Juvenile Offenders Great advances have been made in recent years
in the treatment of juvenile offenders, but we have a long way to go, as Lord Hewart showed in his Clarke Hall lecture last Friday, before we shall have found the ideal solution. He pointed out that a large proportion of the magistrates sitting in Juvenile Courts are too old ; and he suggested that they should generally be of parental 'age, from forty to sixty. So far as punishment is concerned, he doubted whether anyone under twenty-one years of age should ever be sent to prison and so familiarized with prison life. That may be going too far. There are bad cases for which no other treatment offers itself. No hard-and- fast rules can be laid down as to the most suitable treatment of young offenders. It is the whole intention of the Juvenile Courts that the procedure should be as elastic as possible, taking into full account the human circumstances of each case. It is for that reason that the qualifications of the magistrates are of so much importance.
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