Whether when he finally emerges he has benefitted morally may be doubted. It is impossible with so large a population, spread over so large an area, that there can be any reformatory process as applied to individuals. Fresnes is open to the serious objection that it is too large for effective moral discipline, and that government of some 2,500 persons, four-fifths of whom are criminals of many varied classes, would make excessive demands upon even a heaven-born administrator and philanthropist.
As we have seen in the closing paragraphs of this volume, the great prison of Fresnes exemplifies the best practice of modern penology in the incarceration and discipline of those whom society, for its own protection, isolates from itself. But punishment is not necessarily reform; and it may be doubted whether the redemption of the criminal will ever be accomplished by model prison structures alone. France, in common with all other nations, has this further step of reformation yet to take. But little indication of what its nature shall be, in France or elsewhere, has been given; for its revelation we must look to the future.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History and Romance of Crime. Modern French Prisons, by Arthur Griffiths