“I’ve seen many a man driven queer.” (This recidivist had served four terms of penal servitude.) “I’ve seen men driven off their nuts.” I could not get an admission from any prisoner that the suffering they underwent in separate confinement deterred them from coming back to prison. The two reasons they assigned for coming back to prison were: (1) That they had so little chance outside. (2) Drink. It is obvious, however, that the separate period is almost universally regarded as much the worst part of the sentence. My reasons for believing that, in spite of this, separate confinement is not, in fact, deterrent were given in my open letter to the Home Secretary (the _Nation_, May 1st and May 8th, 1909); this belief has been strengthened rather than weakened in the course of this investigation. As a final result of these visits I record my deliberate conviction that no competent observer with any knack of getting at men’s feelings, and the opportunity of conversing in private and _as a private person_, with the prisoners could come to any other conclusion than that an immense amount of harmful and unnecessary suffering is inflicted by closed-cell confinement extending over the periods (especially the longer periods) now prevailing. It is my belief that if the authorities were able to adopt this method of getting at the real state of the case the system would not remain unaltered for a single day. (4) (From a Letter to the Home Secretary, the Right Hon. Herbert John Gladstone, M.P., October, 1909.) “. . . Every day that passes with this question undealt with means so many thousand hours of solid, tangible, harmful, removable misery. There is a distinction between this particular kind of misery and any other experienced by man in a state of society such as we now have in England. There is no other form of acute, _prolonged misery enforced_ on people in such a way as that they can by no possibility avoid it. The old saying, ‘He deserves all he’ll get and more,’ stultifies itself the moment it is looked into; the plea of deterrence does not hold water; and this misery stands out stark—a survival from the philosophy (!) of the dark ages. . . .” NOTE.—Solitary (or separate) confinement for convicts has been reduced from nine, six, and three months to three months for “old hands,” and one month for the other two classes of convicts. But the writer feels as strongly as ever that, except in special cases, it should be done away with altogether.—J. G. II THE SPIRIT OF PUNISHMENT (An Article in the _Daily Chronicle_, 1910.)