CARE OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 159, 2 April 1937, Page 15

CARE OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS

Lord Hewart on Modern

Treatment

STOPPING HARVEST OF CRIME

Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Jus lice of England, opening the new £20,000 Police Court at Tottenham recently, praised the work of voluntary magistrates and commented on the improvement in the treatment of juvenile offenders. "There is, 1 think, something to be said for the view that the law, and specially the criminal law. should be administered by men who have had a long training and experience of the law,” ho said. "I marvel quite seriously, however, at the amount of work which is willingly done by justices who are acting from a mere sense of duty. It is not so all over the country. In Scotland no man is tried for a crime, however small, except by a trained lawyer. There is something to be said for that system."

Discussing juvenile delinquency, Lord Hewart said that even during his lifetime there had been a very remarkable change in the administration of law in the direction of humanity. It was only 100 years since small children were sent to long terms of transportation for petty theft. That period had disappeared. “I think it is quite true to say. without undue self-praise, that during the last half-century there has been a great development of the human temper in dealing with persons who are said to be criminals,” he continued. “Enormous Improvement.’' "For a series of reasons, not purely humanitarian, and certainly not purely sentimental, there has been an enormous improvement in the way in which young criminals—if they are criminals—are dealt with. It may be tbiil the tendency to take care of the young has gone too far. It may be that the desire to save them and protect

them has been given an outlet in ways that are difficult to support, but, after all, can there be a graver or more appalling problem?”

In the Court of Criminal Appeal it was appalling to observe bow often a mature .man who was before the court for a very serious offence was first of all sent to prison when he was under the age of 16. That was a system not so much for the punishment of crime as for the manufacture of criminals.

Therefore, ho said, on an actual consideration of what was in the public interest it was right that efforts were everywhere being made to save the young criminal from the associations and contaminations of crime. That was not. sentiment, it was stopping the

harvest of crime at its beginning. The new Tottenham Court, Lord Hewart remarked, had been described as “the most handsome in the country.”

He was far from thinking, he added, that Utopia would be found in a state where everybody bad paid for his funeral before he was 21, or where they had the greatest, number of handsome police courts, all busily occupied. In the meantime, until Utopia came, police courts were necessary, and it was as well that they should be, if possible, at once efficient and impressive.