Arthur Griffiths and Thomas A. Ingram

“ The system is very elastic, realizing the infinite variety of childish natures. The purely paternal régime would be wasted upon the really vicious; a severe discipline would press too heavily on the well-disposed. Accordingly, all juveniles, male and female, are divided into six principal classes with a corresponding treatment, it being strictly ruled that there is no intermingling of the classes; the very youngest, rescued early, are never to be associated with the older, who may be already vicious and degraded and who could not fail to exercise a pernicious influence. ”

“ The power of detention applies also to reformatory school offences, while such persons as are already undergoing penal servitude or imprisonment may be transferred to a Borstal institution if detention would conduce to their advantage. The establishment of other Borstal institutions is authorized by the act, while a very useful provision is the power to release on licence if there is a reasonable probability that the offender will abstain from crime and lead a useful and industrious life. ”

“ This is the plausible explanation given for the state reformatory movement, which led to the creation on such costly and extensive lines of Elmira, and of Concord in Massachusetts, a cognate establishment. There is very little penal about the treatment, which is that of a boarding school; the education, thorough and carried far, includes languages, music, science and industrial art; diet is plentiful, even luxurious; amusements and varied recreation are permitted; well stocked libraries are provided with entertaining books; a prison newspaper is issued (edited by an inmate) . ”

“ In spite of the general adoption of the Borstal system, there was a large class of young criminals who were outside its effects, those who were sentenced to terms of ten days and under for trifling offences. These juvenile adults, once having had the fear of prison taken away by actual experience, were found to come back again and again. To remedy this state of affairs, a bill was introduced in 1907 to give effect to the principle of a long period of detention for all those showing a tendency to embark on a criminal career. ”

“ The very young, those of twelve years of age and under, are placed out in the country with families, unless they can be again entrusted to their parents or committed to maisons paternels, containing very limited numbers, twenty or thirty, in charge of a large staff. After twelve, and from that age to fourteen or fifteen, the “ungrateful age” as the French call it, boys are sent to a reformatory or “preservative school,” where they will be under stronger discipline. ”

“ The hope of permanent amendment is further sought by the fact that a situation, generally with good wages and congenial work, provided by the authorities, awaits every inmate at the time of his discharge. The inmates, selected from a very large class, are first offenders, but guilty generally of criminal offences, which include manslaughter, burglary, forgery, fraud, robbery and receiving. The exact measure of reformation achieved can never be exactly known, from the absence of authentic statistics and the difficulty of following up the surveillance of individuals when released on parole. ”

“ Moreover these adolescents escaped special reformatory treatment, for sixteen is in Great Britain the age of criminal majority, after which no youthful offenders can be committed to the state reformatory schools. But there was always a formidable contingent of juvenile adults between sixteen and twenty-one, sent to penal servitude, and their numbers although diminishing rose to an average total of 15,000. It was accordingly decided to create a penal establishment under state control, which should be a half-way house between the prison and the reformatory school. ”

“ The original features of the institution are that the motto “Nothing without labour” is rigidly enforced, and that self-government is carried to a point that, with mere children, would appear whimsical were it not a proved success. ”

“ A remarkable and unique institution is the state reformatory for women at Sherborn, Massachusetts, for women with sentences of more than a year, who in the opinion of the court are fit subjects for reformatory treatment. The majority of the inmates were convicted of drunkenness, an offence which the law of Massachusetts visits with severity—a sentence of two years being very common. ”

“ Other schools must be classed with the reformatory, although they have no connexion with prisons and deal with youths who are only potential criminals. The first in importance are the industrial schools. When the newly devised reformatories were doing excellent service it was realized that many of the rising generation might some day lapse into evil ways but were still on the right side and might with proper precautions be kept there. They wanted preventive, not punitive treatment, and for them industrial schools were instituted. ”

“ Education must be less systematic in the private home, industrial training is less easily carried out, and there can be none of that esprit de corps that stimulates effort in physical training as applied to athletics and the playing of games. ”

“ In the 17th century people came from all parts of Europe to learn from the Dutch how orphans and unfortunate children could best be cared for. The Godshuis of Amsterdam was a vast establishment, into which as many as 4000 juveniles were sometimes crowded, with such disastrous effects that its name was changed to that of “pesthuis,” and the government in the beginning of the present century ordered it to be emptied and closed. Other reformatory institutions in Holland are the Netherlands Mettray, the reform school of Zetten, near the Arnheim railway station, for Protestant girls ”

“ In Hungary the penal code prescribes that children of less than twelve cannot be charged with offences; those between twelve and sixteen may be deemed to have acted without discretion, and thus escape sentence, but are sent to a correctional school where they may be detained till they are twenty years of age. ”

“ Too much praise cannot be accorded to the agencies and associations which labour strenuously and unceasingly to this excellent end. Especial good work has been done by the Borstal association, founded under the patronage of the best known and most distinguished persons in English public life—archbishops, judges, cabinet ministers and privy councillors—which receives the juvenile adults on their release and helps them to employment. ”

“ There is plenty of hard work, mental and physical, and the “inmates” rather envy their fellows in state prisons. A point to which great attention is paid is that physical degeneracy lies at the bottom of the criminal character, and great attention is paid to the development of nervous energy and strengthening by every means the normal and healthful functions of the body. A leading feature in the treatment is the frequency and perfection with which bathing is carried out. ”

“ 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 institution. Parkhurst was technically a prison, and the system combined industrial training with religious and educational instruction. ”

“ Employment in Danish schools is mainly agricultural, field labour and gardening, with a certain amount of industrial training; and on discharge the inmates go to farms or to apprenticeship, while a few emigrate. ”

“ In Italy the age of responsibility is nine, below which no child can be charged with an offence. The Italian schools are mostly planned on a large scale. That of Marchiondi Spagliardi accommodates 550, divided among three houses under one supreme head. The Turazza institution at Treviso holds 380, and there are eight others with from 200 to 300 inmates. The régime is very various; the larger number of schools are on the congregate system, with daily labour in association and isolation by night. ”

“ Instruction, both manual and educational, was well suited to the recipients; the first embraced field work, market gardening, and a knowledge of useful handicrafts; the second was elementary but sound, aided by well-chosen libraries and brightened by the privilege of evening association to play harmless but interesting games. Physical development was also guaranteed by gymnastics and regular exercises. ”

“ One of the great merits of the Belgian system is that the regulations may be relaxed, and children of whose amendment good hopes are entertained may be released provisionally, either to the care of parents and guardians or to employers, artisans or agriculturists who will teach them a trade. ”

“ The ragged school movement found powerful support in active philanthropists when public attention was aroused to the prevalence of juvenile delinquency. The first Industrial School Act was passed in 1856 and applied only to Scotland. ”

“ The difference in grades is denoted by small and scarcely perceptible variations of the little details of everyday life, such as are supposed in a peculiar degree to affect the appreciation of women, e.g. in the lowest division the women have their meals off old and chipped china ”

“ Under this law the state is also to provide special schools to take all above ten who have shown peculiar depravity; all who have reached eighteen and who are not yet thought fit for freedom; all who have relapsed after provisional release. Sweden is rich in institutions devoted to the care of destitute and deserted children, all due to the efforts of the charitable. ”

“ At that time the French law, while it acquitted minors shown to have acted without discretion, still consigned them for safe keeping and inevitable contamination to the common gaols. M. Demetz conceived the idea of an agricultural colony, and in 1840 organized a small “société paternelle,” as it was called, of which he became vice-president. Another philanthropist, the Vicomte de Bretignières de Courteilles, a landed proprietor in Touraine, associated himself in the enterprise and endowed the institution with land at Mettray near Tours. ”

“ This began with a single cottage but had grown in twenty years to a hamlet of twenty houses, with from twelve to sixteen inmates in each. The establishment is a Lutheran one; both boys and girls are admitted, in separate houses, and a marked feature of the place is the number of “brothers,” young men of good character qualifying for rescue work as superintendents of homes, prison officers and schoolmasters. ”

“ They receive all juvenile offenders, up to the age of sixteen, who have been convicted of an offence punishable with penal servitude or imprisonment. The number of these during the years between 1894 and 1906 constantly varied, but the figure of the earliest date, 6604, was never exceeded, and in some years it was considerably less, while in 1906 it was no more than 5586, though the general population had increased by several millions in the period. ”

“ It was found that some special treatment was required for large masses of youths in large cities, who were in such a neglected or degraded condition that there was little hope of their growing into healthy men and women or becoming good citizens. ”

“ Local Borstal committees were established at all prisons, and it was arranged that those members of the local committees should become ex officio honorary members of the Central Borstal Association, which it was intended should become, what it now is, the parent society directing the general aid on discharge of this category of young prisoners. ”