The improvement of penal institutions was undertaken by Austria in the early forties and a special commission was appointed to examine into the merits of various systems recommended, with the result that solitary confinement was recognised as the most suitable form of punishment for all prisoners awaiting trial and for those sentenced for a year or less. But before this could be put into practice in the new prisons, the political situation changed and the projected reforms were delayed. The old system was not changed, but efforts were made to provide further accommodation to meet the great increase in the number of sentences. Much energy was devoted to the work and considerable outlay, which produced prisons large enough to contain thirteen thousand inmates. The entire prison administration was entrusted to religious orders and even prisons for male offenders were placed under the superintendence of nuns, a cardinal error resulting in much mischief. Under the minister of justice, in 1865, reforms were again instituted; he assumed the supreme control, and prison management was made to conform to the spirit of the then prevailing liberal views. The system of imprisonment hitherto in force throughout Austria remained untouched for the time being. Among other reforms, corporal punishment and chains were abolished. In 1868 the penal institutions of Garsten and Karthaus came under government inspection, the contracts with the religious orders ceased, and in 1870 all male prisons were put under direct state control. A new male prison for three hundred inmates was opened at Laibach in Carniola and another at Wisnicz to accommodate four hundred. In April, 1872, the system of solitary confinement was partially introduced, but the progressive principle of prison treatment was kept steadily in view. After a period of cellular confinement, prisoners lived and laboured in association, care being taken to separate the worst from the less hardened offenders. Juveniles were segregated and, of course, the women, the whole number falling into three principal divisions,--the first offenders, the possibly curable and the hopeless, habitual criminals.