JUVENILE OFFENDERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13357, 11 December 1906, Page 5

JUVENILE OFFENDERS.

LACK OF PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. - [by telegraph.— correspondent.] Dunedin, Monday. In the course of a speech at the annual meeting of the . Southland Prisoners' and Patients' .Aid Society, at Invercargill, , Mr,, S. E. McCarthy, S.M., made some strong comment on the lack of parental responsibility. He said an Act had been passed known as the Juvenile Offenders Act, providing for young children who had committed offences being dealt with in magistrates' rooms. He thought the Legislature would have acted wisely if it had gone a step further,,; and given the magistrates power to order floggings to boys who deserved them, irrespective of the nature of the offence. In a great many cases throughout New Zealand there was an entire lack of parental discipline, which was the cause of much juvenile crime. The children were not to blame. They were simply allowed to grow up without any attempt at correction, and if magistrates had power, when boys were convicted of little acts of theft or mischief, to order floggings, he thoughtit would be a very great deterrent. They could not be sent to gaol, and it would not be proper, perhaps, to take them away from their parents for a first offence, but for a magistrate to simply admonish them was no deterrent. Several cases had come within his experience where boys . had been admonished, and. within a week they had been- before Tiim again. It would be very much better for the boys if they could be punished in some way.