The one progressive penal act for which the last Legislature deserves credit is the bill “providing for the selection and purchase, or the appropriation from State forest reserves, of a tract of land and the erection thereon of buildings for the Western Penitentiary; making an appropriation therefor; authorizing the removal thereto of the inmates of the said penitentiary, and directing the sale of the site now occupied by the said penitentiary, and the buildings and materials thereon.” This is in line with the recommendation of the Board of Charities, which, in its preliminary report for the years 1911-12, called renewed attention to the very unsatisfactory conditions surrounding the Western Penitentiary, and strongly urged its removal to some large tract of land in a rural section, so that labor, not in conflict with existing laws, might be provided for the inmates. In pursuing this course Pennsylvania will only be doing what some other States have already done or are about doing; and it is to be hoped that in due time similar provision will be made for the eastern part of the State. Might it not be well to keep in mind, however, the need of a central state prison for the confinement of habitual criminals, so that the two penitentiaries now in existence could be used only for first-termers? This would make the reformatory process contemplated by the indeterminate sentence infinitely easier. Another bill of extremely doubtful utility passed by the last Legislature, authorizes the judges of the courts of quarter sessions and the courts of oyer and terminer, after due inquiry, to release on parole any convict confined in the county jail or workhouse of their respective districts, and place him or her in charge of and under the supervision of a designated probation officer. County jails as now conducted are not reformatory institutions.