The first instinct of an offender is, as I have said, to confess, even if an understanding person is not available to confess to. He has offended the Law; he wants to make all amends he can by confessing to the representative of that offended Personality. I have seen very many first offenders and talked to them before they got into the hands of pleaders and others, and my experience tells me that a man who has committed his first offence is very like a man who has caught his first attack of serious illness. He is afraid not so much of the results as of the thing itself. Sin has caught him, and he is afraid of sin. He wants protection and help and cure. He does not want to hide anything; his first need is confession to some understanding ear. Many, many such confessions have I heard in the old days. That is the result of the first offence. But this tendency to truth is choked when it is ascertained that as a result the offender will be vindictively punished and made in the end far worse than he was at the beginning. Naturally the offender says to himself: "I am bad now. What shall I be after two years' gaol? Better fight it out. If I win and get acquitted, at least I shall have a chance to reform. If convicted that chance will be taken from me for ever. And fighting will not lose me anything. The penitent prisoner who confesses gets no lighter punishment than if he had put the Court to the expense of a long trial. Why therefore repent? It will do me harm, not good." That is the case now; under reasonable laws it would be the other way. But even yet in country places he often confesses to the police by whom he is arrested. Now by Indian Law no confession to the police may be offered in evidence. The reason of this is that the police, in their keenness to secure a conviction, may extort a false confession by torture, and there have been in fact enough of such cases to cause doubt and to prevent the police being allowed to receive a confession. Therefore if the offender wishes to confess he is taken now to a magistrate, there his confession is recorded. Then he is sent back to police custody. He is visited by his relatives, a pleader is engaged for him. His folly in confessing is pointed out to him and he withdraws the confession, alleging that he had been tortured to confess. His confession is not only negatived, but a slur is cast on the police which is hard to remove. Their case and evidence appear tainted, and the accused often secures an acquittal though the Magistrate knows that the confession was true. All this is very common both in Burma and India, and it is disastrous to allow and to encourage such things, as by our procedure we do encourage them. There should be a complete change. When a man is arrested some such procedure should be adopted as this: