26o CHARLTON T. LEWIS 



It being evident, then, that the conception of penal law 

 as a system of just retribution is without validity and without 

 utility, it remains to consider what service, if any, the practice 

 of imprisonment renders to society. It must be admitted 

 that life in confinement and cut off from association with 

 others is unnatural. A long period of complete subjection to 

 the will of others and without individual initiative, results, 

 except for characters of unusual strength, in a paralysis of will. 

 Nothing can unfit a man for society so surely as cutting him 

 off from all society. It is, therefore, a first principle of reform 

 that only necessity can justify imprisonment. A person who 

 can be at large with safety to others ought never to be subject- 

 ed to a term in prison. If it is unsafe for the community that 

 he should be free, he must be confined; but the duration of con- 

 finement must be determined by the duration of the necessity. 

 In other words, the only rational system of imprisonment is 

 that which limits its appHcation to those who can not be trusted 

 in freedom with safety for the rights of others, and all such 

 should be subjected to such influences as will, if possible, 

 prepare them for freedom, and released when they have given 

 satisfactory evidence that confinement is no longer necessary. 

 This is the great principle of the indeterminate sentence, which 

 is the recognized basis of reform legislation in many of the 

 states of the union; but it has been as yet timidly and imper- 

 fectly embodied even in the foremost penal codes. One of its 

 most valuable features, to which too little attention has been 

 directed, is that it leads to the permanent seclusion of the 

 irreclaimable. If crime is ever to be extirpated, society must 

 be resolute in its dealings with habitual and professional crimi- 

 nals. Any system which treats a recognized enemy of human 

 society on the basis of a single act, and fixes, in view of that act, 

 a definite term at the end of which he must be freed, to prey 

 upon his fellows, is a foreordained failure. 



It must not be disguised that these principles will neces- 

 sarily lead to a large disuse of imprisonment. A growing sense 

 of the evils which follow the practice, and especially of the 

 fact that prisons and jails are the channels of supply for the 

 criminal class at large, has already pressed strongly upon 

 thoughtful men the necessity of finding a substitute for con- 



