The prevention and cure of crime, the best methods for this, says Frank B. Sanborn, the political economist of Massachusetts--why “Prison science is in its infancy, so far as the world at large is concerned.” Pathetic and humiliating is the tardy advance made in this direction. Very provoking to the enlightened are the dull indifferences and frequent hallucination of the community in regard to the treatment of criminals. Gradually, however, there has grown up in regard to a large class of criminals, the so-called “first offenders,” most rapidly in these United States, and chiefly in the past thirty years, something that may justly be turned “prison science.” Its best examples are in the men’s prison at Elmira, which is the outgrowth of Mr. Brockway’s half century of experience in controlling and instructing convicts, and in the woman’s prison at Sherborn, Mass., lately under the inspiring government of Mr. Johnson. As yet the criminals of longer habituation in guilt have come but little under this new development of prison science, except that in some States they now receive an added sentence when proved to be an old offender. But the tendency is where crime is best understood, to establish a small class of “incorrigibles,” for whom perpetual imprisonment shall be the sentence. This is on the theory that such can never be safely returned to the community, upon which they are found perpetually preying, with a reasonable hope that they can be cured of evil habits. From these, should be distinguished a much greater class of criminals, who are temporarily incorrigible, but will yield to the methods, somewhat prolonged. WHERE DEATH PENALTY IS NEEDED. Governor Dockery, of Missouri, in his message to the Legislature of that State, recommends a law prescribing the death penalty for kidnappers of children for ransom. Also recommends that it be enacted in every State. It should also apply to another crime, which our penal laws do not properly reach--railroad train wrecking, which is often attended with a wholesale slaughter of life, and those who commit it seldom receive their just punishment, though abhorred and dreaded more than the ordinary murderer. THE LOCK-STEP. At Sing Sing prison the lock-step has been abolished for first offenders; it ought to be given up everywhere. The men are often identified as having been to N. Y. State Prison by the shuffling habit; a military step has been substituted. Superintendent Collins has noticed that the lock-step has grown on a prisoner to such an extent, that he will fall in behind people on the street unconsciously in true lock-step fashion. A gang of convicts belonging to Class A, all carpenters or masons, were sent to work on the new prison at Mapanoch, Ulster Co., N. Y., and 250 from Clinton and Auburn. The new prison will cost $700,000. It was first intended for a reformatory, but the plan was changed to a State prison with accommodation for 1,000 convicts.