/14 THE JUKES. 



held in common, and thus, under the imposing title of " the con- 

 gregate system," prepares an environment of criminal example just 

 fitted for the assimilative power of each individual malefactor? 

 Upon what grounds shall we continue this system when the experi- 

 ence of other nations has demonstrated that three years of separate 

 imprisonment has more effect in checking crime than ten years of 

 congregate custody ; that it reduces the necessity of punishment ; 

 that it prevents the contamination of the reformable ; that it pro- 

 tects the convicts from recognition by their co-prisoners when 

 liberated ; that it checks the formation of gangs for future criminal 

 operations, and that it cuts off the possibility of odious crimes 

 which rivet the criminal habit because they obliterate the sense of 

 self-respect and the voice of conscience as the first step in a mental 

 degeneration that ends in a maniac's demise. 



The best experience as respects all institutions is against the 

 aggregation of similar defects, or similar misfortunes within the 

 walls of a spacious building. The large hospital is making way 

 for the pavilion, and in many cases the tent in the open air with its 

 single patient ; the orphan home, for the domesticating of the child 

 in private families; the foundling hospital, for the nursing-out 

 system ; and the insane asylum, for the private treatment of the 

 mentally deranged. It is useless to resist a tide which thus sweeps 

 from all directions, and must necessarily carry away the congregate 

 method of treating every form of human infirmity. 



Fortunately for our State, the recent adoption of a constitutional 

 amendment abolishing the political mismanagement of our State 

 prisons and the establishment of the Elmira Reformatory have 

 already produced reforms in the law and the administration of 

 penal discipline which give great promise. 



As respects the amendment of the criminal law much needs to 

 be done, but there is room here for only two features, relating 

 to irreclaimable criminals and epileptics. 



In dealing with the typical habitual criminals who are contrivers 

 of crime, criminal capitalists and panders, where we cannot accom- 

 plish individual cure we must organize extinction of their race. They 

 must sternly be cut off from perpetuating a noisome progeny either 



