“This is the greatest difference between the policy which we are working out at Sherborn and the policy pursued by Dr. Davis at Bedford Hills in New York State. The emphasis at Bedford is, I believe, too much on the educational side. The emphasis on Sherborn has been, I know, too much on the industrial side. The two must be properly balanced.” The reformatory at Bedford Hills can hardly be compared to the prison at Sherborn. The problem of the latter is much more complicated by reason of the fact that it is a prison for all mature offenders, including women of forty and over, while Bedford is nearer the Lancaster Industrial School, which receives girls under the age of seventeen. The older women criminals of this State are sent to Auburn. Mrs. Hodder is energetically opposing the age grouping which our penal institutions have followed for many years. “Segregation and classification,” she says, “this is the next practical move in our prison reform. What classification has been done has been for the most part according to chronological age, which is absurd. “An examination of 427 cases from the reformatory showed that, should all women under fifty be grouped in one institution, the long-sentence women--almost invariably first offenders, and of a much higher type of intelligence than short-sentence women--would be classed with a large number of alcoholics and some of the worst of the sex cases, together with a number of definitely feeble-minded. In fact, almost every type of criminal would come into the under-thirty class, and by no means are the young offenders the least hardened and the most reformable. “Segregation, as we are fast coming to realize, must be according to degree of viciousness and according to intellectual and not chronological age. And the classification must be greater. The cottage plan is the only one by which successful reform work can be accomplished, such a plan as Dr. Davis has worked out at Bedford Hills, for example. “Under such a system, which allows for very small groups, the women can be carefully graded, the downright vicious woman kept from the one whose weakness is nothing more than alcohol or vagrancy. Under such a system we can care for the extreme cases, which are always the most perplexing problem--those violent cases for which we now have to employ the punishment cell. For these women, who are often border-line cases, should be prescribed steady out-of-door work. My idea is to have a sort of movable shack and a cage where a violent case of this kind could have the opportunity for solitary confinement, which undoubtedly is the best treatment, and for working in the ground, making things grow.