Note 1 — Chapter IX · SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS;— THE PROBATION SYSTEM. THE ELMIRA SYSTEM.

It is generally supposed that such a system cannot act as a deterrent to crime. The American delegates to the International Prison Congress (held in Paris in 1895) declared that the obligation imposed upon the prisoners, in such institutions, to raise themselves by mental as well as by industrial labour, into higher grades as a necessary condition for liberation, is felt by many of them, to involve so much exertion, that they would rather be consigned to some ordinary prison, where self-improvement is not specially enforced. This system, they declared, was more deterrent than was generally supposed.