JUVENILE CRIME
SIR,—The prevalence of crime amongst youngsters shows the failure of `social science' policies in edu- cation quite as much as of existing methods of punishment. It is apparently still possible to build palaces for schools and yet to produce semi-literate thugs.
No one can `abolish' the criminal instinct; nor are 'severe' methods of punishment held to be highly edifying or moral things in themselves. Clearly the primary task is to minimise the causes of crime by maintaining improved social conditions in and outside the family.
Until this is finally achieved, the plain fact is that the birch-rod is most effective in persuading young offenders 'not to come back for more.' To this extent we are not perpetrating barbarism, but pro- tecting society from it.
Your resurrection of the time-worn cliché about 'the social disorders' of the war to make excuses for sadistic acts of violence practised on `black' and 'white' alike is nothing less than an exploded heresay. —Yours faithfully, E. P. HIBBERT Magdalene College, Cambridge
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