“I can’t close this letter without saying that it’s impossible to go over our prisons and not see that the country has in yourself a great reforming administrator; I shall consider it a rare piece of good fortune if any words of mine help to bring about in your mind the belief that this particular feature of our prison system, closed-cell confinement, requires immediate mitigation and _ultimate elimination_, except in individual cases. . . .” ----- [5] Criminality, I now think, is as often the result of too strong a character, or rather of too much unbalanced self-will.—J. G. (3) A MINUTE ON SEPARATE CONFINEMENT Forwarded to the Home Secretary and the Prison Commissioners, September, 1909. (Compiled from visits paid to sixty convicts undergoing separate confinement in X. and Y. Prisons, July and September, 1909.) By the courtesy of the Prison Commissioners, to whom my thanks are due, I visited these convicts in their cells, and conversed privately with each one of them for from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour. I put certain definite questions to each in regard to the effect of separate confinement on themselves, and, so far as they could tell me, on other prisoners, prefacing each conversation by the information that I was in no way connected with the prison authorities. My object in the course of these conversations was to get behind the formal question and answer to the man’s real feelings. I met with no hostility, defiance, or conscious evasion in any single case. In some cases a word or two was sufficient to bring a rush of emotion. Several men were in tears throughout the interview. In the majority of cases, however, I found it difficult to get the prisoners to express themselves; and in some cases formal answers, stolidly given, were reversed by some sudden revelation of feeling evoked, as it were, in spite of the prisoner’s self. Generally speaking, I judged that feelings were understated rather than overstated. The summary of these interviews is as follows: (sixty convicts interviewed):— Of these: _Eight_ preferred separate confinement to working in CATEGORY A. association, and were not conscious of harmful _Fifteen_ would prefer work in association, but CATEGORY B. (1) Having suffered from their separate confinement, had got more or less used to it (three cases). (2) Were suffering, but thought it was good for them (three cases). (3) Were so incapable of expressing their experiences, that no definite answer could be got from them (nine cases). _Thirty-seven_ preferred association; suffered severely CATEGORY C. from separate confinement; and asserted that they had been harmed; that all prisoners were harmed, and some driven crazy. Of the eight convicts in Category A, who preferred separate: