Institutional life has points of difference from life outside, which cause the formation of habits that are detrimental to the inmates when they return to the community. They are lodged usually on the model of the barracks; though this does not apply to the lodging of prisoners in prison, as they have separate rooms. Outside an institution most people do not sleep in dormitories or live in common rooms. They may live and sleep in the same room, but the only lodging outside which is on the same model as the dormitory is the common lodging-house, and that is the last place to which anyone would desire that a reformed offender should go.
In an institution division of labour is carried out for reasons of economy. The superintendent directs that different sets of people should perform different duties. Even if all the persons are changed at intervals from one set of duties to another, with a view to each inmate learning to do all parts of the work which is necessary in order that the place may be kept in proper condition, the habit formed is different from that of the housewife outside, who daily has to go over the whole round of her work. She is not responsible for doing a part, knowing that some other is responsible for some other part. Not only each part of the work engages her attention in its turn, but she is accountable for the whole; whether she does it well or ill is beside the point, which is, that there is nobody to rule her and no one whom she can hold accountable for her neglect. The habits of housekeeping acquired by the inmates of a home may tend to make them good servants, but they are certainly not the kind likely to make them more fit than they were to undertake the management of a house of their own; for they do not manage, they are managed.
The Borstal experiment--Provisions for the "reformation of young offenders"--Is any diminution in the numbers of police expected?-- Preventive detention--The implied confession that penal servitude does not reform, and the insistence on it as a preliminary to reform--The prisoner detained at the discretion of the prison officials--The powers of the Secretary of State--The change under the statute--The necessary ignorance of the Secretary of State by reason of his other duties--The "committees"--The habits to be taught--The teaching of trades--The ignorance of trades on the part of those who design to teach them--The difficulty of teaching professions in institutions less than that of teaching trades--The vice of obedience taught--Intelligent co-operation and senseless subordination--The military man in the industrial community.