102 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the state and in the full blaze of public opinion. The danger of partisan control, now seen at its worst in the county jails, would surely be greatly diminished, and there is ground to hope that it would entirely vanish before the increased publicity of a cen- tralized state system, and the increase of public interest and enlightenment which such a system would inevitably foster.
What would then become of the buildings now used as county jails? Some of these are of such faulty construction, or so satur- ated with filth, or so impregnated with the germs of disease as to be wholly unfitted for any use and are only meet for destruction. Very many of the jail buildings, however, can be so repaired and altered as to make them available for use as places of detention for persons arrested under civil process, for witnesses in crimi- nal cases, and for persons accused of crime and awaiting trial. And this brings us to the consideration of the proper treatment of that second class of prisoners, mentioned above; those, namely, who have been arrested on a charge or on suspicion of crime and are detained while awaiting trial.
2. Imprisonment before trial. These prisoners form a class entirely distinct from guilty and convicted prisoners, and are entitled to receive a wholly different kind of treatment. The law presumes them to be innocent, and the law should treat them as if they were innocent. Their imprisonment has no other object than their safe custody until the question of their guilt or innocence can be judicially determined. There is, in their case, no occasion for any disciplinary or reformative training; they may be, and in many instances they are, wholly innocent, and, until they are actually adjudged guilty, they have all the rights of other members of the community, subject only to their enforced detention. To treat them as if they were criminals, to confine them in association with prisoners who are guilty and are serving sentence for crime, and thus to subject them to most corrupting influences, is much more than a mere personal outrage ; it is a grievous wrong to the public whereby the author- ity of law is used to foster crime by keeping a presumably inno- cent person in enforced contact with criminals.
When a youthful offender is for the first time arrested for
