His work on the commission gave Brown a strong interest in prison reform. While the work of the commission was fresh in his mind he delivered an address in the Toronto Mechanics' Institute, in which he sketched the history of prison reform in England and the United States, and pointed out how backward Canada was in this phase of civilization. He pleaded for a more charitable treatment of those on whom the prison doors had closed. There were inmates of prisons who would stand guiltless in the presence of Him who searches the heart. There were guilty ones outside. We cannot, he said, expect human justice to be infallible; but we must not draw a hard and fast line between the world inside the prison and the world outside, as if the courts of justice had the divine power of judging between good and evil. In Canada, he said, we have no system of reforming the prisoner; even the chaplain or the teacher never enters the prison walls. "Children of eight and ten years of age are placed in our gaols, surrounded by hundreds of the worst criminals in the province." He went on to describe some of the evils of herding together hardened criminals, children, and persons charged with trifling offences. He advocated government inspection of prisons, a uniform system of discipline, strict classification and separation, secular and religious instruction, and the teaching of trades. The prisoner should be punished, but not made to feel that he was being degraded by society for the sake of revenge. Hope should be held out to those who showed repentance. The use of the lash for trifling offences against discipline was condemned. On the whole, his views were such as are now generally accepted, and he may be regarded as one of the pioneers of prison reform in Canada.