It has lately been shewn, that society has a strong interest of a pecuniary nature in the reformation of juvenile delinquents.  A boy or youth continually going about as a pickpocket or petty larcenist, is a destructive animal of somewhat formidable character.  To get quit of him at last by transportation, costs at the least calculation L.150.  Now, he can be put through the twelvemonth’s course of reformation in such a school as that which we have described, and deported as a free emigrant to Australia (where he is welcomed), for L.25.  Thus, even in an economical light, the reforming of the youth is a great gain.  Magistrates are everywhere impressed with the hopelessness of a mere judicial treatment of these hapless children.  They come back to the dock at almost regular intervals; severity is of no avail with a poor wretch who, on being discharged from jail, finds all honest employment denied to him.  It is by reform alone that we can rid ourselves of this moral pest, by which our country is disgraced.

There is but one difficulty in the case, and that is one involving profound social questions.  Shall we see criminal children taken care of, and treated kindly, while many of the children of the honest poor are so ill off?  Shall we not, by taking these children under our care, and so relieving parents and others of their responsibility towards them, sap the principles of the industrious poor, leading them to desert or cast off their children, whom they will now be sure of seeing cared for by others?  We must admit that there is much force in these queries; but it would be wrong to allow them altogether to deter us, where the reasons on the other side are so urgent.  It may be possible, by keeping to such individual efforts as those of Mr Nash, or to those of little unobtrusive societies, to prevent much of the evil apprehended.  And it may also be practicable, as we find is proposed, to arrange that there shall be a legal claim upon parents for the expenses incurred in reforming their criminal offspring.  Thus none who are not themselves destitute, could safely leave their children to the chances of a criminal life.  It is also most desirable, that the state should limit its interference to grants of money in proportion to the sums advanced by private or local effort, and to the enforcing of a law for the detention of vagrant and criminal children where it may be necessary.  Under such precautions, we think most of the advantages might be obtained, with a much less admixture of evil than many would now be disposed to expect.[1]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] The reader will find excellent matter on this subject in Mary Carpenter’s recent volume on Reformatory Schools, and in a ’Report of the Proceedings of a Conference on the Subject of Preventive and Reformatory Schools, held at Birmingham on the 9th and 10th of December 1851.’

‘MEN OF THE TIME.’