I want to say a word for these women! Does any one in their heart of hearts doubt the madness of such women! If so, let me say that my experience has taught me that they are as certainly mad as the veriest madman locked in any lunatic asylum. I have known some of them, and I have taken some measure of their madness. Some day we shall have decent pity on the uncertified, unclassified but the undoubtedly mad. But that will be when we are able to distinguish between disease and crime! When that time comes, prison will no longer be the one and only specific for the cure of poverty and feeble-mindedness, mania and disease when criminal actions result from these afflictions. But judging from present procedure, that day is still a long way off. CHAPTER VI PRISONS—WHY THEY FAIL! It is generally admitted that prison life, with its discipline and punishments, very largely fails to reform or deter those that are submitted to it. The reasons are not far to seek. The very fact of a number of men, who are prone to commit certain actions, being detained in prison, makes it certain that many of them will again commit those actions when they are again restored to liberty. For with liberty comes the temptation of opportunity, and with opportunity the fall. Moral strength cannot be developed in the absence of temptation, for moral qualities must be free or die! Prisons are at their best but unnatural places; for though the machinery, discipline and even the spirit that animates the whole of the officials be of the very best, still goodness, manhood, honesty and sobriety cannot grow inside a prison wall. Doubtless tens of thousands of good resolutions are formed in prison. To many prisoners it seems impossible that they should repeat the actions that brought about their imprisonment when once more they are free. But they do repeat them, again and again. Prison life, then, neither deters nor reforms. But it does other things: it deadens, demoralises, or disgusts according to the temperament and characteristics of the individual prisoner. The fixed belief in the virtue and necessity of prison has had disastrous consequences, for the State has hitherto considered it the one great cure-all for law-breaking. It has till quite recently been the first resource of the law, instead of its last resource, when called upon to deal with its erring children. Roughly, the men and women who inhabit our prisons may be classified under five heads: First: the feeble-minded; second: the physical weaklings; third: the vagrant; fourth: the casual offender; fifth: the habitual offender. I believe that all our prisoners can be placed in one or more of these divisions, though of course there are variations. Should this be approximately the case, it is certain that a tremendous difficulty arises when the discipline and routine of any one prison, however well conducted, is made to serve for the whole of the classes.