“There are few things more frequently borne in on a judge’s mind than the little good he can do the criminal by the sentences he imposes. These sentences often do nothing but unmixed harm, though I am sure that throughout the country the greatest pains are taken to make our prisons as useful as possible in the way of being reformatories. But, _as a matter of fact, they are not so_.” Greater pains are now taken than when those words were spoken, but a man cannot go over prisons (I do not speak of the Borstal institutions) without seeing that they are not, _cannot be_, reformatory. Reformation does not come from beating on the prisoner’s fibre with the dull mallet of suffering. To reform one must inspire. There is a spark of good in every man’s breast; the only chance lies in fanning that spark. But if we are not reforming men in our prisons, how can we be said to be protecting society, by sending them there? We are surely endangering society; and nurturing the spirit of crime. The fact of the matter is this: Revenge is still at the back of our minds. Let a man argue on the subject with whomsoever he will, ten minutes will not have passed before he makes that discovery. The State still feels that because a man has hurt it, it must hurt him. And this feeling destroys all the economy and science of our laws. When a crime is committed, all we should be concerned with, in our own interests, is the application of the best possible means to minimize the results of that crime, to ensure that society shall run the least possible risk of a repetition of the crime, and the offender the least possible risk of remaining a criminal. In doing this we cannot, in very many cases, avoid the detention of our criminals; but we can, and should, avoid inflicting suffering on those whom we detain, beyond the already great suffering and deprivation inseparable from disciplinary detention, and all that disciplinary detention implies; for by deliberately superadding such sufferings as solitude, or perpetual unrelieved silence, we do not to any appreciable degree deter others from committing offences, and we do foster in those whom we imprison the disposition to commit fresh offences when they are released.