In many of the crimes committed by young men which we have personally investigated, it has been a question with us who has been the greatest criminal, the state, the parents or the boy. Many a young man would never have reached prison had his parents placed around him any reasonable moral safeguards. When I remember that hundreds of boys who get into the Tombs every year come from homes of poverty, misery, drunkenness, profanity and vice of every name, I do not wonder when I see crime written on their pale faces. If Gladstone’s dictum were to actuate our state legislature, laws would be forthwith passed, making it a crime to sell to minors the blood-curdling novel, tobacco or cigarettes, or intoxicating liquor in any form. Boys should be prohibited from going to prize fights, the race course, gambling hells, theatres, billiard halls, or even from staying on the street after nine o’clock at night. This might seem harsh, but if strictly carried out we have no doubt whatever that crime would be reduced thereby. It was a law in the Commonwealth of Israel, promulgated long before their settlement in Canaan, that when they built a house in the promised land they must put a railing or battlement around the roof to protect their children from injury by accidentally falling off. If the state were to make it difficult for our young people to do wrong by erecting around them moral barriers, there would be less criminality among boys and young men, and fewer human shipwrecks in after life. When young men are admitted to prison for the first time, efforts should be put forth to save them. The work of isolation, separation and classification should then begin. If the authorities were to sift and separate the good from the bad, the precious from the vile, I am positive there would be fewer recidivists who are now compelled to repeat the same prison experiences several times over. [Illustration: The new Tombs prison.] [Illustration: The open corridor of the women’s prison of the Tombs.] [Illustration: The old Tombs entrance on Leonard street.] Hundreds of boys who are sent to the Tombs enjoy the novelty immensely. It is a new experience to them, and as such is exciting. In prison they are huddled together as a band of incorrigibles. There seems to be no punishment in such an experience. Some of them are better off there than they would be in their homes. They get enough to eat. In some prisons they can smoke all the cigarettes and read all the dime novels they please. If up till this time they have been ignorant of the ways of pickpockets and sneak thieves, when they come out, after a few weeks’ incarceration, they are expert crooks, and fifty per cent. of them are soon back in prison. In order to reduce crime among boys we must take away the operating causes. There is no other way to reach the desired end, and the sooner we get our eyes open to these facts, the better for ourselves and everybody else.