42 CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON 



Indeed, all penological studies are driving us back to 

 educational and other preventive measures. Reformation 

 is costly and uncertain. Penalties have little influence upon 

 minds not disciplined to foresight of consequences, incapable 

 of connected reasoning. When wages are so low and fluctu- 

 ating as they are in some ranks of labor, the prison becomes 

 actually inviting, and its terror a paradise to many of the pro- 

 letariat. Prison reform problems lead straight on to kinder- 

 garten and manual training, the trade union, the minimum 

 wage, and related agencies of prevention and degradation. 

 Expert judgment has long since declared that for the socially 

 unfit, liberty is an injury to the individual and a constant men- 

 ace to society. Legal innocence sets free the recidivist at the 

 end of a brief sentence, while the wild beast in him is yet un- 

 tamed and the enfeebled will is unable to resist temptation. 

 This cruel policy of mathematical justice is sustained by cus- 

 tom and legal conservatism long after it is condemned by 

 science. The sociological method of co-ordinating study is 

 compelling the lawyers to bring fresh life into a formal text 

 study, and just as truly compels theoretical specialists in 

 anthropology to regard the legal point of view, the certainty, 

 impersonality and impartiality of justice. 



The most glaring contrast between expert knowledge and 

 popular custom and law is seen in the legal administration of 

 local institutions — the jail and the county poorhouse. The 

 mere description of an ordinary jail should suffice to condemn 

 it, and would awaken intense horror if the public could know 

 and picture the necessary results of average administration. 

 The local prison is used as a place for the detention of prisoners 

 awaiting trial, sometimes of insane persons, and even of wit- 

 nesses, as well as for the infliction of short sentences for minor 

 offenses. Frequently, men, women, and youths are confined 

 in the same building, not seldom within sight or hearing of 

 one another. The corridors of many jails are occupied all 

 day long by a motley company of prisoners of all grades of 

 depravity. In this free school of crime, the uninitiated take 

 lessons from adepts in licentiousness and burglary, and thought- 

 less children become the pupils and intimate companions of 

 tramps and thieves. The local officials seem to have no stand- 



