for a man to
preserve his sense of self-respect. If he should not be amenable to the
prison discipline he may be held up to ridicule by being compelled to
wear a parti-coloured uniform. However can a man be expected to reform
who is held up to the ridicule of felons? It matters not from which
class of life he is drawn, what his age is, or the nature of his
offence, he is thrown into the company of the worst criminals in the
land. If he were a cultured man, or a man who had known no associates in
his crime, or if his aesthetic taste was considerably developed it
matters not; he must do the same work and mix in the same company as the
most ignorant and most brutal. To utterly disregard these qualities is
to ignore the wide-open channels along which the most powerful
reformative influences may be transmitted. If his recovery is to be
considered these are most substantial assets. They are, as it were, "the
general health" of the patient suffering from a local lesion. Yet our
prison system not only ignores them but patiently sets to work to
destroy them, as if their possession were an additional offence on the
part of the criminal. Prisoners who try to keep aloof from their
associates may often be made to suffer very considerably for it. Others,
craving for some association, soon fall in with men whom they would have
regarded, a few days previously, as impossible companions. The almost
entire absence of elevating influences makes it easy for the
concentrated power of evil to become irresistible. The gloom of the
prison rises, the fear of the law vanishes and the new born tendency to
crime becomes a confirmed habit. A man needs either a very strong will
indeed, or else to be supported by powerful social traditions to enable
him to resist the evil influences of prison life. A few men do resist
and maintain their sense of self-respect in spite of all indignities and
bad influences. Some sink as under a torture; some sink and are enticed
and absorbed into felony. These last will plan their future crimes while
they are serving their first sentence. Henceforth the prison is their
home.

What purpose is thus served? Why should a man who has lost self-respect
be continually reminded of it? If a man is diseased he is not placed
amongst filthy conditions and the emblems of sickness and death crowded
upon him. His removal from all unhealthy surroundings is the first
essential necessary for his recovery, and the same should be observed