It was decided to confine the use of the State Reformatories to the reception and treatment of persons who had proved uncontrollable in the Local Reformatories. They are conducted on prison lines only so far as is necessary to ensure safe custody and control, and on strictly asylum principles in all matters referring to the treatment of inmates. The application of all restraint and punishment is controlled by the medical aspect of the question. The majority of inmates are persons who, through a long life of debauch, immorality, violence, and crime, have given constant trouble to the Police in the streets and to Prison Authorities during innumerable penal sentences. They are either too old, too confirmed in their habits, or too demented to afford ground for any hope of reformation. The value of the State reformatory will not consist in the production of actual results, but its existence will permit of certified institutions carrying on a work of reformation otherwise impossible. It will also ensure the retention to the end of their sentence of persons who are dangerous at large, a disgrace to the streets, and an important source of contamination to others. The pity is that at the end of such sentence the law requires the absolute discharge from custody of persons known to be so dangerous and so deleterious to the peace, morality, and health of the community at large. These State Institutions are under the control of the Prison Commissioners, and form part of the Prison administration. They are controlled by minute regulations, approved by Parliament, and their function is to reconcile, as far as possible, a strict custody and control with certain alleviating conditions and privileges for those who deserve them. Their population is however, relatively small, the average for the three years prior to the War not having exceeded nineteen Males and fifty-seven Females. Since that date the numbers gradually fell, and, at the present time, there are no inmates in custody. The inmates of State Institutions practically represent the persons of both classes who are of a character and temperament incapable of control in local Institutions. As the number committed to the local Institutions diminishes, there is, of course, a corresponding reduction in the number coming under State control. Although both Sections 1 and 2 of the Act give effect to a most important principle, _viz._, the special treatment otherwise than by imprisonment, of persons whose offence is due to morbid conditions, affecting the power of self-control, and whom it is practically useless to punish for the offence, while the predisposing condition is left untouched, yet experience, so far, does not furnish evidence that the power given to the Courts is either largely exercised or fruitful of curative effect.