Again, under the amended law the _court_ virtually determines when a prisoner shall be eligible to parole. This is, however, utterly subversive of the theory upon which the indeterminate sentence is based, namely, that _parole is to be granted when a prisoner is believed to be fit to be restored to society as a law-abiding citizen_. The time when this may be done no court under the sun can fix, but only those who have the prisoner in charge and under observation, and even they may make mistakes. In the argument on the amended bill before the Senate Committee, it was said by those who opposed the original law, that it conferred judicial functions on the Penitentiary Boards, and that there was not a State in the Union whose statutes prescribed both the maximum and the minimum. But it was shown that under the laws relating to the Huntingdon Reformatory the courts in imposing sentence do not fix the duration thereof, but that the Board of Managers is authorized to terminate the sentence at its discretion, provided the detention shall not exceed the maximum of the term assigned by law for the offense of which the prisoner was convicted; also, that in many States, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and others, the minimum as well as the maximum sentence to the state prison is fixed by law. It seems strange, indeed, that those who opposed the law of 1909 should have forgotten the law as regards Huntingdon; and that they should have been totally ignorant of the laws of other States on a subject that is to-day receiving the serious attention of many of the most thoughtful minds the world over! On the benefits of a just and equal indeterminate sentence, Dr. Frederick Howard Wines, one of the best informed and most eminent penologists in the United States, expresses himself as follows: