Vice and crime are not the same thing, nor have they any necessary relationship. Though generally the result of a vicious impulse or intention, there is hardly a crime in the calendar that might not be committed by a person acting from a higher moral standard than that set by the law. On the other hand, a vicious person may indulge in almost any vice and yet keep clear of the law; it all depends on how he does it. A dishonest person, if he puts his hand in the pocket of another and abstracts the contents, may be sent to prison; but if by appealing to the cupidity of his neighbours he can get them to put their hands in their own pockets and hand him over the proceeds in order that they may share in the El Dorado he has invented, he robs them just as effectively and is not sent to prison. He may become a pillar of society and a legislator. When people are sent to prison for the first time all that has been determined is the fact that they have been guilty of breaking the law. There is no justification for assuming that their characters are, on the whole, worse than those of others. Some of them may have committed very wicked crimes; but, except in a few cases, a thorough investigation of all the attendant circumstances might modify any impressions derived from the trial. Even the commission of a fiendish act is not incompatible with a disposition that is usually and mainly good. We do not in practice assume that a man is a bad man because he has done a bad thing, any more than we credit him with being a good man because he has done a good thing. When the evil he has done has taken a criminal form we are as little entitled to judge the man by the act we condemn. The fact that a person is in prison hinders any attempt to study him. The investigator begins with a prejudice against him because of the crime he has committed. Yet it is the most common thing to hear people who have known a prisoner intimately for years say that they could not have believed he would do the thing he has done. These people are quite as fit to judge character as those who are called scientific investigators, and they have better opportunities for doing so. They have not seen the weakness of their friends in the form it has taken. The investigator usually sees nothing else. If those who come to prison for the first time were made the subject of examination, it would be found that they are principally remarkable for the absence of what the books call criminal characteristics.