It is also plain from much of the evidence submitted to the committee that an experience of prison soon shows that life there is not as terrible as it seems from the outside; and, as it is the last resource that society has against the criminal, it should not be brought into use against the young till everything else has failed.

The committee has therefore considered the possible alternatives. The only ones that need to be here considered are Probation, Certified Schools, i.e. Industrial Schools and Reformatories, and Borstal Institutions. As regards the probation system there can be no doubt of its success as a whole, though its effects are too complicated to be demonstrated by statistics. On the other hand the need for industrial schools and reformatories is decreasing to an extent that has caused many of them to be closed, and will probably cause the closing of a good many more. There is no corresponding increase of Borstal cases, and the number of young inmates of prisons is decreasing. At the same time, there is no reason for supposing that the number of first offenders of tender years is decreasing to an extent which would produce such results as these. Consequently these broad facts seem to be all to the credit of the system.

The committee does not propose any changes in present arrangements, but draws attention to the notorious fact that frequent repetitions or renewals of probation orders may produce disastrous results. The difficulty occurs in many ways, and may be expressed by saying that a boy should not be sent to a certified school if it can be avoided; but that if he is going, he had better go as soon as possible. The warning that "probation "supervision in the open," and is not to be used as a means of compelling a boy to go to a " home," which is essentially a prison, will be welcomed in view of the frequency of such practices mentioned in the report; but the proper use of what are commonly known as voluntary homes hardly receives the treatment it deserves.

means

A more difficult point is indicated by what the report calls "the unfortunate association of the dismissal of the charge with release under supervision": that is if a boy is put on probation he and his friends consider that he got off. The observation is an example of a failure to appreciate a point of view that is nearly universal, and is at least founded on essential facts. Juvenile Courts may be separated from ordinary Petty Sessions as much

as is possible, while both remain courts of justice; and wellknown terms of law like "guilty," "conviction," conviction," "sentence may be avoided, however awkward the results may be; everything may be called by a new name that will itself be changed as soon as it is familiar; certified schools and Borstal Institutions may be declared by law to be places of training and not of punishment. Magistrates may, in fact, consciously act on the principle "that the duty of the court is not so much to punish for the offence as to readjust the offender to the community"; but the difficulty is that this principle will not cross the Bench. There are some facts that nothing will get over; and one of these is that if a boy who gets into trouble is taken away from his home and deprived of his liberty, he is in an essentially different position from one who remains at home and to all appearances lives as he lived before. And everyone who is not concerned in the administration of the Children Act will mark the difference by saying that the first boy is punished and that the second is not. It may be the duty of the court to lead us all to a different point of view, but they will not easily do so by suggesting that there is no difference between a boy who has done wrong and one who has not, particularly if their proceedings are " as private as possible.”

In dealing with certified schools, that is Industrial Schools and Reformatories, it is satisfactory to observe that the committee appear to be satisfied generally with their organization and management. A disturbing factor in the general position is that their number has been seriously-and probably still is—considerably in excess of what is required. The number of committed children in 1913 was 18,916, the corresponding number in 1926 being 1791; about 40 schools have been closed in the last five years, and of the 86 left, no doubt a certain number are doomed to extinction. The difference between industrial schools and reformatories, except in regard to the age of the inmates, was shadowy in 1908. It has now almost disappeared. Both kinds of school receive the same kind of child, except that those in a reformatory are older than those in an industrial school, and therefore more developed in undesirable directions; but both use much the same means to reach the same ends. The time has therefore arrived when the distinction between the two should be abolished, and they should be treated as junior and senior schools of the same kind. The advantages of such amalgamation

are that it will enable both forms of school to be more fully classified than they are at present, thus giving wider choice in the destination of any particular child, and will also make transfers much easier than they are at present.

The suggested rule that no children under 10 should be committed to the schools will probably not effect much real change in their character. The further suggestion that all cases should be committed for three years is a more serious change from the present practice. The committee, however, give clear and convincing reasons for holding that both short and long committals serve no useful purpose, and that, with due attention to the all important question of licensing by the school authorities, a committal for three years may safely be prescribed as the normal order. This is fully in accordance with what will generally be accepted as a governing principle in such matters, namely that the court should be solely responsible for the decision that a child or young person should be sent to a school, and for the choice of the school, subject to the right of the local authority to offer advice; but that, after this order has been made, the authority conducting the school should be primarily responsible for deciding when an inmate is to be licensed for employment. A definite division of responsibility on those lines will, no doubt, be for the good of the child and--what, in the end, is much the same thingwill promote smooth administration.

If certified schools cannot meet the case of a juvenile offender on account of his age, the remaining alternative to prison is a Borstal Institution. Three such institutions exist for the purpose of receiving boys between 16 and 21 who have already been convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment without the option of a fine, and have such criminal tendencies that they need detention, accompanied with suitable training and education. A Borstal Institution resembles a prison, in so far as its inmates are detained in a place which has all the appearance of a prison, and are there subject to a system of discipline which covers every hour of the day, and compelled to do such work as is assigned to them. It differs from a prison in so far as the inmates live together, working, playing and feeding in suitable units, are encouraged to associate one with another for all manner of purposes, and are set to work, which is carefully selected to suit their various capacities and circumstances. The system may be considered to have passed the experimental stage since the committee

definitely finds that it has proved a success and recommend that it should be further developed. Borstal Institutions are essentially official, and in their actual management leave no room for voluntary assistance. On the other hand, their work would, as the committee point out, fail, were it not for the existence of the Borstal Association, which provides care and supervision for boys leaving the institutions, and the Borstal Association is purely voluntary. All persons with any knowledge of the remarkable work of this association hope that the present state of things may continue.

The criticism that arises on this part of the report is that, as the committee point out, cases must occur where a youth who is liable to the dangers that an ordinary prison gives rise to, nevertheless requires some such punishment as prison affords. To pass a sentence involving the possibility of three years' detention in all such cases seems inappropriate, however much such detention may be likely to be shortened by licensing. A separate prison for boys sentenced to not more than six months' imprisonment seems to be the appropriate remedy, but this remedy is rejected by the committee on what seem insufficient grounds. Readers of the report will, however, no doubt, fully agree that many of the two thousand young persons sent to prison could certainly be better dealt with by probation or by Borstal Institutions; and especially by the latter, because of their better and closer organization. The process must, however, be a slow one, particularly in the case of probation, the success of which depends on building up and carrying on an elaborate organization for very difficult work in places where it has probably hardly been heard of.

So far, the case of young women and girls has not been considered. In Industrial Schools there is no reason for treating girls differently from boys. The difficulty arises in dealing with Probation, Reformatories and Borstal Institutions, and is due to the fact that whereas it is theft in one form or another that leads most boys into trouble, the corresponding temptation to girls is generally connected with prostitution. In itself, prostitution is not a legal offence, and cannot be made one, if for no other reason, because it cannot be defined. And yet a girl tempted by prostitution is in far greater peril than a boy tempted by theft. The question is one of the greatest possible difficulty. The general answer seems to be that the few girls who have at present to be considered are best dealt with by some form of personal super

vision either in or out of institutions, but that, as the personal question is everything, definite recommendations cannot at present be made. The conclusion is a lame one; but it is at present impossible to see how to improve it.

Among the proposals made by the Committee is a suggestion that "three Observation Centres or Central Remand Homes" should be provided by the State in convenient places in suitable parts of England. To these would be sent the majority of children and young persons on remand who cannot be released on bail, and apparently all convicted offenders between seventeen and twenty-one years of age, that they may be observed "with all the resources of approved medical science in relation to the functions of the mind." How many inmates there would be in each Home defies calculation; they would probably exceed thousands. The scheme is avowedly an adaptation of the Belgian Observation Centres at Moll; but it is left in a sadly ragged state, which is not much improved by the suggestion that " experts" should fill in the details after parliament has sanctioned the scheme. Nor is the proposal commended to the taxpayer by the ingenuous explanation that "in order to justify the employment of the best possible staff" the number of persons to be treated must be made as large as possible. What is intended probably is a development of two systems that seem to work satisfactorily in London. One is that about ten per cent. of the children remanded by the Juvenile Courts are examined by the school medical officer or the Council's psychologist, Dr. Burt, either because they are suspected of some mental abnormality for ordinary reasons, or because their conduct has been such as to suggest abnormality. Such examination takes place as a matter of course on the request of the magistrate or for any other sufficient reason. The other is that boys sentenced to detention are sent to Wandsworth Prison, where they are sorted out, the normal ones for Borstal, the mentally weak ones for Feltham and the particularly bad cases for Portland. Both these systems have their merits and with due modifications might be extended to the rest of the country with advantage. But the vague and grandiose scheme put forward by the Committee suggests that medical opinion has so far prevailed over legal opinion as to lead the Committee to yield in this particular to the principle that guilt is a question for a doctor rather than for a magistrate.