Hawke's Bay Herald. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1880. JUVENILE OFFENDERS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5835, 22 November 1880, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1880. JUVENILE OFFENDERS.

It has always boon a difficult and embarrassing question liow to deal with our precocious criminals. Obviously to commit them to gaol when they have perpetrated thefts or otherwise transgressed against the law is only to send them to a school -where their criminal propensities will be strengthened and whence they will emerge fit for the commission of still more serious offences, and it has not unfreciuently happened that young offenders have been allowed to go unpunished because there were no suitable means of punishment. The consequence has been that, emboldened by impunity, the juvenile delinquents have repeated their petty offences, and after becoming for a season a nuisance to the community have ended by joining the ranks of the criminal class. This has been notably the case in Melbourne. The "larrikins" of that city, who are a terror to wayfarers at night, who maltreat policemen, and , rescue thieves from custody when being conveyed to the lock-up, are youug fellows who in all likelihood would have become lawabiding, useful members of society had they not been encouraged in their roughness by immunity from punishment for petty offences committed when they were mischiovous boys. Even when dealt with for such offences the punishment has been little calculated to act as a deterrent or to £$jß{jLto the reform of the offender. A usual mode of dealing with most igfijiqli cases — falls upon the parent and •ttrajAfjpn the mischievous rascal, and if ||ij.£aternative of a short term of impriitegj^etijt is accepted then the boy be'gSa&k '"contaminated and evil has been ■^^K^itead of good. It seems clear ;^a^§^tl'iat the subject lias not hitherto

been properly handled. We have been too tender-hearted with mischievous boys ami \re have not taken heed of what might be the outcome of our mistaken leniency j and so we have gone on until we are &sr6ed to the necessity for action by the magnitude of the evil. floro in Now Zealand we are fortunately not so beset as they are in Melbourne, but wo have the evil amongst us and it should be grappled with before it assumes large*? jwdjiortions. Reformatories atad industrial schools are doubtkss Suitable institutions for boys

who have been guilty of acts of dishonest} 7 , but for the repression of the tendency to roughness which, is a characteristic of the present day the birch seems to be the best remedy. A lad that would laugh at being fined, and would perhaps rather enjoy tlian otherwise incarceration with grown-up criminals as a new experience, would slirink from the degradation as well as the pain of a whipping-. At Homo, where the question of dealing with criminal Q#end"ers has of late becorao very pressing, a discussion has been opened on the subject in the public Press which was initiated by a communication from Sir William Harcourfc to the Mayor of Manchester; Tile Home Secretary condemns the practice prevailing in England of sending juvenile criminals to gaol, and suggests instead committal to industrial schools and the employment of a ntoder&tß personal chastisement for Srhall offences. In this view he is borne out by the majority of the Press, though, there are 0»e or two journals holding the kl'eft. tliat a boy should only be flogged by his father. The Times does not take that view. "A whipping," it says, "comes more nearly in every way to the ideal form of punishment than any othei\ It is short, sharp, cheap, and deterrent. The offender who has made trial of it will like it no better the second time than the first-. It retains its terrors to the end. Almost every village in the country has its half-dozen or so of young scamps, under no effectual restraint now, but likely to restrain themselves and to cease being a nuisance to the neighborhood if the rod were in prospect." There are of course humanitarians who regard corporal punishment with abhorrence, and doubtless there is something in that mode of correction very repugnant to the notions of the present age, but it would be absurd to be deterred by such a feeling from discharging a plain duty — that of checking the growth of the criminal class and of restraining mischievous boys from becoming ruffians and perhaps outlaws. To be deterred from the discharge of this duty by mere sentiment would be wrong, but on the other hand it must be admitted that much discrimination should be used in administering a mode of punishment which is without doubt of a debasing character. The punishment should not be inflicted for a very trivial offence, nor when it is plainly manifest that milder treatment will better serve the purpose, and it will therefore need that the magistrate empowered to order a punishment of the kind should have a discretion in the matter, and also be capable of judiciously exercising it.