It is true in this case that nature does not like a vacuum.  The thoughts of men are not changed by leaving them to themselves, they are changed by substituting other thoughts.

The whole theory of the Elmira system is to keep men long enough under a strict discipline to change their habits.  This discipline is administered in three ways.  They are put to school; they are put at work; they are prescribed minute and severe rules of conduct, and in the latter training is included military drill.

The school and the workshop are both primarily for discipline and the formation of new habits.  Only incidentally are the school and the workshop intended to fit a man for an occupation outside of the prison.  The whole discipline is to put a man in possession of his faculties, to give him self-respect, to get him in the way of leading a normal and natural life.  But it is true that what he acquires by the discipline of study and the discipline of work will be available in his earning an honest living.  Keep a man long enough in this three-ply discipline, and he will form permanent habits of well-doing.  If he cannot and will not form such habits, his place is in confinement, where he cannot prey upon society.

There is not space here to give the details of the practices at Elmira.  They are easily attainable.  But I will notice one or two objections that have been made.  One is that in the congregate system men necessarily learn evil from each other.  This is, of course, an evil.  It is here, however, partially overcome by the fact that the inmates are kept so busy in the variety of discipline applied to them that they have little or no time for anything else.  They study hard, and are under constant supervision as to conduct.  And then their prospect of parole depends entirely upon the daily record they make, and upon their radical change of intention.  At night they are separated in their cells.  During the day they are associated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, and this association is absolutely necessary to their training.  In separation from their fellows, they could not be trained.  Fear is expressed that men will deceive their keepers and the board which is to pass upon them, and obtain parole when they do not deserve it.  As a matter of fact, men under this discipline cannot successfully play the hypocrite to the experts who watch them.  It is only in the ordinary prison where the parole is in use with no adequate discipline, and without the indefinite sentence, that deception can be practiced.  But suppose a man does play the hypocrite so as to deceive the officers, who know him as well as any employer knows his workmen or any teacher knows his scholars, and deceives the independent board so as to get a parole.  If he violates that parole, he can be remanded to the reformatory, and it will be exceedingly difficult for him to get another parole.  And, if he should again violate his parole, he would be considered incorrigible and be placed in a life prison.