Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. 61 
STATE REFORMATORIES.* 
BY FRED BE. HAYNES. 
The old idea of the treatment of the criminal was 
simply to punish him, to deter him from future offenses 
and to deter others from further violation of law. To 
accomplish this purpose, the penalty for even trivial 
crimes was made extremely severe. The English penal 
code, even as late as the eighteenth century, provided for 
capital punishment for a large number of crimes. There 
was no thought of the future of the criminal. The pen- 
ology of the time was like the charity of the period. The 
thought was for the protection of society. Protection 
of society took the place of the good of the soul of the 
generous giver. Their spirit was of the kind shown by 
the people of Vienna, who petitioned that the torture of 
criminals should be carried on at a place remote enough, 
so that the cries of the victims should not disturb law- 
abiding people, engaged in their ordinary affairs. Indeed, 
with the conditions still existing in many of our jails and 
prisons, perhaps we ought not to criticise too severely 
earlier times and methods. 
But a wiser understanding of the nature of crime 
and of the criminal has come to the minds of some of the 
people of our time. More careful study of educational 
methods, more knowledge of the workings of the human 
mind and of the connection between man’s physical and 
mental activities has led to experiments, that, if they are 
not solving the criminal problem, are at least like the 
X-Ray throwing a flood of light upon many things once 
buried in darkness. Since 1870 a number of pioneers 
have been at work in different places, developing a 
method which is really reforming more than three- 
fourths of the persons who are brought under its 
influence. It is accomplishing far better than other 
