“But when the law grips and the culprit finds himself behind the bars of the jail or the reformatory, what processes have we set in motion? I suppose that of all the factors that have entered into the production and encouragement of crime, the consensus of opinion among those competent to judge would place the county jail foremost. With what inconceivable callousness we have thrown into promiscuous association those not yet determined to be guilty of an offense (and of whom a goodly number will finally be declared innocent) and those against whom the judgment of conviction has been entered! With what inconceivable shortsightedness we have mingled those guilty of the least offenses with those to whom vice and crime have become second nature, and under circumstances of enforced idleness and enforced association! Worst of all, children arrested for even the slightest offenses, and occasionally for no offense other than homelessness, have been unintentionally made the pupils of adepts in every form of vice and crime. I am painting no imaginary or fanciful picture; I am describing the thing that has existed, and still exists, throughout practically the entire United States. The county jail is the classic instance of an institution established to serve one purpose and actually serving exactly the opposite purpose, intended to promote the good order of the community, and actually a most potent factor in every form of demoralization, an agency by which the traditions of crime are handed on undiminished from one generation to another, by which the ranks are kept full and new recruits at least equal in numbers those who drop out. “And as to our penal institutions for the care only of convicted offenders for considerable periods of time, what is the net effect of prison life upon the prisoner? We would like to think that the work of John Howard has been substantially completed. We gladly recognize the fact that a large and increasing number of prison officials, such as those present at this national congress, sincerely desire and earnestly labor for the good of their prisoners, but I suspect that they would agree with us that the inherent and almost unescapable tendency of prison life, even in the best institutions, is not to build up either the physical or moral stamina; and unfortunately not all officials of penal institutions are in attendance at this congress, and not all are represented by the spirit which is here present. The work of John Howard has to be done over again with each generation. There are only too many prisons to which the biting words of Oscar Wilde would apply: “The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison-air: It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there: Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair.