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2 Prob. 1 (1935-1938)

handle is hein.journals/probj2 and id is 1 raw text is: Probation The Journal of the National Association of Probation Officers VOL. 2, NUMBER 1. SECOND JULY, 1935. CLARKE HALL LECTURE TREATMENT OF THE YOUNG OFFENDER BY THE LOIRD L ORD HEWART OF BURY, Lord Chief Justice of England, delivered the Second Clarke Hall Lecture in the Hall of Gray's Inn on 24th May. Miss Elizabeth Haldane pre- sided and Lord Merrivale and the Earl of Feversham proposed votes of thanks to the Lecturer and to the Benchers of Gray's Inn. Taking as his subject The Treatment of the Young Offender, Lord Hewart said, It is clear that the younger an offender is, the more hope there may reasonably be for his re- formation. More than that; it may perhaps be agreed that young offenders tend to suffer from far greater confusion of motive for their acts than is to be found in their elders. It is sometimes said that, while it is often difficult to decide between what is expedient and what is inexpedient, it is seldom difficult to distinguish between right and wrong. To the young man or boy this distinction may not always be so simple : where does mischief merge into something worse? To look at the matter from a different angle the boy or girl below the age of 21 is in English law a minor, and a minor has no rights that can be pleaded in any Court against another citizen. Is it not, therefore, a matter of ' noblesse oblige,' that as the State disregards him as a suitor, the State should exercise a special care over his interests when he is the object of a criminal charge? Especially, CHIEF JUSTICE perhaps, must this be so in a country in which fair play is a criterion of justice, in cases where the young offender has been denied or bereft of the ordinary influence of a good home. If he stands at the bar homeless and untutored, ill-nourished and ill-taught, an English lad with a heritage of poverty and neglect, the State must needs assume an attitude that is not grandmotherly, but at least paternal. We owe some- thing to all minors; we owe a great deal to the children without a chance. And it is probable that nearly every offender, how- ever old and hard, having been once a child, was once a defen- dant in a Juvenile Court. It is said by those who are conversant with these matters that, when last an enquiry was undertaken into the earliest antecedents of some thousands of practised offenders, it was ascertained that 60 per cent. of them had been arraigned for their first offence before they reached the age of sixteen. A figure like that throws Photo-Elliott and Fry. into sharp relief the critical im- portance of the present problem. If the young offender is rightly understood and wisely handled when he is but a novice in crime, still immature and unpractised, how many human lives may be reclaimed from waste, how many crimes of an idle manhood may be averted? But of course it is necessary to beware of mis- placed leniency in the treatment of the young offender merely because he is young. Neither in pity nor in Digitized from Best Copy Available

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