In the foregoing recommendations the Commission has confined itself to matters requiring legislative action and to such only as seem to it to be essential to a consistent, integrated policy of penal administration. All other matters with respect to which the Commission has given expression to its views are either subsidiary to those on which immediate legislative action is recommended or are such as may be properly referred to the wisdom of the proposed Committee on Delinquency for consideration and action. The greatest abuse of the prevailing prison system--the lack of imagination and of understanding which keeps alive in most of our penal establishments the methods of a severe and repressive discipline--cannot be abolished by legislative decree. The greatest reform of which the system is capable--the awakening in the inmates of the new life which comes from active, responsible participation in the life of the prison community--is equally beyond the reach of legislative action. These will be the fruits of a keener intelligence and of a deeper understanding than have yet, except in a few rare instances, been brought to bear on the problem. But your Commission believes that the plan of penal administration which it has recommended, and which provides for the most thorough-going study and the most intelligent treatment of the individual delinquent which has yet been attempted, will gradually prepare the way for these and other reforms in the penal system of the Commonwealth. Respectfully submitted, January 1, 1919. FLETCHER W. STITES, _Chairman_, ALFRED E. JONES, MARTHA P. FALCONER, LOUIS N. ROBINSON, ALBERT H. VOTAW, _Commissioners_. GEORGE W. KIRCHWEY, _Counsel to the Commission_. COMMITTEE ON DELINQUENCY ACT.[1] SECTION 1. _Be it enacted, etc._, That the Board of Public Charities shall appoint a standing committee of five of its members to be known as the Committee on Delinquency. Such Committee shall be chosen within thirty days after the approval of this Act, and annually thereafter, by a majority vote of all of the members of the Board, and at least one member of such Committee shall be a woman. Vacancies in the membership of the Committee shall be filled in like manner. Within thirty days after their selection, the Committee shall each year elect one of its members as chairman. The members of the Committee shall serve without compensation but shall receive all of their travelling and other necessary expenses incurred in the performance of their official duties.