MANUFACTURING CRIMINALS.

Evening Star, Issue 12762, 15 March 1906, Page 3

MANUFACTURING CRIMINALS.

TO THB EDITOB. Sir,—The deputation from the Prison Reform Association who waited on the Minister of Justice on Monday afternoon presented very weighty and cogent arguments in favor of admlnisTrative reform. I noted that one speaker, who dealt specially with the treatment of juvenile crime, urged that this class of case should be dealt with by a magistrate specially appointed. and tliiit the probationary officer, who would advise the Court, ought not to. ba an ordinary peace officer, but someone who was in thorough touch with the gtmins, waifs, and stray® who hang about our theatres and places of amusement, who from want of due parental control infest our Streets at nights, and who are slowly but surely graduating in the school of crime. The apposileness of these remarks was borne out by the report. I read in your issue last night .of a case heard yesterday morning in the so-called Juvenile Court, A youth (about fifteen, years of age) was charged with a, series of petty thefts, which, if the ]»lice had so desired, might have been transformed into a much more serious indictment. It transpired that this enterprising youth had, during a somewhat extensive period, carried on in the ‘Evening Star’ office a series of daring

larcenies of money, occasionally naming as high as £6, and nearly always involving substantial sums. The full extent of bis misdeeds was not disclosed, because some of tho victims did not feel disposed■ -to prosecute, but it traraspired that, this Jack Shepherd in embryo was in possession of duplicate keys of the principal roon» of the establishment, and had not been above resorting to methods of abstraction not unfamiliar to the heroes of some of those penny "dreadfuls" that too- easily fall into the hands of our youth. And how was this youthful delinquent deatt with? The S.M. who presided allowed his judgment to be swayed by the ad miserricordiam appeals of the professional advocate, and permitted the offender to be sent back to his home, there to be whipped as his father thought desirable. If that is 'the way justice is to be administered in the so-called Juvenile Court, The sooner it is closed the better. What is needed is either that such cases shall only be adjudicated by the senior stipendiary, or by a speda%-appointed magistrate whose acumen will enable him to distinguish between) those cases of sudden temptation which cause a lad to lapse from the straight path, and those wellplanned and cunadngly-executed crimes that disclose an evil mind, which can only be corrected by tbe transference of its owner to a training ship or by bis confinement for a definite period in a -reformatory like Burnham. The mistaken clemency exhibited yesterday, if persisted in, can only result in, tho manufacture of a crop of youthful cximinalß; and l it behoves the Executive of the Prison Reform Association to direct 'the attention of tbe Minister of Justice to this case, and to urge him, when preparing his promised Bill to see that a repetition! of such farcical treatment' of offenders is not possible.—l am, etc., Obsekvtcb. March 14.