JUVENILE COURTS.

Evening Star, Issue 17637, 16 April 1921, Page 3

JUVENILE COURTS.

WOMAN TO SIT ON BENCH. _ A Bill which was read for the second time ijl the British House of Commons was the Juvenile Courts Bill—one that will greatly interest many New Zealand women who have been of tho opinion that tho children’s courts should be entirely separated from any other court. Mr Short, who moved the second reading, stated that juvenile courts had done an immense amount of good, the results showing that it was now being realised that imprisonment was a barbarous and futile method of correcting a child. A main point in the Bill was that an entirely separate building should he provided for the children, and that the police in attendance should be in plain clothes, thus removing any kind of unwholesome excitement, or glamor, which would have an evil effect in some cases. It was important that the court should contain a woman magistrate, and that the president of the court should be a man specially qualified and specially interested in the subject of child offenders and their treatment.

A speaker in favor of the Bill said that after a long experience as a school medical officer he had come to tho conclusion that the matter was really psychological. He considered that a woman, married or unmarried, had instinctively a feeling with the child, and he had found that in dealing with tho medical work it was a great advantage to have women doctors and nurses, as well as school officers associated as helpers. Tho only objection advanced was that the stipendiary magistrate would bo put in a position whore ho could not be, as at present, omnipotent. Tho speaker asserted that the magistrates were unanimous in agreeing that there was no need for tho Bill, but this was emphatically denied by other speakers. As stated, in lito end tho Bill was read a second .time.