He is convicted and sent to prison.  As a rule, he will some time be turned back into the world.  He needs careful treatment, involving instruction and an appeal to that part of his nature which may awaken sympathies and produce emotions that will make him more of a social being on his return to the world.  In the loose language of the world, it is necessary for him not only to learn how to curb the evil but how to increase the good.  His imagination should be cultivated and enlarged.  The responses to better sentiment should be strengthened.  This can be furthered only by skilled teachers who are moved by the desire to help him.  The process should be similar to a hospital treatment.  Instead of this, he is usually surrounded by men of little intelligence or education, men who have no fitness for the task; he is governed by strict rules, all of them subjecting him to severe penalties when violated.  Every action in the prison reminds him of his status.  With the exception of a few strong men who need suffering for their development it can have but one result.  He must come out from prison poorer material than when he went in.  There are only two reflections that can keep him out of trouble in the future:  the remembrance of the past and the fear that a similar experience might come to him again.

When it is remembered that the greatest enemy to happiness and life is fear; when we realize that the constant battle of the primitive man was with the fear that peoples the unknown with enemies and dangers; when we remember that in some way, fear of poverty, of disease, of disaster, of loss of friends and life is the ever-present enemy of us all, it is evident that nothing but harm can come from the lessons of fear that are drilled into the victim in prison.  Life furnishes countless ways to be kind and helpful and social.  It furnishes infinite ways to be cruel, hard and anti-social.  Most of these anti-social ways are not condemned by the law.  Whether the life is helpful and kindly or hard and selfish can never depend upon the response of an organism to fear, but upon the response of an organism to the kindlier and more humane and sympathetic sentiments that to some extent at least inhere in the constitution of man.

It is a common thing for prisoners, even during the longest term, to be more solicitous about mother, child, wife, brother or friend than about themselves.  It is common for them to deny themselves privileges, presents or favors to help other inmates.  The consideration and kindness shown by unfortunates to each other are surprising to those who have no experience with this class of men.  Often to find real sympathy you must go to those who know what misery means.  Pride and coldness are usually due to lack of understanding, and life alone can bring understanding.  Every intelligent man engaged in efforts to improve and help either criminals or children or any others, knows the need of an appeal to what passes as the better