The law does make a difference: some criminals are only given short
sentences, while others have very long ones.

But the jail makes no difference whatever. Once within the prison walls,
all convicts are treated in the same way.

[Illustration: STATE PRISON, SING SING.]

General Lathrop's plan alters all this. He takes into account that some
people commit crimes through ignorance, some through weakness, and some
through wickedness. He thinks that the first two classes of convicts
should be carefully separated from the really bad criminals.

His plan is to divide all the convicts in the prisons into separate
groups.

Group A is to consist of those who are serving their first term of
imprisonment, and who may therefore be supposed to have been led into
crime by others, and not to be so wicked but that a chance remains of
turning them back into the paths of goodness and honesty.

Group B will be made up of men who have been in prison once before, and
for whom there is still hope that they may reform.

Group C will take in the men who have served more than one term of
imprisonment, and whose reform is very doubtful, but even they will be
separated from.

Group D, into which will be put the hardened criminals, who are to be kept