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general laws relating to the construction of such buildings and the system on which they are to be conducted; and the power and duty should be vested in a state board or officers of the state to maintain a constant and rigid inspection of such buildings and of their management, and to enforce their conformity to the law.
All persons arrested upon a charge of violating state law should be brought to trial before state courts only, which should have exclusive jurisdiction in all such cases.
All persons found guilty of violating laws of the state and sentenced to imprisonment should be committed to the custody of the state, and sent to prisons under the exclusive control and management of the state.
All prisons should be conducted upon a reformatory basis, where every person sentenced to imprisonment shall be treated in accordance with those approved scientific methods which have resulted, and can be made to result, in the actual reformation of a majority of convicted offenders. When this consummation is reached and it will only be after long and strenuous effort the volume of crime must steadily grow smaller and smaller, until it is reduced to a minute residuum of incorrigible and irre- claimable criminals (if such there are) who are beyond the reach of human effort and science. When the existence of such a residuum is demonstrated, its perpetual imprisonment seems the only efficient and practical measure of public defense. 3
- For a very important application of the main principles of this paper to a
concrete situation, see the valuable report of the Prison Commission to the governor of Indiana, December 26, 1904. EDITOR.
