CLASSIFICATION OF PRISONERS.

Evening Star, Issue 3817, 19 May 1875, Page 3

CLASSIFICATION OF PRISONERS.

To 4he Editor. Sir,—l have read : with much care and interest many hundred pages of learned theories of grand humanitarian ideas,, essays on the prevention of crime and the reformation of criminals, reports of prison commissioners congresses, and conventions—State, national and international—and through all I find a tendency to tieat the convicted sinners as a separate j c “ k88 „ from the rest of mankind, and that it .requires some; peculiar legislation, some new power or process whereby criminals could be, as it were, put into a machine and turned ont model Christ,w?B But next to man’s hard heart and perverse nature, I consider that the greatest obstacle : to criminal reformation is a olass of self-styled reformers, who have a morbid mama to he considered kind-hearted sympathising humanitarians. Their sympathy is only with the victims of vice, their exertions are only with criminals. The greater the crime the greater the sympathy. Their hearts and eyes are hermetically sealed to all appeals to them for _ help. from struggling virtue, ready to sink into vice for want of assistance, and thty withhold their bounty and benevolence until the street arab becomes a hardened crimiual, imprisoned for some fearful outrage on the ommunity—then all the pent-up kindness of their nature gushes forth in his behalf. Provided it can be done at somebody else’s expense they will, if permitted, furnish him with rare luxuries; they will lead him to believe that ho is the injured party-the victim of prejudiced society and. perjured law officers. They try to. surround him with a halo of martyrdom, heap abuse on his keepers,' and besiege the Executive ears with their pleas for pardon. They wish the public to believe that they are doing a great work in the cause of morality, when all their acts tend to encourage crime and thwart justice.—l am, &0., t. ~ Colonist. Dunedin, May 18.