There should be separate rules and privileges to meet the case of a prisoner guilty of moral lapses only, as distinguished from the habitual breaker of the laws. At present the former gets the same treatment and discipline as the habitual criminal of several convictions, and can not claim a single privilege that the old offender has not a right to ask--for example, members of both classes are limited to the same number of letters and visits. The “Star Class” is supposed to be kept separate from ordinary prisoners. It was so at Woking Prison. But at Aylesbury Prison, to which I was transferred later, they were sandwiched between two wards of habitual criminals, with whom they came continually in contact, not only in passing to and from the workshops, fetching meals, and going to exercise, but continuously. That contamination should ensue is hardly surprising. It requires a will of iron, and nearly the spirit of a saint, not to be corrupted by the sights and sounds of a prison, even when no word is spoken. It is a serious accusation against any system to say “that it produces the thing it is designed to prevent,” but such, I am convinced, is the fact as regards the manufacture of criminals and imbeciles by the present system of penalism almost the world over. CHAPTER FIVE The Period of Hard Labor ROUTINE Having passed solitary confinement and probation, I entered upon the third stage, hard labor, when I was permitted to leave my cell to assist in carrying meals from the kitchen, and to sit at my door and converse with the prisoners in the adjoining cells for two hours daily--but always in the presence of an officer who controls and limits the conversation. My daily routine was now also somewhat different from that of solitary confinement and probation.