''
In this connection, however, we must avoid the two extremes,
uniformity of punishment and the so-called individualisation of
punishment, the latter especially in fashion amongst American
prison experts. No doubt it would be a desirable thing to apply a
particular treatment to each convict, after a physical and
psychological study of his individuality, and of the conditions
which led him into crime; but this is not practicable when the
number of prisoners is very great, and the managing staff
have no adequate notions of criminal biology and psychology. How
can a governor individualise the penal treatment of four or five
hundred prisoners? And does not the cellular system, which
reduces the characteristic manifestations of the personal
dispositions of prisoners to a minimum, levelling them all by the
uniformity of routine and silence, render it impossible to observe
and get to know the special character of each condemned person,
and so specialising the discipline? Where, too, are we to find
the necessary governors and warders who would know how to
discharge this difficult duty? The solid fact that particular
houses of correction or punishment are in excellent condition when
their governors have the psychological intuition of a De Metz, a
Crofton, a Spagliardi, or a Roukawichnikoff, and languish when he
departs, strikingly demonstrates that the whole secret of success
lies in the spirit of a wise governor, skilled in psychology,
rather than in the slender virtue of the cell.
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