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IN PRISONS OFT.
If every chapter in this book is ignored, I hope that this one will be read thoughtfully.

For I want to show that a great national wrong, a stupidly cruel wrong, exists.
Probably all injustice is stupid, but this wrong is so foolish, that any man who thinks for one moment upon it will wonder how it came into existence.
I have written and spoken about it so often that I am almost ashamed of returning to the subject.

Yet all our penal authorities, from the Home Secretary downwards, know all there is to be known about it.
I am going, then, to reiterate a serious charge! It is this: no boy from eight years of age up to sixteen, unless sound in mind and body, can find entrance into any reformatory or industrial school! No matter how often he falls into the hands of the police, or what charges may be brought against him, not even if he is friendless and homeless.

Again, no youthful prisoner under twenty-one years of age, no matter how bad his record, is allowed the benefit of Borstal training unless he, too, be sound in mind and body.