Of all ills, in or out of prison, with which our people are afflicted, that of false clemency with coddling is the most pronounced and far-reaching. So, natural laws will have it; and so, therefore, the after-parole record attests. While the personal equation in prison management should never be negatively considered, the reformation of the criminal still resides at his finger tips. That, in the final analysis, whether or no our man likes "Steve" of the institutional staff; approves or disapproves of any part of the house régime; tells the truth about all following his release, or tells out-of-whole-cloth, stock-in-trade lies, with which the habitual criminal is ever ready to assail the ears of the super-emotional. The last and only reliable test of the efficiency of a régime of reform reduces to the question of recidivation; which is to say: what percentage of the grand total of the paroled lapse into crime following parole, are caught at it, and are reincarcerated, either under the original or new indictment? As a matter of fact, we have not and cannot have informing data concerning the above, vital point, until we shall have established an international bureau of anthropometry, as well as regulations pertaining to the indeterminate sentence which shall insure reasonable supervision over, and control of, the paroled felon. Then, even, regiments of habitual repeaters will not be "caught at it." And then, those will "report" as from a prayer meeting, who had just cracked a safe. The criminal in America is peculiarly a menace to society because of that which we do not know and do not find out about him. Such data as we have stands a serious blemish on the penological escutcheon of the nation, and makes comparison with the best pre-war results of other nations as unsatisfactory as humiliating. Foreign penologists say to us: "Especially, you make our corrective systems read well, and we must allow that they look the real thing; but we find it difficult to reconcile the efficiency you claim, with the number of recidivists you admit. _Please_: why so many criminal rounders in and out of your prison houses?" Why, indeed, and it is a question a patient people cannot shunt much longer. Nothing is so expensive to the State as the criminal, concerning the future of whom in America, this is binding: the moment society at large concerns itself seriously with individual practice of the "Golden Rule," and incidentally about alleged prison malpractice, that moment we shall begin to get criminals in leash, and not before. In the meantime, if some would not, as they do, through loosely written and spoken construction of vice, virtue and authority, place a premium on anti-social expression, they would probably render the best aid of which they are capable to the singularly complex work of reform. Calling false turns is simply to give the criminal more rope. Playing up to the criminal, and down the public security, is to make bald bid for social chaos.