnish proof, during his incarceration, that it is safe to confide in him; safe to put him at the work-bench; safe to place in his hands "the shovel and the hoe;" safe to admit him to the intimacy of the fire-side and the home circle. In other words, he must be tried, his cure must be tested, before he is discharged. But this can never be done where the system of imprisonment is one of material isolation to the end; neither can it any more be done where the system of imprisonment is one of moral isolation to the end. There must be a field, an opportunity, for the trial. But such a theater and such a chance the separate system can never furnish; nor any more can the congregate system, on its present basis. Both of our present systems must be in part retained, in part discarded, in part changed; and so changed that the passage from imprisonment to liberty shall not be, as now, per saltum, by a single bound; but the change must be such that the former shall gradually, almost

imperceptibly, melt into the latter; such that the latter part of the imprisonment shall be little more than moral, in which, as far as may be, all the arrangements shall be those of ordinary life, with its trusts, its temptations, its responsibilities, its victories over self and sin, its toning up and strengthening of the character by the friction to which the man is, in these various ways, subjected. Or, to sum up all in one word, the principle of the Irish "intermediate prison," in the form which it there has, or some other, must be impressed upon our system of imprisonment, where, doubtless, it will yield the same precious fruit that it does in the country in which the idea was first conceived and applied. "The same precious fruit." What fruit? The conquest of distrust, the implantation of confidence toward liberated prisoners. And has that result been achieved? Yes, to the fullest extent. What was thought to be an impossibility— what is yet so regarded by many-has become a living fact. In Ireland, the labor of discharged convicts, which, fifteen years ago, was spurned as a gift, is to-day eagerly sought; and the competition for it is so sharp that employers are often obliged to wait for it weeks, and sometimes months, because the applications of others were in advance of theirs.

5. Greater breadth should be given to moral and religious agencies. This principle is abundantly recognized in the reports under review, and it is asserting its force with greater potency from year to year. Twenty-six State prisons have resident chaplains, who preach-some once, some twice-on the Sabbath, and perform pastoral duty to a greater or less extent; most of the others have regular Sunday services. by volunteer clergymen, chiefly resident pastors in the towns where the prisons are situated. Sunday schools or Bible classes are maintained in eighteen prisons, with much interest and excellent effect. In nine prisons, convict prayer meetings are regularly held-in one three times, and in another twice a week. They are reported as orderly, spirited and very salutary in their influence. Only eight prisons are reported as having "funeral services" at the burial of convicts; in the others, as far as appears, no such respect is shown to the dead; no such agency for good is used in behalf of the living. This is a sad omission, and is keenly felt by many prisoners, producing in their minds a loneliness and desolation, described by one as "a feeling of forsakency." In the reformed system of discipline lately inaugurated into the Indiana State prison (south), the effect of the introduction of funeral services, with other decent appointments for the dead, is said to be truly wonderful. It is "for good (so the report declares), to an extent that can never be known."

6. There should be a stronger infusion of the educational element in our prison systems. No principle of penitentiary discipline is more generally recognized than this; nor is it a recognition in words merely, but in action as well. There is no department of the work in which reform is pushed with greater vigor than here. Secular schools, held more or less frequently, either on Sundays or week days, have been established in the State prisons of California, Florida, Indiana (south), Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oregon, Western Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin; and also in the Detroit House of Correction. Lessons are given either by teachers or chaplains at the cell doors in all the State prisons of New York, and in those of Connecticut and Illinois. In the Eastern penitentiary of Pennsylvania, secular instruction is imparted to each prisoner needing it, in his own cell. In the Virginia penitentiary reading is taught in the Sunday school. We think it safe to say that secular instruction has been increased within the year at least fifty per cent; and what is most gratifying is the eagerness with which the opportunity of learning is embraced, and the rapid progress made therein, greatly exceeding, according to a careful estimate made by a competent teacher, in the Detroit House of Correction, that of classes in the same departments of study in the public schools.

7. Industrial training needs a higher development and a greater breadth. On this point there is no dissent among the friends of a reformatory prison discipline; but a formidable impediment is found in the contract system of labor prevailing in most prisons. In prisons where the industries are managed by the head of the institution, as in Maine and Wisconsin, a full trade is taught to all the inmates who have the necessary aptitudes, and whose terms of imprisonment are sufficiently long; and there the proportion of recommittals is surprisingly small.

8. The principle is daily gaining adherents that peremptory sentences ought to be replaced by those of indeterminate duration that sentences limited only by satisfactory proof of reformation should be substituted for sentences measured by the mere lapse of time. The justness of this principle strikes every mind the moment it is announced; the difficulty felt by all is as to the possibility of applying it. But that question resolves itself into another, viz. whether the administration of our prisons can be made permanent and placed in the hands of competent governors. Nothing could be more idle than such an experiment under existing prison systems; few things more hopeful than the same experiment under the system suggested. It will scarcely be more difficult to judge as to the moral cure of a criminal than it is of the mental cure of a lunatic; we mean, of

course, when we have men of ability and experience at the head of our prisons, who make prison discipline the study and work of their lives. The principle has been already tried to some extent, and with excellent effect, in the Detroit House of Correction. It is proposed to introduce it into our own new State Reformatory for young criminals. The directors of the Ohio penitentiary give it an emphatic indorsement, and declare their belief that its general adoption is only a question of time.

esce.

9. The idea that the social principle must be brought more into play as one of the forces of a reformatory prison discipline has not yet gained, possibly we ought to say, is far from having gained, all suffrages; but it is, nevertheless, making progress, and securing recruits from year to year. It was a maxim of the greatest thinker and writer on penitentiary service the world has ever seen, Captain Alexander Machonochie, that "criminals can be trained for society only in society;" a truth in which men are slowly coming to acquiThis principle is even now applied, to a less or greater extent, in the State prisons of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maryland, Indiana, Missouri, and Virginia (at least it was in the last named State under the late warden, Burnham Wardwell). In Massachusetts the principle has a legal recognition and sanction, and may have, by permission of law, as broad an application as the prison authorities think proper to give it. In the Maryland penitentiary the prisoners, whose conduct is such as to merit it, have, for three years, been allowed an hour of recreation and freedom in the prison yard daily, when the weather would permit. For some months, one-half of the prisoners in the Indiana State prison (south) have been granted a like privilege (the two sections alternating weekly), in the corridors of the cell-house. The testimony in both cases is that no disorder or impropriety of any kind has been chargeable upon the convicts, and that so far from any evil thence resulting to the discipline, the influence, on the contrary, has, in this regard, been highly beneficial. Nor has any general demoralizing effect been the consequence, but the reverse; since, instead of the worse prisoners corrupting the better, the better have exerted a restraining and regulating influence upon the worse.

10. Political influence must be eliminated from prison administration, and greater stability impressed thereupon. But one voice, touching this point, and that in full and swelling chorus, comes up from the reports which have passed under review. There are but three prisons in the country, so far as we know, into whose management politics does not enter as a disturbing, if not a controlling, element. These are the Eastern Penitentiary, at Philadelphia, the

Albany Penitentiary, and the Detroit House of Correction; the two latter not from any organic structure in the governing power, but from the personal character and high ability of their superintendents, which are such as, themselves, to control all partisan bias, commanding it into unanimity on every election. But while the injurious effect of political influence is thus widely felt, nowhere else, probably, is it so dominating and disastrous as in our own State, where it rules supreme; though there is hope that its reign will be cut short by the adoption of the proposition, now pending before the Legislature, looking to an amendment of the Constitution, the great aim of which is the removal of our prisons from the arena of politics, so as to place their administration in the hands of competent men, and make it permanent there.

11. The principle that, to a far greater extent than heretofore, moral agencies should be substituted for brute force in the management of prisoners, is fast uniting, if, indeed, it has not already united, all suffrages in its favor. And here, contrary to what has been stated as regards the principle enunciated in number four of this detail, action waits upon theory. Let the reader recall the statements made in reference to the penitentiaries of Virginia, Maryland, Southern Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Western Pennsylvania, Detroit, New Hampshire and many others, and he will readily convince himself of the truth of this declaration.

12. That prisons themselves, as well as prisoners, should be classified, so that there shall be prisons for young criminals, prisons for women, etc., is an idea that has taken root widely and deeply in the public mind. The question of these classified prisons has been a good deal ventilated in the prison reports of the last two or three years, and already these discussions have begun to bear fruit. An act for a prison for young offenders and those who have been convicted for the first time has passed the Legislature of Illinois. Bills to a similar effect are now pending in the Legislatures of New York and Ohio, which are sure to pass. A female prison, to be placed in charge of a woman, is in process of construction in Indiana, under a law containing provisions as admirable as they are novel. The agitation for a women's prison in Massachusetts, under a leadership no less distinguished than that of Governor Claflin and Senator Wilson, is just now very vigorous; and the final passage of an act creating such an institution in the old Bay State is simply a question of time.

13. The growing sentiment in favor of preventive institutions, such as truant homes, industrial schools, etc., for all cities and large towns at least, though not very apparent in the reports under review,