YOUNG OFFENDERS "
Sno,—Many of your readers must, if they did not already know the fact, have been startled and horrified to learn that one in eighty of the children between ten and fourteen throughout the country is a convicted thief. As roughly five-sixths of these criminals are boys, this means that one boy in every forty-eight comes into this category.
The following considerations must also be borne in mind: (r) The upper and middle classes as well as the beet type of
artisan families very rarely have any of their children charged with a theft, or, as is usually the case, with several thefts which are asked to be taken into consideration.
(2) The same thing might be said of many rural parishes where juvenile crime is practically non-existent because the people make their homes and the bringing up of their children . their chief preoccupation in life. Moreover, they still like to have them educated under the influence of religion.
(3) A considerable number of juvenile delinquents have not been detected and convicted.
Taking all this into account, it would be interesting to know what the percentage of boy-thieves would be in, say, forty of our largest towns. I will not enlarge on the significance of all this, except perhaps to wonder what the brave new world will be like whose future citizens are so many of them already thieves and house. breakers. Nor will I animadvert on the meagre results of all that has been expended in money, time and service on primary education and child-welfare. But I do think that some member of the House of Commons might well ask the Minister for Education what he has to say on. the subject.—Yours faithfully,
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