Although the Justices lost their administrative powers, they remain in the shape of the "Visiting Committee," a body selected from the local Magistracy, as the judicial authority of Local Prisons, for hearing and determining reports against prisoners, and for the award of punishment. They also have large general powers of advice and suggestion; and the admitted success of the policy of centralization has been undoubtedly due to the wise compromise which continued the interest and concern of the local Magistracy in their local prisons; and which ensured not only just and patient hearing of reports against prisoners, but permitted reports on any abuses within the prison, and on complaints made by prisoners, by an independent judicial and unpaid body; and provided, at the same time, a tribunal to which the Secretary of State could always refer with confidence any question that might arise as between prisoners and the State. In certain respects, however, the judicial powers of the local magistrates were curtailed, _e.g._, powers of ordering confinement in a punishment cell were reduced from twenty-eight to fourteen days, and the award of corporal punishment was made dependent on the concurrence of two magistrates. In other respects, the tendency of the Act was towards a greater humanity of treatment. The rigid provisions of the Act of 1865 as to the enforcement of first class hard labour were modified. Under that Act, it was enforced for the whole of a sentence of three months, or even for an entire sentence, however long. Under the Act of 1877, the compulsory period was limited to one month. Another notable feature of the Act was the classification of prisoners into two divisions, one of which was that any person convicted of misdemeanour and sentenced to imprisonment without hard labour, might be ordered to be treated as a misdemeanant of the First Division, and, as such, was not deemed to be a criminal prisoner. Persons convicted of sedition or seditious libel, or imprisoned under any rule, order, or attachment, or for contempt of any Court, were to be placed in the First Division.