“My personal opinion is that it is utterly impossible to reform criminals. There are certain fancy measures pursued in this city for the reformation of criminals, but they are all bosh; they do not reform the outlaws. To some extent such efforts are made for the purpose of public notoriety. I know people in this city who claim that they want to reform thieves. They get hold of notorious scoundrels when they come out of state-prison, and so long as the thief is a good ‘star-actor,’ and goes from place to place and tells all sorts of things that are villanous and bad about himself (no matter whether they be lies or the truth), he is lauded around by these people as a great attraction. The moment he discontinues that kind of performance they throw him out in the street because he is of no use to them; he doesn’t ‘draw.’ “So far as the efforts of religious people are concerned in this matter of criminal reformation, I say that their efforts are laudable. They certainly mean well. They devote time and money to the work; but they have no practical experience with criminals, and their efforts count for very little. It is sometimes claimed that, under the influence of prayers and preaching, the criminal’s heart is touched, he sees the error of his ways, he is converted; I do not believe it. As the word ‘reformation’ is ordinarily used, I know there is no such experience among thieves.” It will not do to dispose of the subject by saying that there must be criminals in the world, and that we pay policemen to take care of them. No police force can entirely suppress crime; there are too many evil-doers to be watched, and each has his own style. Inspector Williams, of New York, an officer almost as widely known as Inspector Byrne, and who has had charge of the most dangerous precincts in the city, wrote recently: “The general public, who look upon criminals as a class by themselves, are apt to think that one criminal is very much like another. This is not a fact. I have been a policeman for nearly a quarter of a century, and I have never seen two criminals who were very nearly alike in character. A Siamese-twinship in the annals of crime is unknown. When we enter the criminal world and seek to deal with its members from any point of view, we must look upon them individually, not collectively.” All of which means that the only way to lessen the number of criminals is to see to it that wretchedness of the masses of population in our large cities shall not be allowed to send new recruits to the ranks. CHAPTER XXI. RELIGION.