BORSTAL.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sie,—Your article relative to Borstal, based on Mr. Charles McEvoy's contribution to the Press, proves the need for impar- tiality and experience in regard to such institutions, which no one suggests are perfect, but a totally inaccurate picture is painted. Mr. McEvoy and others speaking for juvenile delin- quents are frequently biased, and their opinions carry some- times too much weight, especially when evidence is lacking. Early Victorian ideas are difficult to forget. It is unfortunate that Portland should be thus used for the reception of, not medically defective prisoners, but hardened offenders, but I believe Wakefield Prison is being utilized for candidates to the ministry, so prison walls may not necessarily retain an atmo- sphere unfaiourable for curative treatment. The Borstal Association is fully alive to the importance of the boy criminal, but the weakness in the chain of the delinquent youth is the ignorance and lack of co-operation existing between the magis- trates and the reformatory and industrial schools; also proba- tion workers know little of the splendid work of the Home Office schools and the consequence of lads receiving no proper supervision. The boy who is not deemed bad enough for Borstal curiously is sent to one of the prisons under a so-called modified Borstal treatment. He is segregated from the adult side, but what one ought to have is a visiting committee, not composed wholly of officials or aged men unconversant with youth, who would be able to look after •the welfare of lads after release and during confinement.
We have heard a good deal on probation, but the system does not appear to me to work satisfactorily. Magistrates, unfor- tunately, as one can read in the October issue of the Certified Schools Gazette, are not committing lads to schools even after serious offences. Boys are placed on probation more than once when they ought to be sent for reformative treat- ment. This deficiency leads to increase in juvenile crime, and opens up the bigger question of whether the right men and women are selected to deal with such cases. The writer has visited Borstal, and is connected with an industrial school, as well as having had the opportunity Of seeing boys in local prisons sent for a short period. Criticism and public opinion are safeguards, but let us not be too hasty in our attacks. `I also possess some knowledge of the unhappy youth sentenced to
penal servitude.—I am, Sir, &c., IUSTITIA. [Since our correspondent wrote there has been another attempted suicide, and the Home Secretary has promised an inquiry.—ED. Spectator.]
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