"The separate confinement to which convicts sentenced to Penal Servitude are, in the first instance, subjected, seems to be regarded with great dislike by most of them, and especially by those who are criminals by profession. It appears that owing to the want of room in the prisons for separate confinement, and the demand for labour on Public Works at Portland and Chatham, the period of separate confinement, during the last year, has fallen so short of the nine months prescribed by the regulations, that the average has been only seven months and twenty days. Arrangements ought at once to be made for remedying this. We are of opinion that convicts ought to be kept in separate confinement for the full period of nine months, except in the case of prisoners who are found unable to undergo it so long without serious injury to their bodily or mental health. No considerations of expense, whether connected with the necessity for additional buildings, or with the loss of the labour of the convicts, ought to be allowed to prevent this stage of punishment from being continued for the time prescribed by the regulations. We think, too, that though separate confinement, even under the present system, is, as has been said, extremely distasteful to convicts, this wholesome effect on their minds might be increased. It has been already mentioned that in Ireland the diet is lower during the first four months, and that no work is given to the prisoners for the first three months, except such as is of a simple and monotonous character, in which they require little or no instruction. This practice has been adopted because it has been found that by far the greater number of convicts have no knowledge of any trade, and when first taught one must necessarily be constantly visited by their Instructor, whose visits tend to mitigate the irksomeness of separate confinement. There appears to us to be much force in the reasons which induced the Directors of the Irish Convict Prisons to adopt these means for rendering separate Imprisonment more formidable, and we therefore recommend that attempts should be made with due caution to give a more deterrent character to separate Imprisonment in the English Prisons."