Hawke's Bay Herald. WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1889. NEGLECTED AND CRIMINAL CHILDREN.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8351, 1 May 1889, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1889. NEGLECTED AND CRIMINAL CHILDREN.

The problem of how to deal with neglected and criminal children is every day becoming more pressing iv New Zealand, and unfortunately it is one which is fay from easy of solution. Where parents so far neglect their duties as to fail to provide proper food and shelter for their children, the State must step iv in loco parentis, and do its best for the waifs, to prevent them becoming criminals and ft menace to the well-being of the community. When they have already developed criminal tendencies it is equally imperative that the State should attempt to reform them. Hitherto, It inubt be admitted, the State has performed these duties in a very perfunctory manner, and in tuacy cases, we fear, more harm than «ood lias been done. For children who have really proved themselves to be inherently vicious a reformatory or industrial school is perhaps the best place, though little practical good can come of herding children together in barracklike seclusion and endeavoring to reform them by teaching them the "three r's" and set lessons in morality which they iearu as parrots do phrases, and regard iv the light or unpleasant tasks given to them by way of punishment. Nay more, positive harm results to many children whose only crime is haviug been brought into the world by fathers and mothers totally unfitted for the parental or maternal offices. The theory held by advocates of the industrial school system is that the viaious, by being brought into active contact and association with the comparatively will be helped to reform. But, like many theories which look very nice when expounded by wrongheaded philanthropists, the facts do not bear it ont. Instead of the good leavening the bad. it is too often the bad which leavens the good, and sets up a moral ferment winch is finally destructive to the genus of good, immature and weak as they must be under such circumstances. This is, we believe, generally recognised by those who take a real interest in this important question, and of late years there has been a large extension of the " boardiug-ont " system, and, so far as we can learn, with the happiest results. In Hawke's Bay, at least, tho system has been a marked success, though the CharitaUo Aid Board has had to fight against all the pigheadednoss of official obstruction, which prefers the massing of children together under such conditions that moral contamination is practically unavoidable. Indeed, so far us merely neglected children go, the boarding-ont plan may be regarded as a successful solution of the problem of how best to deal with them. For the actively vicious, as we have said, at present no better way of dealing with them has been found than the reformatory system, with all its objectionable features. But there is a side issue to the problem which, we are glad to see, is receiving prominent atteution all over New Zealand. It is a matter for keen regret that this attention has been forced upon the people by a marked increase in juvenile crime, but out of evil may come good. Generally, when an evil is admitted, political quacks by the dozen start up and offer their infallible nostrums warranted to cure all the ills of the body corporate. But, perhaps because the question does not commend itself to the professional politician and stump orator as one out of which material for a good election cry can be made, there is in this instance a concensus of opinion that the State, while doing all it can to reform the vicious, and to prevent the merely neglected becoming vicious, does not end its duty there. Those responsible for the state of those children should be sought out and adequately punished, ft is an almost daily ocemreuce in New Zealand for parents to step iuto a witnessbox and unblushingly confess that they cannot control boys and girls of from seven to twelve years of age. Now we will not take upou us to say that Home children, let them be as well tieated and trained as possible, will not develop vicious and criminal instincts. There may be such, but certainly in nineteen eases out of twenty the parents are directly responsible for juvenile crime. It is pitiable that in New Zealand, where wages are higher than in any other part of the world, there should be such a large pro portion of the young amongst our criminals, and most of them colonial born. This, on the very face of it, augur-i a want of due parental control. And that the neglect of parental responsibility is widespread, aad is not confmad to the very poor, is evident to anyone who will watch the streets of our towns at nights, and especially on Saturday nights. There the merest boys can be seen in hundreds, evidently with more money to spend than is good for them, jostling passers by, leering and jeering at girls little less shameless than themselves, and generally exhibiting themselves as incipient larrikins who only need temptation to develop into criminals. So long as they do not commit any actual breach of the law, however, the State is powerless to interfere, at least in a democracy such as exists in New Zealand. Buti when they do go wrong, tho State can at least devise some means to punish those who fail to train them in the path of rectitude. How that punishment can be best inflicted is for our legislators to devise. But one initial step which should be taken is easily discernible. Wheu, through the neglect of parents, children become chargeable to the State, those parents should be made to bear the Co3t. There are utterly shameless parents who themselves take their children before tho magistrates, profess inability to control them, and get them sent to an industrial school. Such cases have occurred even in this small town, and are sure to occur again. With parents so admittedly incompetent to fulfil their dnties it may be "well to allow them' to abrogate their functions, but it shonld only be on tho condition that they continue to bear their financial responsibility. In fact, those who neglect their duties as parents should be put on the same footing as husbauds who desert their wives, and failure to support their offspring should be punished by imprisonment. That much at least is clear in an otherwise obscure problem.