ment. The proof of any system is in its results; the statistics of the New York State Reformatory at Elmira, where the new system, so far as this country is concerned, had its origin, and the statistics of other reformatories in other states, show that about 80 per cent, of the convicts there treated have been actually reclaimed and transformed from felons into law-abiding members of the free community. Results, the same in kind if not in degree, have been reached at Mettrai in France, in Spain by Montesinos, in Ireland by Sir Walter Crofton, in Munich by Obermaier, at the Rauhe Haus in Germany by Wichern and his successors; and the Elmira system has now been introduced and is in operation in Japan.
Without entering upon the details of this reformatory system, the magnitude and importance of the results it has accomplished are indisputable. They compel the conclusion that every prisoner convicted of crime ought to be subjected to the disciplinary treatment which has proved effective with the large majority of those to whom it has been applied, with the hope of accomplishing his reformation. This conclusion rests not on philanthropic reasons only; it is dictated by sound governmental policy; reformation is the only possible protection of the public against the discharged convict.
Here then, is a vast responsibility and an imperative duty imposed upon the state: to make all prisons within its borders reformatory in character; to give the public the benefit of the application of reformative treatment to every person convicted of crime and sentenced to imprisonment. Under the non-reformative system of imprisonment, which is now the prevailing system, the states turn loose upon the country every year an army of desperate criminals, thus replenishing the criminal class and furnishing it with leaders and expert instructors in crime; the discharged convict is the anomaly and the despair of modern civilization. In reformation lies the hope of the future in the struggle against crime.
The establishment of such a reformative system, extending to all convict prisoners within a state, is manifestly an enterprise which the state alone is competent to undertake. From the
