Beginning with the physical and moral treatment of foundling
children as one of the most effectual penal substitutes, and
advancing to reformatory constraint and penal sentences upon the
young, there is an entire system crying for radical reform, from
which imprisonment for young persons should always be excluded.
We must therefore abolish the so-called houses of correction; for,
taking no account of the absurd and dangerous confusion created by
the three classes of children committed for paternal correction,
for begging and vagrancy, and for offences, no good can ever come
of it, for the herding and crowding together are nowhere more
productive of fermentation and putrefaction than amongst the
young.
There is nothing for them but separate boarding-out with families
of honest country folk, or else agricultural colonies with a
discipline different from that of the colonies for adult
criminals, but still based on the rule of isolation by night, work
in the open air, and as little crowding as possible.
For adult occasional criminals it is unnecessary to insist any
further on the absurdity and danger of short terms of
imprisonment, with or without isolation in cells, which now
constitute the almost exclusive mode of repression.
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