"In criminal treatment, moral forces should be relied on with as little
admixture of physical force as may be; organized persuasion to the
utmost extent possible should be made to take the place of coercive
restraint, the object being to make upright and industrious _freemen_,
rather than orderly and obedient _prisoners_. Brute force may make good
prisoners, moral training alone will make good citizens. To the latter
of those ends the living soul must be won; to the former, only the inert
and obedient body. To compass the reformation of criminals, the military
type in prison management must be abandoned, and a discipline by moral
forces substituted in its place. The objects of military discipline and
prison discipline, being directly opposed to each other, can not be
pursued by the same road. The one is meant to train men to act together,
the other to prepare them to act separately. The one relies upon force,
which never yet created virtue; the other on motives, which are the sole
agency for attaining moral ends. The special object of the one is to
suppress individual character and reduce all to component parts of a
compact machine; that of the other is to develop and strengthen
individual character, and, by instilling right principles, to encourage
and enable it to act on these independently."

They tell us again "that the self-respect of the prisoner should be
cultivated to the utmost and every effort be made to give back to him
his manhood." "There is no greater mistake in the whole compass of penal
discipline, than its studied imposition of degradation as a part of
punishment. Such imposition destroys every better impulse and
aspiration. It crushes the weak, irritates the strong and indisposes all
to submission and reform. It is trampling, where it ought to raise, and
is therefore as unchristian in principle as it is unwise in policy."

Farther, "The system of prison discipline must gain the will of the
convict. He is to be amended, but this is impossible with his mind in a
state of hostility. No system can hope to succeed which does not secure
this harmony of wills, so that the prisoner shall choose for himself
what his officer chooses for him. But to this end the officer must
really choose the good of the prisoner, and the prisoner must remain in
his choice long enough for virtue to become a habit. This consent of
will is an essential condition of reformation, for a bad man can never
be made good against his w