Morning journal and courier., 1888-07-18

make the prisoners leave the prison or the court room worse criminals than when they entered 1t. It is wrong and grotesque to think that any human tribunal can rnete out absolute justice to criminals Prisoners and the public get the idea that all courts are un-
 just and that any punishment may rightly be evaded. The committee recommends the
 following subjects for practical legislation:
 The substitution of indeterminate sentences
 in all cases, even for minor offences, a sen-
 tence now almost universal in reform and in-
 dustrial schools; the extension of this sen
 tence into perpetual confinement for incorri- gibles, making it merely restraint without penal features in cases of habituaI drunken ness, insanity or the like; the removal of criminal administration from all connection with politics or popular elections, and the speedy completion of the trial and the prompt execution of the sentence in case of murders or other cases of much popular interest.
 z. B. Broadway also presented the report of the standing committee on prison disci- pline. To the historical significance of im- pr1sonment as penal measure he devoted an explanatory paragraph, concluding that real protection is the first object of punishment or imprisonment. The question of prison management hinges on the question of the best means to be used in the accomplishment of this end ot protection. He gave promi- hence to the argument of some penologists that deterrent penalty is, in effect, a retri- butive, and, therefore, an unjust penalty which in itself is oontributory to crime. Con tinued severity, he said, no more restraints than leniency. He condemned the lax judicial and penal administration which condene true offences and the prac- tice of permitting personal or emotional considerations to enter into official Judgments. Certainty of discipline conduces to the formation of that individual and pub lie mental habitude which constitutes the in- iva oSo 4o,. IF made the definitive distinction between the three historical stages in the evolution of ps- noloRy-the medieval idea of cruelty as deterrent, the reactionary spirit of senti- mental humanitarianisrn which relies on emotional forces exclusively, and the modern scientific sentiment in favor of rational re. form and prevention. He discussed the three questions which embrace the principal issues of the topic: 1. What is reformation? g.
 What imprisonment best promotes it . 3. How far may reformation be reasonably expectsds The criminal he defined as one adjustment, and the problem of reformation he declared to be the proper adjustment of the criminal to the healthy circumstances of free social life, and refor- nation may be said to be secured when there is 8 reasonable probability that the criminal will live at liberty in harmony with law. But all criminals are not equally de- fective nor are they of equal physical, men, tai and moral condition. On this account any mechanical law of definite imprisonme ent is necessarily in conflict with the purpose and system of reformation, and the indeterminate sentence plan is almost if not quite absolutely essential. The obstacles to be met by any plan of reformation were classified by MT. Brockway into three general divisions-phy- sical, psychica1 and moral. He described the physical criminal type, emphasizing the eranial and facial peouliarities with reference to the dissimilarity of the criminal, to the normal skull, brain and physical organism.