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Page 44
The proportion of offenders under sixteen years of age to the total
local prison population of England and Wales, has decreased in a
remarkable way within the last twenty or thirty years. The proportion
of offenders under sixteen committed to prison between 1857-66,
amounted to six and three-quarters per cent. of the prison population,
and if we go back behind that period it was higher still. In fact,
during the first quarter of the present century, the extent and
ramifications of juvenile crime had almost reduced statesmen to
despair. But the spread of the Reformatory system and the introduction
more recently of Industrial and Truant Schools for children who have
just drifted, or are fast drifting, into criminal courses, has had a
remarkable effect in diminishing the juvenile population of our
prisons. At the present time the proportion of juveniles under sixteen
to the rest of the local prison population is only a little over two
per cent. and it is not likely that it will ever reach a higher
figure. It might easily be reduced almost to zero if children destined
for Reformatories were sent off to these institutions at once, instead
of being detained for a month or so in prison till a suitable school
is found for them. Some persons object to the idea of sending children
to Reformatories at once, on the ground that to abolish the terror of
imprisonment from the youthful mind would embolden the juvenile
inclined to crime and lead him more readily to commit it. Others
object on the ground that it is only right the child should be
punished for his offence. In answer to the last objection, it may
pertinently be said that a sentence of three or four years to a
Reformatory is surely sufficient punishment for offences usually
committed by small boys. With regard to the first objection, our own
experience is that the ordinary juvenile is much more afraid of the
policeman than of the prison, and that the fear of being caught would
operate just as strongly upon him if he were sent straight to the
Reformatory as it does now. The evils connected with the present
system of sending children destined for Reformatories to prison are of
two kinds. At the present time many magistrates will not send children
to Reformatories who sorely need the restraints of such an
institution, because they know it involves a period of preliminary
imprisonment before they can get there. Secondly, it enables a lad to
know what the inside of a prison really is. On these two points let me
quote the words of an experienced magistrate. "I have many times,"
said Mr. Whitwell, at the fourth Reformatory Conference, "when having
to deal with young people, felt it very desirable to send them to a
Reformatory, but have shrunk from it because we are obliged to send
them to prison first. I think it should be left to the discretion of
the magistrates and not made compulsory. I feel very strongly indeed
that it is most desirable to keep the child from knowing what the
inside of a prison is. Let them think it something awful to look
forward to. _When they have been in the prison they are of opinion
that it is not such a very bad place after all, and they are not
afraid of going there again_; but if they are sent to a Reformatory
and told that they will be sent to a prison if they do not reform,
they will think it an awful place." These are wise words. It is
impossible to make imprisonment such a severe discipline for children
as it is for grown-up men and women, and as it is not so severe,
children leave our gaols with a false impression on their minds. The
terror of being imprisoned has, to a large extent, departed; they
think they know the worst and cease to be much afraid of what the law
can do. Hence the fact that society has less chance of reclaiming a
child who has been imprisoned than it has of reclaiming one who has
not undergone that form of punishment although he has committed
precisely the same offence. In England, many authorities on
Reformatory Schools are strongly in favour of retaining preliminary
imprisonment for Reformatory children; in Scotland, experienced
opinion is decisively on the other side. On this point, the Scotch are
undoubtedly in the right. The working of prison systems, whether at
home or abroad, teaches us that any person, be he child or man, who
has once been in prison, is much more likely to come back than a
person who, for a similar offence, has received punishment in a
different form. The application of this principle to the case of
Reformatory children decisively settles the matter in favour of
sending such children to Reformatories at once. If this simple reform
were effected, the child population of our prisons would almost cease
to exist. In the year 1888, this population amounted to 239 for
England and Wales under the age of twelve, and 4,826 under the age of
sixteen, thus making a total of 5,065 or 2.9 per cent. of the whole
local prison population.
In the preceding remarks on juvenile offenders under 16, it has been
pointed out that the great decrease in the numbers of such offenders
among the prison population is mainly owing to the development of
Industrial and Reformatory Schools. In order, therefore, to form an
accurate estimate of juvenile delinquency, we must look not merely at
the number of juveniles in prison; attention must also be directed to
the number of juveniles in Reformatory and Industrial Institutions.
Although these institutions are not places of imprisonment, yet they
are places of compulsory detention, and contain a very considerable
proportion of juvenile delinquents. All juveniles sent to
Reformatories have, indeed, been actually convicted of criminal
offences, and in 1888 the number of young people in the Reformatory
Schools of Great Britain (excluding Ireland) was in round numbers six
thousand (5,984). These must be added to the total juvenile prison
population in order to form a true conception of the extent of
juvenile crime. It is almost certain that if these young people were
not in Reformatories they would be in prisons, for, in almost the same
proportion as the Reformatory and Industrial School inmates have
increased, the juvenile prison population has decreased.
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