Energised by his foreign travels, Alec was all the more active at home. He was already recognised as an expert, perhaps the expert in his field, and his expertise would be repeatedly called upon. Alec's reputation was growing apace, as was that of England as being ‘in the van of prison administration’. His rehabilitative approach was rapidly gaining ground at home and found resonance abroad, and he made every effort to ensure his message was heard. His was not a voice crying in the wilderness.

In August 1925 he attended the IXth International Prison Congress, which was being held at the Imperial Institute in London, presided over by a stalwart of such occasions, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise. Throughout, Alec played ‘a splendid part as guide, orator and chorister’. Many of the issues that engaged him were on the agenda, including the individualisation of punishment, classification (on which he submitted a paper), employment, alternatives to imprisonment, indeterminate sentences and preventive measures to save the young from a life of crime. The Congress had no powers of compulsion, but its resolutions had moral suasion and Britain in particular had implemented many previous ones.

Encouraged by the ‘common desire to introduce into the punishment and prevention of crime more reason, more justice and more reform’, Ruggles-Brise concluded the conference on a note of optimism. On 6th September he wrote to express his gratitude for the decisive contribution his younger colleague had made to the success of the whole undertaking, and to inform him that he intended to bring this to the notice of the Secretary of State, Sir William Joynson-Hicks. The latter had spoken at the Congress and had shown himself to be an unlikely recruit to the new mode of thinking. He had told the assembly that