If an ex-convict has a family, he returns from prison to find them impoverished, shunned by their neighbors, his children scorned and sneered at by their schoolmates—everything worse, more helpless, than when he left them. All of this, and much more, is escaped by the man under a suspended sentence; his capital is unimpaired, and by "making good" his record will be cleared.
That many, perhaps a majority, of criminals can be wholly reformed without imprisonment, through the means of a suspended maximum sentence, with little or no expense to the State, I am satisfied beyond a doubt; and this will be done when we can eliminate from the treatment of criminals the desire for revenge and look only to the good of the individual and of society.