t, some of the convicts have become so
unhappy that they have lost their reason.

The wardens, seeing how their prisoners were suffering, have been much
troubled, and have all been trying to think of some means of exercising or
drilling, which will interest the convicts, and make up to them for the
work they have lost.

There have been so many complaints about convicts being allowed to do work
that honest men can earn money by, that little by little all employment
has been taken from them.

A very good change has been made in the management of the prisons in New
York State, by General Austin Lathrop, the Superintendent of Prisons.

It has long been felt by people who have given serious thought to the
matter, that it was wrong to mix all the criminals together. It was
thought that men who had been dishonest should not be put with men who had
tried to kill, or were guilty of other awful crimes. Many people have
thought that some difference in the class of the prisoners should be made.

The law does make a difference: some criminals are only given short
sentences, while others have very long ones.

But the jail makes no difference whatever. Once within the prison walls,
all convicts are treated in the same way.

[Illustration: STATE PRISON, SING SING.]

General Lathrop's plan alters all this. He takes into account that some
people commit crimes through ignorance, some through weakness, and some
through wickedness. He thinks that the first two classes of convicts
should be carefully separated from the really bad criminals.

His plan is to divide all the convicts in the prisons into separate
groups.

Group A is to consist of those who are serving their first term of
imprisonment, and who may therefore be supposed to have been led into
crime by others, and not to be so wicked but that a chance remains of
turning them back into the paths of goodness and honesty.

Group B will be made up of men who have been in prison once before, and
for whom there is still hope that they may reform.

Group C will take in the men who have served more than one term of
imprisonment, and whose reform is very doubtful, but even they will be
separated from.

Group D, into which will be put the hardened criminals, who are to be kept
apart, that they may not harm the more innocent prisoners.

The different groups will be kept entirely separated, and those who are
young in crime will never come across the old offenders.

The first gr