“Our mission is to turn out not worse men, but better men.” THE TREATMENT OF THE MISDEMEANANT [This excellent summary of the present correctional treatment of the misdemeanant was read by Amos W Butler, chairman of the Committee on Corrections, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Memphis, in May, 1914.] Who knows how many persons are confined in local jails in the United States? Who comprehends the magnitude of the problem involved? How many appreciate its relation to the individual, to his family, to society? The Bureau of the Census tells us that 452,055 persons were committed to county and municipal prisons in 1910, under sentence or for non-payment of fine. We call them misdemeanants. It is the name ordinarily given one whose offense the law does not deem sufficiently serious to warrant a State prison sentence. If the ratio of commitments to the whole number received is the same throughout the United States as in Indiana, it is probable that one and one-half million people annually come under the influence of these local prisons. We know that jails are the spoil of partisan politics. They are maintained largely on the fee basis. Most of them were built without any proper idea of the purpose they were intended to serve. As a rule they are insanitary, they lack proper provision for separating the sexes and there is no means of employment. Often they are crowded beyond their capacity. There is little attempt to classify the prisoners. They congregate in the corridors and the older and more experienced in criminal ways instruct the others in vice, immorality and crime. In how many such institutions are women not only waited upon but searched by men? The late Samuel J. Barrows once remarked: “Back in 1876 a committee of the New York Legislature said: ‘There is no one source of crime more operative in the multiplication of thieves and burglars than the common jail’ and that statement still remains true of a large number of jails throughout the country.” Many of you have heard Dr. F. H. Wines’ scathing denunciation of these institutions. Delegates to the International Prison Congress who visited this country in 1910 declared our local jail system as bad as it was centuries ago in Europe. “Every jail I saw ought to be wiped off the face of the earth,” said Thomas Holmes, secretary of the Howard Association of London, and this was the general verdict of these distinguished prison officials and penologists. It was the idleness of the prisoners, the lack of fresh air, the indiscriminate mingling, the long-delayed trials that impressed them so unfavorably. “I asked two colored men how long they would be in and they said they did not know; that they had waited eleven days for a trial,” said Dr. Eugene Borel, professor of law in the University of Geneva, Switzerland. “That is a shocking travesty of justice. In Europe a prisoner gets a hearing within twenty-four hours.”