insanity.

If objection is made to the indeterminate sentence on the ground
that it is an unusual or cruel punishment, it may be admitted that
it is unusual, but that commitment to detention cannot be called
cruel when the convict is given the key to the house in which he is
confined. It is for him to choose whether he will become a decent
man and go back into society, or whether he will remain a bad man
and stay in confinement. For the criminal who is, as we might say,
an accidental criminal, or for the criminal who is susceptible to
good influences, the term of imprisonment under the indeterminate
sentence would be shorter than it would be safe to make it for
criminals under the statute. The incorrigible offender, however,
would be cut off at once and forever from his occupation, which is,
as we said, varied by periodic residence in the comfortable houses
belonging to the State.

A necessary corollary of the indeterminate sentence is that every
State prison and penitentiary should be a reformatory, in the modern
meaning of that term. It would be against the interest of society,
all its instincts of justice, and the height of cruelty to an
individual criminal to put him in prison without limit unless all
the opportunities were afforded him for changing his habits
radically. It may be said in passing that the indeterminate
sentence would be in itself to any man a great stimulus to reform,
because his reformation would be the only means of his terminating
that sentence. At the same time a man left to himself, even in the
best ordered of our State prisons which is not a reformatory, would
be scarcely likely to make much improvement.

I have not space in this article to consider the character of the
reformatory; that subject is fortunately engaging the attention of
scientific people as one of the most interesting of our modern
problems. To take a decadent human being, a wreck physically and
morally, and try to make a man of him, that is an attempt worthy of
a people who claim to be civilized. An illustration of what can be
done in this direction is furnished by the Elmira Reformatory, where
the experiment is being made with most encouraging results, which,
of course, would be still better if the indeterminate sentence were
brought to its aid.

When the indeterminate sentence has been spoken of with a view to