JUVENILE OFFENDERS. In modern social science the question of the proper penal treatment of juvenile (i.e., non adult) offenders has been increasingly discussed ; and the reforma tory principle, first applied in the case of children, has even been extended to reclaimable adult offenders (juveniles in crime, if not in age) in a way which brings them sufficiently within the same category to be noticed in this article. In the old days the main idea in England was to use the same penal methods for all crim inals, young and old; when the child broke the law he was sent to prison like his elders. It was only in comparatively recent times that it was realized that child criminals were too often the victims of circumstances beyond their own control. They were rather potential than actual criminals, calling for rescue and regenera tion rather than vindictive reprisals. Striplings of 13 and 14 had been committed io, 12, 16 or 17 times. Religion and moral im provement were little regarded in prisons, industrial and tech nical training was impossible. The chief lesson learnt was an intimate and contemptuous acquaintance with the demoralizing interior of a gaol. There were at one time in London 200 "flash houses" frequented by 6,000 boys trained and proficient in thiev ing and depredation.
The substantial movement for reform in England dates from the first Reformatory School act in 1854. Sporadic efforts to meet the evil had indeed been made earlier. In 1756 the Marine society established a school for the reception and reform of younger criminals; in 1788 the City of London formed a similar institution, which grew much later into the farm school at Redhill. In 1838 an act of parliament created an establishment at Parkhurst for the detention and correction of juvenile offenders, to whom pardon was given conditional on their entrance into some charitable insti tution. Parkhurst was technically a prison, and the system com bined industrial training with religious and educational instruction. These earlier efforts had, however, been quite insufficient to meet the evils, for in the years immediately preceding 1854 crime was being so constantly reinforced in its beginnings under the existing penal system, that it threatened to swamp the country. Unofficial, but more or less accurate, figures showed that between ii,000 and 12,000 juveniles passed annually through the prisons of England and Wales, a third of the whole number being contributed by Lon don alone. In 1854 the total reached 14,00o. The ages of offenders
ranged from less than 12 to 17 ; 6o% of the whole were between 14 and 17; 46% had been committed more than once; 18% four times and more.
The Reformatory School act 1854, substituted the school for the gaol, and all judicial benches were empowered to send delin quents to schools if over the age of 12 and under the age of 16 when they had been guilty of acts punishable by short imprison ment. A serious flaw in this act long survived ; this was the pro vision that a short period of imprisonment in gaol must precede reception into the reformatory; it was upheld by well-meaning but mistaken people as essential for deterrence. But more en lightened opinion condemned the rule as inflicting an indelible prison taint and breeding contamination, even with ample and effective safeguards. Wiser legislation has followed, and an act of 1899 abolished preliminary imprisonment.