REFORMATORY AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS' BILL. (Hansard, 22 May 1856)

§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE
said, he had been in conversation with Mr. Morgan, the Government collector of payments from the parents of the children, and that gentleman, desirous of making his own duties easier in the matter of legal proof, had sent him certain clauses to which he had no objection. He should therefore now beg to move a clause making it imperative on the governor of any gaol, &c., to send the warrant with every child to the reformatory, and that a copy of the warrant should be evidence of the identity of the child. He also wished to move a second clause, making a copy of the certificate evidence of the school being a certified school, and evidence of the identity of the child.

§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE
said, he would now move a third clause, giving the committing magistrate power to summon the parents before him at the time of the committal of the child, and to make an order upon them for the payment of any sum not exceeding 5s. a week for the support of the child.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, a similar provision was introduced into the Act of last year, but in that clause the power was 567 given to two justices of the peace. Yet tills clause did not repeal the old law.

§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE
said, it was a suggestion of Mr. Morgan, and he quite agreed with that gentleman in his view of this particular point. It had occurred, that a parent, if called upon at the time of the committal by the magistrate, would pay willingly, and accept the proposal to deal with the child in the reformatory as a good one; but a little delay often changed that disposition, and great difficulty was afterwards experienced in getting parents to obey the Act.

§ MR. PALK
said, he looked upon this new movement, which was to give the criminal advantages of knowledge over the honest man's son, with great suspicion. He was not opposed to the principle so long as it was confined to voluntary contributions; but he thought that if they were to make the payment compulsory, they would, by impoverishing the parents, increase poverty, and thereby extend the source of crime.

MR. BECKETT DENISON
said, he would suggest that the clause should be remodelled so as to make the parish as well as the parent liable for the support of the child.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, he hoped the Committee would never sanction the principle that parents should be freed from the obligation of supporting their offspring.

§ Mr. BARROW
said, he did not think the clause called for, as the present Act was working well.

§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE
said, he now had to move another clause to the effect, that the parent should pay for the whole term of sentence, unless in case of a regular discharge, or an order of exemption, signed by the Secretary of State.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, the clause evidently was to prevent vicious parents inducing their child to run away from the reformatories that they might escape the charge of maintaining them there.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, he was opposed to the frequent alteration of the law without strong cause being shown for it. The parent was at present made to pay for the support and maintenance of the child. That was the principle on which the charge was made, and he could not see how they could still make the charge after the support and maintenance ceased.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, he must beg to explain that it was meant to apply in the 568 event of the child's being re-apprehended on the same charge and sent to prison.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, that was an alteration in the criminal law of some importance, and required careful consideration.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, that the proposed alteration was made on the suggestion of Mr. Justice Coleridge.

§ MR. BAINES
said, he was totally opposed to the principle that parents should be allowed to derive any premium, pecuniary or otherwise, from the criminality of their children, but he nevertheless thought the proposal was revolting to common sense. Besides, he saw some injustice in the probable working of the clause, for if a boy ran away from the reformatory against the parent's will, he was to be made to pay notwithstanding for his maintenance, on the fictitious supposition that the boy was still in the reformatory.

§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE
The State has the power to remit the payment.

§ LORD R. CECIL
said, that it appeared to him that all danger would be avoided by giving discretionary power to the Secretary of State. He must, however, protest against the course of argument on the opposite side—that it was useless to attempt to remove one blot on the Statute Book until a general measure for removing all blots was introduced.

§ MR. G. BUTT
said, the difficulty and expense which in such a case would be imposed upon the poor man, in order to procure from the Secretary of State a reversal of the order, would be very great. He would recommend the hon. Baronet not to press this clause at the present moment.

§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE
said, he would now beg to propose a clause inflicting a penalty of £5 upon any person who induced the children to abscond from these schools, or who knowingly concealed or harboured them and otherwise prevented their return.

§ MR. BAINES
said, he thought the clause went a good deal further than was necessary. No doubt some kind of punishment ought to be inflicted on those who enticed boys from the reformatories; but if a poor widow gave a bed to her son upon his absconding, she, according to this clause, would be liable to fine or imprisonment. He would, therefore, suggest the omission of the words "who shall knowingly conceal or harbour."
569 The words objected to were struck out, and the clause was added to the Bill.

§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE
then proposed a clause providing for the publication in the Gazette of a list of all certified reformatory or industrial schools, after which magistrates might commit young persons to these schools.

§ MR. GORDON
said, he would now beg to move the insertion of a clause to repeal so much of the former Act as provided that a youthful offender should not be sent to a reformatory until after the expiration of his sentence of imprisonment, and to enable any magistrate to send an offender direct to the reformatory without passing through a prison. If the clause were agreed to, it would not interfere with the power of the magistrates to inflict any certain period of punishment.

§ MR. J. G. PHILLIMORE
said, he could not agree to adopt the clause. The effect of it would be that a person who committed a crime would be in a much better condition than a person who committed no crime. The fallacy which prevailed in all these propositions was to consider only the child that was to be improved, and not to consider the effect of the law upon other classes of the community. No doubt it was better to send boys to school than to a gaol; but why did you send them to gaol? You did it that it might operate as an example to others. Although the improvement of the criminal was to be kept in view, that was not the paramount object of the law. The paramount object of all punishment was to deter others from crime. The number of committals in France had been far more numerous, in consequence of the law having regard to the moral improvement of the offenders, instead of considering the object of punishment to be that of deterring others from crime.

§ MR. MONCKTON MILNES
said, he regretted that stale fallacies such as those just enunciated by the hon. and learned Gentleman should be reproduced. There was a difference between a child and a hardened offender. And that was what the hon, and learned Gentleman in his argument entirely overlooked. It had been urged that committals in France had increased in consequence of the reformatory system of La Mettray being purely reformatory, and receiving offenders without their suffering previous punishment. But that system was only applied to offences 570 of a class not involving moral or criminal responsibility; such, for instance, as "vagabondage." It was essential that the magistrate should, in all cases, have the power of declaring a child a proper object of reformatory rather than penal treatment. Therefore he was strongly in favour of the clause.

§ MR. ROUNDELL PALMER
said, he thought, as this most important question must be decided sooner or later, it was advisable to do so at the earliest possible time. They must look not only to the interest of the child, but also to that of society, and must endeavour to take that course which should tend most to the repression of crime. But would they be doing so by compelling every poor child who should be admitted to reformatories to pass a prior apprenticeship in gaol? If the prospect of a lengthened maintenance and excellent education offered a temptation to crime, that temptation would not be diminished by a preliminary fourteen days Spent in prison. Such a requirement might have a deterring effect to some extent, but it would also have a demoralising effect. His hon. Friend's clause proposed to give magistrates a discretion, and if they should deem it advisable for the interests of society and of the child that a youthful offender should pass his time in a reformatory then such detention, with its attendant discipline, could only be regarded as a punishment. He hoped the Committee would concur in these views, and adopt the clause proposed by his hon. Friend.

§ MR. LIDDELL
said, that in many gaols at present youthful offenders received very beneficial training from the chaplains and governors.

§ MR. NEWDEGATE
said, that if reformatories were not to be regarded as places of punishment, by adopting the clause they would be abolishing punishment, and placing in the hands of magistrates a dangerous discretion. One of the difficulties at Mettray, in consequence of that not being a place of punishment, was that many children were sent there by those who wished to place them under the guardianship of the State, and now it was proposed to do the same thing here.

§ MR. MONCKTON MILNES
said, that the cases which occurred in France were chiefly those in which the departments sought to relieve themselves of the burden of supporting vagrant children, and imposing it upon the State.

§ MR. J. G. PHILLIMORE
said, that if there was crime, punishment ought to follow, for the guilty child ought not to be placed in a better position than the innocent.

§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTON
said, he thought that the detention in a reformatory, and the strict rules of discipline which would be enforced in those institutions, would, in fact, be regarded as a punishment by those who were sent to them.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, he was of opinion that it would he better to adhere to the previous decision of the House in the existing Act, which provided that there should be a period of strictly penal imprisonment before the offender was sent to the reformatory.

§ MR. BLACK
said, that boys of tender age were frequently sent to prison for offences which, like stealing a few peas or a turnip, implied very little guilt. If children once went into gaol their character was gone. He was quite prepared to vote for the clause.

Mr. BECKETT DENISON
said, that an offender could not be sent to a reformatory without the consent of the owners of that reformatory. Did not that constitute a check?

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, he wished to know whether the Government were prepared to lay it down as a rule, that every juvenile criminal, whatever might have been the nature of his offence, should undergo punishment previously to being drafted into reformatories? Surely there were exculpatory circumstances in many cases. At all events, he thought a discretion should be left in the hands of the magistrates.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, he had not said that every child, however slight his offence, should undergo imprisonment. He had no desire to fetter the discretion of magistrates in cases where they thought that cases were of too trivial a character to be dealt with. What he contended for was, that it would be rash to depart from a rule by which approved offenders were subjected to punishment of a penal character for a limited period.

§ MR. HENLEY
said, a clause had just been passed entitling parents to remove their children from one reformatory to another. Now that, he considered, was a very forward step, and it behoved the Committee to watch the consequences to which it might lead. He did not think 572 any fact had been adduced against the law as it now stood.

MR. MILES
said, he would now beg to move the insertion of the clause of which he had given notice, which was to enable counties to make provision for the erection of reformatory schools. In submitting the clause for consideration, he must express his regret that a question of such magnitude had devolved upon a private Member. However, the demand for accommodation for juvenile offenders was so pressing that he had been forced to take the matter up. The Returns laid before Parliament for the present and the preceding year made it abundantly apparent how ridiculously small was the reformatory accommodation. He found that in the "certified schools" there was only accommodation for 420 children. That Return, however, did not include the school at Red Hill, which happened not to be certified, and where there was accommodation for 230 inmates. Besides that, there were two or three other establishments throughout the country, whose accommodation raised the number of children provided for at all the reformatories of the country to 840. Well, on the other hand, they had it on the testimony of Captain Williams's Returns, that upon an average of five years, the number of children up to seventeen convicted at assizes or summarily disposed of before magistrates, reached to 10,306 males and 1,725 females, altogether 12,031 persons. While taking those under fourteen years of age, he found that the annual number for England and Wales averaged 4,134. It was apparent, therefore, that the efforts of mere private benevolence was not adequate to meet the demands of juvenile reformation. He knew, from the instance of his own county (Somersetshire), that the counties generally did not require to be coerced into promoting the scheme of juvenile reformatories. And in proof of how inadequate the voluntary system was for maintaining the schools, he would mention that he himself had proposed to set on foot a subscription of £500 for three years, for the maintenance of a juvenile reformatory, but his applications met with little success. Indeed, such had been generally the difficulty of getting subscriptions for those reformatories during the last three years, that they were likely to 573 die a natural death for want of assistance. He did not think, either, that his proposal would at all interfere with the efforts of private benevolence; on the contrary, he thought it would rather stimulate them. At any rate, he hoped the Government would consent to try his proposal as an experiment, when it would be open to them next Session, or later, to introduce a comprehensive measure that he hoped would meet with general acquiescence.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, he doubted whether the clause proposed by the hon. Member came within the title or the scope of the Bill. It referred to a subject which required to be dealt with by a Bill, and not by a single clause, which of itself would he inoperative.

MR. MILES
said, he drew up the clause with the intention, if the Committee should adopt it, to follow it by others.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, he would advise the hon. Gentleman to postpone the subject for the present; he could not for himself see any valid objection to granting those powers, but it would be desirable to have more experience upon the subject.

§ MR. HENLEY
said, he rejoiced to hear the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman upon the subject. There was a great and increasing desire in the country to use those institutions. He thought there was no fear of any injury to the voluntary cause accruing from the establishment of reformatories, as there was plenty of room for both.

MR. BECKETT DENISON
said, he was so impressed with the conviction that these reformatory schools would decrease crime, that he intended to have brought in a Bill to enable the county of York to build a school of the kind for that county; but, unfortunately, he was too late, the Bill being considered a private one. The Bill he intended to propose was submitted to eighty-one magistrates, seventy-nine of whom were in favour of its provisions. The inhabitants of the two ridings consented that a rate should be levied on them for the maintenance of the establishment. Those reformatories could not be carried on successfully by private benevolence, and he hoped before long the Government would take the matter into their hands. He would, however, suggest the withdrawal of the clause.

§ MR. STUART WORTLEY
said, he was glad to hear that Government intended to take the question into consideration with a view to the establishment of such 574 schools. The Committee would, no doubt, be surprised to hear that till within the last few weeks there had not been an institution of the kind within the metropolitan districts. A private Bill had to be obtained for that purpose.

§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTON
said, he was glad his hon. Friend the Member for East Somersetshire had raised the question by proposing the clause he had moved. He was convinced that it was impossible, by the system upon which they were now acting, to maintain those institutions to the extent which the requirements of the public rendered necessary. He trusted the several Bills on this subject would be consolidated. He would ask the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary whether the requirements of the deputation which had waited upon him, asking for the Government allowance to be increased from 5s. per head to 7s. per head, would be complied with?

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, he would make inquiries upon the cost per head, and intended to ask the deputation again to wait upon him.

§ MR. LIDDELL
said, he wished to recal the attention of the Committee to the clause under consideration, and to point out that it was simply permissive in its nature.

§ MR. DUNLOP
said, he thought that the entire efficacy of reformatory schools rested upon their being supported by voluntary subscriptions.