LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
tCorrespondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed letters arc given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR.]
SENTIMENTAL JUSTICE
[7'o the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—The wise and impressive article on this subject which appears in your issue of September 27th will, I hope, cause many people to think. I had six years' experience in one of my parishes of work in a Reformatory, which I visited for a long afternoon every week, and wherein I privately interviewed every boy, sometimes often. The conclusions to which I came are these.
A large number of these boys would never have reached . the stage of being sent to a Reformatory had they been birdied for the first offence, and, more important still, made to pay back, wherever possible, the amount they had stolen --for most of the crimes were theft. I know that this is not always possible, a boy cannot refund £200 worth of damage done to machinery, as was one case. But in very many cases the boy could be made to repay. At first, usually, the thefts are of small amount, it is only when the boy realises that nothing much happens that he goes on to bigger ad- ventures.
I suggest that the police or the probation officer should try to enlist the co-operation of the parents (always very difficult) and that when the boy reports to the probation officer, or that official goes to sec the boy, the repayment in instalments of the debt due should be very much in the foreground. It is useless to deprive the boy of all his " spending money," but he could pay half of it each week or month. I have done this in case after case of petty theft in ordinary parochial life, it requires patience with the parents chiefly (the boys usually see the justice of it), but it rarely fails. It took one lad liMe months to repay 5s.
but he never thieved again.
That the present situation is rapidly growing intolerable is clear. The first point to remember is, usually, the smallness of the first theft. That action, and how it is dealt with, is the key to the situation. If the boy finds, to his surprise, that he can " get away with it," he will go on getting away with it until he is made a persistent thief. His whole moral standards, small as they are, are lowered. Recently a small boy was met by his mother outside the Children's Court where he had made his first appearance, and in reply to her anxious enquiry, " Were you frightened " replied " What of ? " Had that boy, as " A Barrister Magistrate " suggests, been faced with the formality of a proper Police Court, with its dignity and sense of awe, it is most unlikely that he would so have replied. There is far less awesomeness in the Children's Courts than in going up to the headmaster's desk for punishment in an elementary school.
In the Reformatory of which I had experience, there were boys of 14 who had been " had up " as many as a dozen times—warned and warned and warned. Every time they had got away with cigarettes or sweets to their hearts' content, repaying nothing and never having had it even suggested to them that they should repay. If half the trouble taken to shut the stable door after the colt had bolted were taken to make the first offence appear serious (as it is) to the boy, many a criminal career would be nipped in the bud. I do not suggest that the boy should be placed in the dock—at least not until he reappeared in Court, but I do suggest that he should be brought into the ordinary. Police Court, at a . time well apart from adult cases, faced with uniformed police, a magistrate on the Bench, the Clerk and all the legitimate dignity usually in a Court. We do not hesitate to bring ordinary civil offenders into Court, sometimes with tragic results, as in the case of the clergyman who last week fell dead in Court where his wife was to appear for an offence against the motoring regulations. Why this sentimentalism towards youngsters—who need above all things to be im- pressed ? Three lads recently broke into a cinema and a shop, painted the cinema red with some paints that they found, and smothered the shop with the • contents of soda- water bottles and the butter tubs. Penalty—Bound over. Damage done-150. These lads could not repay the £50, but who can say that the birch was not needed ? Some years ago I had a long talk with one of the principal Inspectors of the Home Office on these matters. He listened with pained surprise and resentment.. Birching he considered beneath discussion, the suggestion of repayment horrified. him. He told- me that he was surprised to hear such views from a clergyman, who ought, surely, to believe in " forgive- ness." ? I tried, without the smallest success, to show this gentleman that the Christian doctrine of forgiveness postulated repentance and restitution as far as was within one's power. Repentance cannot be tested as valid without the latter. restitution implements the former. Otherwise the Christian doctrine of forgiveness is, as alleged by our critics, a menace to the whole structure of society. Perhaps I ought not to wonder at the Inspector's attitude as I have found Bishops just as sentimental, with the same disastrous results to morals.
Love without justice, affection in which there is no note of severity, are, as all worthy moral teachers have taught us, the most subtle yet the principal causes of moral shipwreck. Where these obtain, spiritual and -moral bankruptcy results. And this is the stage that we have reached in this matter of juvenile crime. We have deprived Justice of its rightful dignity, and wrong-doing of its rightful consequence. We are reaping the whirlwind.
It is but a very few years ago that a boy in a Reformatory told another 'lad that he intended to run away, and in doing it, to kill the last person that he saw. The other lad joined in. The leader explained to him that they must act within the next two months, before they were sixteen,—for he said, if we are under sixteen " they can't hang us nor even send us to Borstal." The last boy that they saw they beat over the head with an iron bar with such ferocity that he.Iay for days between life and death, and was only saved by his abnormally thick skull. The leader was right—they were not birched, nor imprisoned, nor punished in any way at all—they were merely transferred to two other Homes !—Yours faithfully,
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