Another anomaly in existing penal systems is their failure to deal adequately with the chronic “jail bird”—the man whose inveterate tendency to crime breaks out again and again, with only such enforced intervals as may be imposed by periodical incarcerations. Such cases are, unfortunately, far from rare. For instance, the daily press last month recorded a fiendish plot to rob and murder an aged couple in a Long Island village. Of the two conspirators, one had spent a total of seventeen years in prison as the result of a series of convictions for similar offenses, while the other—a lad of eighteen—had just finished a term of imprisonment for a previous attempt to murder. At almost the same time a miscreant made an effort, which narrowly missed success, to blow up a crowded train on the Lehigh Valley railroad by placing dynamite on the track. Investigation of his antecedents revealed that most of his life had been passed in jail, to which he had been repeatedly sentenced for a variety of more or less serious crimes, among which was an attempt to destroy a Hudson River passenger steamboat. For his last offense he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. With the usual commutations, his term will probably expire in five or six years, when we may expect him to renew his attacks upon his fellow men. The dual purpose of the penal law is, we take it, the reformation of the criminal and the protection of society. Now in the cases cited, and in scores of similar ones, it is entirely clear that repeated terms of imprisonment have not the slightest corrective or deterrent effect upon the offender, while they afford only a temporary safeguard to the community upon which he preys. As soon as he is released from jail, his perverted mental bent impels him to resume his warfare against mankind. It is mere fatuity to give such a man his liberty, when liberty simply means another opportunity to attack the lives or property of others. And yet, under existing laws, he is again and again set loose to resume his predatory career. There is no statute under which his incurable hostility to society can be rendered innocuous by imprisonment for life. And yet it is evident that such is the only rational method of dealing with a large number of cases.