from
prison to a criminal department of an insane hospital will have a
beneficial effect upon the prisoner because of the more lenient
environment into which he is taken is entirely delusional in the case of
the degenerated habitual criminal. These individuals, if the public
safety is to be kept in mind, can receive but very limited privileges in
a hospital for the insane. The modern hospital is not constructed with
the idea of caring for dangerous criminals, and in many instances the
habitual criminal, who because of his dangerous tendencies and ever
readiness to escape, has to be constantly kept under lock and key, would
be much better off if he were treated within the enclosure of the
prison. There the construction of the place permits of a wider latitude
of outdoor exercise. An annex located within the enclosure of a prison
could well afford to allow its patients the freedom of the enclosure,
while this can manifestly not be done in a general hospital for the
insane. Then again, there is the unavoidable delay attendant upon the
commitment of a prisoner to an insane hospital. As I have already stated
elsewhere, it is not a rare occurrence to receive patients into the
hospital who have entirely recovered from their mental disorder before
leaving the prison. Furthermore, the expense and danger always
connected with the transfer of insane criminals from prison to hospital
and back again, if the hospital is any distance from the prison, must be
kept in mind.

A word to those who, from a false altruistic standpoint, insist that the
insane criminal requires no different treatment from that which the
ordinary insane patient does. This is very true in the case of prisoners
who develop mental disorders which have no relation to crime or
imprisonment. These do not require special measures of treatment. It is
likewise true of the psychoses of the accidental criminal, but it is
entirely different with the criminal who suffers from a degenerative
prison psychosis. Here we are not dealing with individuals who tend to
dement, who have little or no conception of whether they are in a prison
or in a hospital. In short, we are not dealing here with paretics or
senile dements, who, although being at the same time prisoners, remain
subject to the same unavoidable lot of the paretic or the senile dement.
The habitual criminal who suffers from a degenerative psychosis, unless
he is in a stupor, is constantly on the alert for a chance to