Yet in the glibbest way that golden rule “protection of society and reformation of the offender” is cited to cover all the flaws in our administration of justice. In its name men are prosecuted, when with better comprehension they should be warned or helped. In its name first offenders are imprisoned, when with better comprehension the _imprisonment of first offenders_, of whatever age, for whatever offence, should be unknown; a much greater danger to society arises, and infinitely less chance of reforming the delinquent exists, when that delinquent has once been committed to prison. Place him on probation, or send him to a reformatory institution such as Borstal, for whatever fixed period may seem necessary—but to a prison, as prisons now are, never! To send him there is fatal, hopeless, uneconomic, unscientific. In its name, the continuance of closed-cell confinement is defended; and we endeavour to reform men by consigning them to the operation of what, in the words of its staunch supporter (the late Sir Edmund Du Cane), is, “an artificial state of existence, absolutely opposed to that which Nature points out as the condition of mental, moral, and physical health.” We try in fact to protect society by a method that does not reform. Many have raised their voices against this strange practice since evidence, given before the Select Committee on Prison Discipline, 1850, described closed-cell confinement as dangerous to health, and unjust to the prisoner “because it throws him back into society with diminished physical ability to encounter the variableness of climate, the severity of labour, and the pinchings of want, to which as a labourer in the market of competition he must ever be liable.” . . .! Yet in the name of the golden rule the practice lingers on, helping to rot men and women. In the name of this golden rule, prisoners working in association are, in our prisons, forced into an unnatural silence, for ever furtively evaded. Some silence may be good, but perpetual silence is too unnatural not to defeat itself. Classification is the true preventive of contamination, not complete separation, nor perpetual silence. In its name the handicap of the ticket-of-leave (now, thank heaven, modified) is placed on those who are desperately handicapped already. The idea behind these and other practices of the administration of our justice is that much deterrent suffering is needful for the protection of society and the reformation of the offender. But those who know human nature know that, except in rare cases, human beings cannot be _reformed_ by suffering inflicted on them against their will, and it is no use having a system of punishment beneficial to the few and harmful to the majority. The late Lord Coleridge once made these remarks:—