It was at this time that I was appointed by the Home Secretary (Mr. Asquith) to be Chairman of the Prison Commission, against which so severe an indictment had been laid, as explained in a former Chapter, of being indifferent to the moral welfare of prisoners. My experience and observation had already led me to form a very strong opinion that the Penal Law, which classified forthwith as adult criminals lads of 16, was unjust and inhuman. I obtained the authority of the Home Secretary, Sir M. Ridley, who was in warm sympathy with my views, to go to the United States in 1897 to study at Elmira the working of what is known as the American "State Reformatory System." The annual reports of the authorities at Elmira had begun to attract considerable attention in Europe. The American System classified as youths all persons between the ages of 16 and 30. While we classified our boys as adults, the American adopted the converse method, and classified his adults as boys. I thought myself that the truth lay midway between these two systems, between the system that ends youth too early and that which prolongs it too late, between the voluntary system of England and the State Reformatory System of the United States. The point I was aiming at was to take the 'dangerous' age--16-21--out of the Prison System altogether, and to make it subject to special "_Institutional_" treatment on reformatory lines. I was impressed by all that I saw and learnt at the principal State Reformatories of America, at that time chiefly in the States of New York and Massachusetts. The elaborate system of moral, physical, and industrial training of these prisoners, the enthusiasm which dominated the work, the elaborate machinery for supervision of parole, all these things, if stripped of their extravagances, satisfied me that a real, human effort was being made in these States for the rehabilitation of the youthful criminal. It was on my return that, with the authority of the Secretary of State, the first experiments were begun of the special treatment, with a view to the rehabilitation of the young prisoners, 16 to 21, in London Prisons. A small Society was formed, known as the London Prison Visitors' Association, to visit these lads in the London Prisons: (they were removed later, as stated, to the old Convict Prison at Borstal). The procedure was to visit Borstal by roster each month, and interview the cases about to be discharged in the following month, so that the best arrangements might be made. Out of this small body of visitors sprang the Borstal Association, and it is interesting now, looking back to that time, to recall the circumstances under which this Association was founded. There was in the public mind a great confusion as to the exact meaning of the phrase "Juvenile Offender". That ambiguity has since been largely cleared up by the definitions of the Children Act, but, at that time, there was a confusing medley