YOUNG OFFENDERS
Sur,—It is apparent that your lay correspondents who are contribu- ting to the discussion on " Young Offenders " have not taken the trouble to make even a casual acquaintance with the lengthy penal Statutes, which prescribe the most ferocious punishments for chil- dren and juveniles. For stealing half a crown out of a drawer or a tin of apricots from a larder, children can be immediately removed from the sight and company of their young contemporaries and incarcerated in an approved school for goodness knows how many years. This is not law, or even order, it is cruelty unknown to any European country except England. What should be even more shocking to the conscience is the way in which fathers and mothers, and even grandmothers, go into the witness-box and, without any remorse or shame, tell the court and the nation that their offspring are thieves or are out of control, so that they may get them off their hands and maintained at the taxpayers' expense. Parents of this type are inhuman. If the parents cannot control their own children nobody else can, not even the sternest gaoler in existence. It is the parents who should be punished for the offences of their children, for in law the parents are responsible for their children's actions. We know a good deal about Dartmoor and Brixton and Pentonville, and even about Borstal, but the public know little of these approved schools. What goes on in these schools? Do the children have holidays like they do in other schools ; if so, what is the length of these holidays? If these approved schools are places of refreshment and light, then the " criminal " children who dwell therein are much better off than the non-criminal children who run about in Paradise Walk, which on the face of it is absurd.—Yours faithfully,
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