Individual supervision is compulsory, and in many cases it is essential, but not in all. Surely there are some prisoners who might, with good results, be trusted. The supervision is never relaxed; the prisoner is always in sight or hearing of an officer. During the day she is never trusted out of sight, and at night the watchful eye of the night officer can see her by means of a small glass fitted in the door of each cell. She may grow gray during the length of her imprisonment, but the rule of supervision is never relaxed. Try and realize what it means always to feel that you are watched. After all, these prisoners are women, some may be mothers, and it is surely the height of wickedness and folly to crush whatever remnant of humanity and self-respect even a convict woman may still have left her. These poor creatures who wear the brand of prison shame are guarded and controlled by women, but men make the rules which regulate every movement of their forlorn lives. SOME GOOD POINTS OF CONVICT PRISONS The rules of prison, rigorous as they are, are not wholly without some consideration for the hapless beings who are condemned to suffer punishment for their sins within their gloomy walls. On the men’s side the system is harsher, the life harder, and the discipline more strict and severe; and I can well believe that for a man of refinement and culture the punishment falls little short of a foretaste of inferno. But gloomy and tragic as the convict establishment is, it is a better place than the county prison, and I have heard habitual criminals avow that a convict prison is the nearest approach to a comfortable “home” in the penal world. I know that a certain type of degenerate women, after serving their sentences, have committed grave offenses with the sole object of obtaining a conviction which would send them back to penal servitude. For such the segregation system would be the most effectual remedy. MY SICKNESS