MAGISTRATE ON THE POLICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3911, 26 February 1929, Page 48

MAGISTRATE ON THE POLICE.

“A KIND-HEARTED BODY.”

HELPING THE YOUNG.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, December 21.

Mr Clarke Hall, the Old street magistrate, addressing the Howard League for Penal Reform, suggested that in each police division there should be one or two officers particularly interested in children’s cases who should be specially deputed to inquire into those cases and bring them before the court yvhere necessary.

.“ The police are enormously sympathetic and kind,” he said. ' “ They are the most splendidly kind-hearted body of people I hav’e ever come across, and a great many of them are very interested in the yvelfare of the children. I am told there yvould be no departmental difficulty about carrying out the suggestion I have made. As one policeman said to me, ‘ They set apart a particular policeman to’ look after dead bodies. Why should they not do so for live children?’”

The Home Secretary had a Bill prepared to amend the Children’s Act. It yvould provide, he believed, that any child likely to fall into delinquency by reason of its surroundings might be brought before the court. If that became law it yvill be an enormous help toyvards the prevention of delinquency. Children’s courts yvere not entirely satisfactory in this country, and there yvas an enormous amount of child dcliqucncy that never came before the courts, and yvas never checked.

“ There is an erroneous idea that. it is not playing the game to go in for child case snatching. The police and public have not yet realised that the only chance for many of these children who have gone astray is to bring them before the court. If they are given a smack over the head by a constable and told not to do it again, of course, they yvill go on doing it. If they come before the court they will have the great value of the probation officer’s supervision.”

Mr. Clarke Hall agreed entirely yvith the vieyv that in looking after children women made the best probation officers. Contrary to the practice of some other courts, he placed his boys, even up to the age of 15, under the care of the woman probation officer.