In Chapter VII. (The Inquiry of 1894), I have shown how the public conscience awoke at the end of the last century. It declared in a voice that could be heard that a determined effort must be made to grapple with this problem, and in two ways in particular, (a) It asserted the new policy of _Prevention_, _not_ Prevention in the sense of the old penal servitude Acts, by which a criminal was prevented after a series of offences by strict supervision of Police from repeating his crimes, but Prevention which would strike at the sources of crime, by cutting off the supply _by concentration of effort on the young offender_; and (b) by the organization of such a system of Patronage, or Aid-on-discharge, that no prisoner could say with truth that he had fallen again from want of a helping hand. Prevention, in this sense, has been the watch-word of the Prison System since that time, and its effect is distinctly traceable in the statistics of crime since the beginning of the century. Enough has been said to show that the future of crime is with the statesmen and men of science. The prison administrator plays only a small and obscure executive part--but from his experience and observation of the causes that make for crime, he may be able to denote the direction in which its gradual solution may be found. A quarter of a century spent by the Author in directing the prison administration of this country is his excuse for offering his humble contribution to this absorbing and all-important theme-- "Enough if something from our hands gives power To live, and act, and serve the future hour." E.R.B. December, 1920. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Although the greater part of this work was prepared in 1915, where it has been possible, the statistics furnished are of a more recent date.] THE ENGLISH PRISON SYSTEM. CHAPTER I. THE MEANING OF "PRISON REFORM." "Prison Reform" is a phrase of many meanings. It is used indifferently by the publicist who is seeking a correct definition of the function of punishment: by the utilitarian who doubts if the official system of administration is fulfilling its State purpose: by the humanitarian whose pity is stirred by the inevitable austerity of a system, inflexibly applied to all who suffer deprivation of liberty, and whose mechanical operation might, in their opinion, be relaxed relatively to the vastly different mental and physical states of all the categories of human beings coming, in one way or another, within the domain of the criminal law.