Governor Foss’s last message was accompanied by three bills. One provides for new buildings for defective delinquents; another calls for the appointment of an expert alienist to assist in the proper treatment of female defective delinquents, and the third directs the prison commission to report upon the best method of providing institutional accommodations for those now in prison and state care for all convicted felons. The first measure is designed to change the present policy of trying to reform feeble-minded people by the methods employed for normal persons. It has been established in recent years that large percentages of those convicted for law-breaking are irresponsible mentally. The following table showing the percentage of mentally deficient persons in seven correctional institutions has been published by the Russell Sage Foundation: Per cent. New York State reformatory, Elmira 37 New Jersey State reformatory, Rahway 33 New York reformatory for women, Redford 37 Massachusetts industrial school for girls, Lancaster 50 Maryland industrial school for girls, Baltimore 60 New Jersey state home for girls, Trenton 33 Illinois state school for boys, St. Charles 20 Governor Foss believes, as do more and more people, that these persons, if left at large in the community, constitute one of our gravest social dangers. “But neither the prison nor the asylum,” he adds, “is adapted to their incarceration, and they are rarely capable of reform.” He therefore recommends that two special cottage buildings for male patients of this type be erected at the state farm. In these they can be under the medical direction of the hospital for the criminal insane. For female defectives he urges the erection of two or more cottages near the present reformatory for women at Sherborn. Declaring that “the county prison has no place in a model prison system and no logical reason for continued existence,” Governor Foss suggests that all such jails be taken over by the state, “with complete disregard of the personal interests and protests of county officials, who depend largely for their political power and patronage on retaining the county system intact.” While recognizing that this perhaps can not be done at once, the governor sees no reason why there should not be an immediate reclassification of prisoners, so that long-term men can be located in one kind of institution, instead of in three as now. Likewise those amenable to instruction and remedial treatment he thinks should be confined by themselves. The present system, he says, was constructed mainly at a time when no attempt was made at such a classification. For these reasons he thinks new prison accommodations must be provided.