The mode of procedure under this law is very summary, but very effectual. A vagrant, a loafer, or a work-shirker falls into the hands of the policeman, who in Germany is taught to protect both the highway and the street against uses for which they were never intended. By this official he is haled before the _Amtsgericht_, which is a local Court of First Instance for the adjudication of petty cases. As a rule, he is sentenced to a few weeks' imprisonment, and to be afterwards handed over to the _Landespolizei_ or State Police Authority. In effect, he is despatched to the district in which the original offence was committed. The whole of the documents in the case are passed on to the President or Prefect of this district, and it is this official who fixes the term of detention in the provincial Labour House. The maximum period is two years, but whether the man obtains discharge at the end of a shorter sentence depends entirely upon himself. If he shows distinct signs of improvement as the result of his discipline, he may be released. If not the sentence is probably prolonged for six months, or in bad cases to the maximum term, at the end of which the prisoner must unconditionally be discharged, whether reformed or not. In practice it rests entirely with the Director of the Labour House to determine whether a sentence should be prolonged or not, for though the District President nominally decides, it is on the direct representation of the Director, whose recommendation is seldom or never ignored. Thus, the Labour House is not punitive in the technical sense; it exists for the one purpose of training the lazy and the vicious to a life of labour and industry. Labour Houses of this kind are found in almost all the States, in numbers proportionate to the population. Some of them, however, serve for large towns, as in the case of Berlin, Hamburg, and Dresden. Prussia has twenty-five Labour Houses, of which seven are for men only, two for women only, and sixteen for both sexes. The following is a list of these institutions, with the accommodation they afforded in the year 1908:-- GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES.