What eventuates?
Idleness, hooliganism and repeated imprisonments for petty crime, until something more serious happens, and then longer sentences.

Such is the progress of hundreds whom statisticians love to call "recidivists." Am I wrong when I say that the State has been too ready, too prompt in sending the youths of the ignorant poor to prison?
Am I wrong in saying that the State has been playing its "trump ace" too soon, and that it ought to have kept imprisonment up its sleeve a little longer?
These lads, having been in prison, know, and their companions know, too, the worst that can happen to them when they commit real crime.

Prison has done its worst, and it cannot hurt them.
If prisons there must be, am I wrong in contending that they should be reserved for the perpetrators of real and serious crime; and that the punishment, if there is to be punishment, should be certain, dignified and severe, educational and reformative?
At present it includes none of these qualities.
To such a length has the imprisonment of youths for trumpery offences gone, not only in London, but throughout the country, that visiting justices of my acquaintance have spent a great deal of money in part paying the fines of youths imprisoned under such conditions, that they might be released at once.

Here we have a curious state of affairs, magistrates generally committing youths to prison in default for trumpery offences, and other magistrates searching prisons for imprisoned youths, paying their fines, setting them free, and sending on full details to the Home Secretary.
It would be interesting to know how many "cases" of this kind have been reported to the Home Secretary during the last few years.

Time after time the governors of our prisons have called attention to this evil in their annual reports.