The Children Bill .
The Children and Young Persons Bill was read a second time last week with the approval of all parties, after a debate which showed the House at its best. On the whole, we must be grateful for this substantial instalment of reform. The Juvenile. Courts will be strengthened, for they are to be still more definitely separated from the ordinary sessions by having special panels of magistrates, they will deal with offenders up to the age of seventeen, and they will cease to have the power to order a whipping. Flogging by the headmaster in a public school, as Mr. Stanley said, is in a very different category front a penal whipping by a policeman. Again, the reformatory and industrial schools, hence- forth to be known as " approved schools," arc to be reorganized. The normal period of detention will be three years in all cases—or until the offender has attained the age of nineteen—but the Home Secretary will have power to release children or young people after six months if they appear to have learned their lesson. Happily the numbers of juvenile offenders arc declining, and with greater elasticity in the treatment of individual cases it should be possible to reclaim many of them.
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