"Imprisonment," affirms Reinach, in his often-quoted work, _Les Récidivistes_, "especially if short, is an excitation to crime." "As to the reformation of the criminal," remarks Dr. Paul Aubrey, in a recent and able study, _Le Contagion du Meutre_, "that is a myth; the prison is still the best school of crime which we possess." "The houses of correction are much more houses of corruption," said a young Italian thief. "Clever robberies are arranged in prison," a thief told the Abbé Moreau; "the prisoners all know each other; once at liberty they can find one another." "I have seen young men enter the Grande Roquette," the Abbé observes elsewhere, "guilty, but not corrupted, who went out decided to commit crimes which a few months before they would have regarded with horror."
It is unnecessary, I trust, to accumulate further evidence on this point; it is a melancholy though far from a difficult task. It must be sufficiently clear that the modern prison, with its monotonous routine of solitary confinement, varied by bad company, is fruitful of nothing but disaster to the prisoner and to the society on which he is set loose. Such mitigation of its influence as may be found is chiefly due to voluntary charitable agency.