"Our view is that means should be provided to allow of the habitual vagrant being dealt with otherwise than under the Vagrancy Act, and that as far as possible, he should be treated not as a criminal, but as a person requiring detention on account of his mode of life. This is the principle which governs the system adopted in Belgium under the law of 1891. For this purpose we propose that a class of habitual vagrants should be defined by statute, and that this class should include any person who has been three or more times convicted during a period of, say, twelve months of certain offences now coming under the Vagrancy Act, namely, sleeping out, begging, refusing to perform task of work in casual wards, or refusing or neglecting to maintain himself so that he becomes chargeable to the poor rate. It will be seen that we do not propose to create any new offence, and that under the existing law, this class could be dealt with as incorrigible rogues. Under this proposal, a means is provided of enabling the Poor Law authorities to deal with the class of "ins and outs" who now cause considerable trouble in workhouse administration. We suggest that persons coming within this definition should be committed by a petty sessional court to quarter sessions or assizes, and there dealt with in the same way as the incorrigible rogue, with the exception that the sentence should be committed to a labour colony for a term not exceeding three years."[73] [Footnote 73: _Ibid._, p. 59.] The Committee further endorse the objections to short sentences which have been advanced times without number by critics of the Vagrancy Laws, and propose that delinquents committed to the proposed Labour Colonies should be detained for not less than six months or more than three years, but that there should be power to curtail a sentence when a prisoner showed good conduct or earned a certain sum of money in wages, as is done at Merxplas. "The evidence we have received shows conclusively that from any practical point of view, it is impossible to defend a sentence of a few days. That it is in no way deterrent to the vagrant is the opinion of all the witnesses.... We are so fully convinced of the futility and needless expense of the short sentence, that we consider it necessary to urge that in any case, where the magistrate deems it expedient to give a sentence of less than fourteen days for a vagrancy offence, the sentence should be for one day only.... A sentence for one day means that the prisoner is detained until the rising of the court, and then discharged. Under our proposal this sentence would be a conviction; the conviction would be recorded, and the offender would be warned by the court that on his second or third conviction he would be imprisoned for a considerable period or, if our later recommendations are accepted, he would be committed for a still longer period of detention in a labour colony as a habitual vagrant."[74]