At Moabit it soon became evident that the separate system was not suitable, and that secret intercourse among the convicts was not preventable. The doors of the cells were therefore left open during working hours, and a number of convicts worked in company. In church, during exercise, and in school no isolation took place, but silence was always enforced. On the whole, the Prussian authorities were not in favour of prolonged isolation. As to the general result, it has been thought that the cellular system lessened the number of reconvictions, but that the experience had no lasting effect upon hardened or habitual criminals. On the other hand, first offenders, or those who had been tempted by opportunity or carried away by passion, were believed to have been returned to society changed and reformed after a period of cellular confinement. Progress continued to be made, although the introduction of a new system of criminal procedure in 1849 led to such an increase in the number of sentences that much overcrowding of the prisons followed. Attention was in consequence directed rather toward providing further accommodation than to experiments in treatment. Such reforms as were urgent, including the separation of the sexes in different buildings, were accomplished, while the building of new prisons went steadily on and the fine specimens of the Stadtvogtei in Berlin, the cellular prisons at Ratibor in Silesia and Rendsburg in Schleswig-Holstein, a cellular police prison at Altona and similar institutions in other provinces, showed that improvement did not tarry by the way in Prussia.