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Under the present enlightened opinion which sees that not punishment but the protection of society and the good of the criminal are the things to be aimed at, the judge’s office would naturally be reduced to the task of determining the guilt of the man on trial, and then the care of him would be turned over to expert treatment, exactly as in a case when the judge determines the fact of a man’s 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 legislation, the question has been raised whether it should be applied to prisoners on the first, second, or third conviction of a penal offense. Legislation in regard to the parole system has also considered whether a man should be considered in the criminal class on his first conviction for a penal offense. Without entering upon this question at length, I will suggest that the convict should, for his own sake, have the indeterminate sentence applied to him upon conviction of his first penal offense. He is much more likely to reform then than he would be after he had had a term in the State prison and was again convicted, and the chance of his reformation would be lessened by each subsequent experience of this kind. The great object of the indeterminate sentence, so far as the security of society is concerned, is to diminish the number of the criminal class, and this will be done when it is seen that the first felony a man commits is likely to be his last, and that for a young criminal contemplating this career there is in this direction “no thoroughfare.”