§ MR. CROOKS (Woolwich)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will cause instructions to be issued to the Metropolitan Police within the county of London that all children arrested on Saturdays and holidays, or at such tune that they cannot at once be brought before the magistrate, shall be taken to one of the remand homes provided by the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and thus save the children from being detained in the police cells for any time.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) As I stated in my Answer to a Question asked by my right hon. friend the Member for Oxford University, on July 18th†, 1904, I cannot, under the fisting law, give the instruction which the hon. Member suggests. The police have no power to take children to a remand home until they have been brought before a magistrate and remanded. I may say, however, that when children are arrested too late to be brought before a magistrate, or on a day when the Courts are not sitting, they are invariably released on bail, if that course is possible; and that if their detention in the police cells is unavoidable, care is taken to prevent their coming in any way into contact with adult criminals.