Excerpt from A Bulletin: On the Condition of the County Jails of Missouri The county jail has been called a school of crime. The promiscuous herding of prisoners Of all ages, both sexes, and of all degrees of criminality which so often obtains in county and city jails is certainly in the highest degree demoralizing to the prisoners, Spreads the contagion of crime among them, and so makes the jail an instrumentality in the propagation of crime. So bad has the county jail been generally in this country that many experts have not hesitated to advocate its entire abolition, while others would make it merely a place of safe custody for those awaiting trial. Both of these courses are, however, impossible with our present political institutions. Moreover, the reform of the county jail is entirely practicable if a knowledge of the principles which underlie its correct administration can be widely diffused. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.