JUVENILE OFFENDERS. (Hansard, 13 July 1853)

§ MR. ADDERLEY

said, he would now beg to move for leave to introduce a Bill which, though limited in its scope, was destitute neither of interest nor importance. The object of the Bill was the establishment of reformatory schools throughout England and Wales, to which young children detected in the commission of offences and vagrant children might be sent by the magistrate. The measure, in fact, was but the corollary to the Act of the 11 Vict., chap. 82, introduced by the right hon. Baronet near him (Sir J. Pakington who gave magistrates summary jurisdiction over peccant children, and authorised their discharge on security being given for their good behaviour. The present Bill went a step further in the same direction, and would enable magistrates to send juvenile offenders to schools to be successively established in counties and boroughs in which the magistrates might agree to apply to the Secretary for the Home Department for that purpose. He conceived that no apology was necessary on his part for in- 157 troducing this Bill, because there was no measure which the country was so ripe to receive. It might, indeed, be said that the country had anticipated legislation on the subject, for a considerable number of institutions such as those he proposed to establish by law had already been established by private contributions in many parts of Inland. What was still more important was this, that the magistrates and justices had also anticipated legislation, and taken the law into their hands by adopting most of the provisions included in the Bill he was about to introduce. Under these circumstances, it was incumbent on Parliament to deal with the question, although at the same time he feared the Session was too far advanced to allow him to hope that his Bill, however limited its object, could be passed into a law. He could plead this excuse for introducing the Bill at so late a period—that a Committee which, under the able superintendence of the right hon. President of the Poor Law Board, had for two years indefatigably and minutely investigated the subject, bad only just reported some Resolutions to the House. The Bill embodied these Resolutions. He anticipated at least this advantage as likely to result from the introduction of the Bill, and the discussion which he hoped would take place on its second reading, that Ministers would feel the necessity of maturing a measure on the subject during the approaching recess, and introducing it with all the authority of Government in the next Session.