BLACKMAR: penology in KANSAS. 159 



penological principles stated, the prison has for its duty the same 

 objects as the university, although applied to a class of individuals 

 entirely different, who overstep the bounds of the law and by their 

 own habits have abstracted themselves from legitimate society. Both 

 institutions exist for the improvement of society and neither is 

 instituted for the purpose of revenge. 



While we have carried on the work of reform of prisoners to a 

 considerable extent and while many seem to be carried away with it 

 as the only great method of solving the evils of the day, we must 

 not forget that the great institutions which tend to develop society on 

 the basis of prevention of crime are not the only ones which are 

 important to consider. And this arises from the very fact of reform, 

 that if we allow either crime or pauperism to develop rapidly, un- 

 checked, we shall soon find it such a burden on human society that 

 the legitimate and well organized will become defective on account of 

 the increase in the number of paupers and criminals who form a con- 

 stant menace to civil institutions. While all sentiments for reform 

 arise primarily from human sympathy with the weak and the erring, 

 the state still rests the cause of its action in the full and complete 

 protection of legitimate society. It matters not how individual sym- 

 pathies act, the reformation of criminals finds its cause to be in the 

 common weal of society. To make a prisoner more intellectual, to 

 give him better moral qualities, to prepare him for better industrial 

 independence, to send him out with a better life and means, if he 

 wills, to support himself, to adopt means to help him from the prison 

 world in which he has lived into a greater world outside: all this 

 might arise out of benevolence, but it has for its ultimate end the 

 simple protection and improvement of society as a whole. Conse- 

 quently reform has become the sole great object in detaining crimin- 

 als within prison walls. All other objects must be considered as 

 means to this one great end. 



In the discussion of penological principles one of the foremost 

 methods of reform to be noticed is that of the classification of all 

 criminals. Perhaps Belgium was the foremost state of Europe to 

 adopt a thoroughly practical classification of prisoners. Formerly it 

 was considered sufficient to have a large prison pen, a foul den into 

 which old and young, light offenders and heavy villains were thrust, 

 taking them out only occasionally for service or keeping them without 

 service at all. Here the old criminals, hardened through many 

 years of repeated crimes, would rehearse their stories to the young 

 who were soon educated in all of the tricks of the trade. Here in 

 these horrid dens the propensities for crime were increas'ed rather 



