“Three or four years ago, when I was sitting in special sessions, my associates and I had occasion to sentence a young man who had been found guilty of petty larceny. In pronouncing sentence I said: ‘I am convinced from the evidence that has been brought out here that you are lacking in moral sense, that at the end of your prison term you will go out and commit more. It is a wrong to the community that you should be so set at liberty, and it is a wrong to you that you should be allowed to follow your course without restraint.'
One of the parents of my young man— he was barely twenty-one—told me tearfully that he was a good boy, the best of boys, but that he had been in bad company and tempted too far. Before he had served out his term his parent came to me again to tell me that now he had promised to reform and how well he was doing. I still had my doubts." —''The Outlook'', February 8, 1913.