If these different systems were more closely studied there would result a great awakening as to the possibilities of the criminal, and society would discover that its best interests were served by reforming its offenders and making them moral and industrious servants of the State, instead of by committing them to institutions where they were brought into contact with consecrated villainy and where the unwholesome influence is calculated to confirm them in criminal habits and make them a constant menace and expense to the community. That our criminal population is on the increase, and that the proportion of recidivists grows larger every year, is scarcely to be wondered at in the midst of such influences. Notwithstanding all that has been done to improve the state of prisons from what they were even fifty years ago, yet the motto "once a criminal always a criminal" is often too sadly true. The report of the English commissioners of prisons shows that amongst those who have been convicted during the year 1902, 51.9 per cent. of the men and 70.6 per cent. of the women had been previously convicted. In the past these results were regarded as inevitable. Now they are regarded with much disquietude. Formerly they were supposed to point to a defect in the criminal, now they are understood to prove a defect in the penal system. The reason for this defect lies in having regarded certain objects as primary which are in reality only secondary. These objects have been defined to be the deterrence of crime by the example of punishing criminals; the repression of crime by the infliction of punishment, and the protection of society as a consequence. The deterrent value of the penal system has been greatly reduced by the small amount of dread which it excites in the criminally disposed. The representative value is of a minus quantity. Crime is assisted more than it is crippled. The protection of society is secured only during the period of incarceration. At the end of that period the criminal must be discharged and he goes forth often a more skilful criminal than before and with a vow to take vengeance upon society. Regarding these objects as secondary the reformation of the offender has been acknowledged as primary by criminologists, and they turned their attention to study the criminal pathologically, to enquire into the causes of crime and also to make trial of the best methods for securing reformation. "Punishment the principle and reformation the incident," was the theory of the old school. The New school reverses the order to "Reformation the principle and punishment the incident." Obviously this course renounces the old principle of retaliation and vengeance and embraces that indicated by Christ in his precept "bear ye one another's burdens."