The Criminal & the Community

by James Devon

The great majority of those who enter prison for the first time are young persons, and in many cases they do not show any great degree of moral turpitude. “As the twig is bent the tree is inclined,” and what might have been merely a phase of recklessness or a passing mood of lawlessness is sometimes made a fixed habit as a result of the way it has been treated. The younger the person the narrower is his experience, other things being equal. In making the experiments which give experience we may hurt ourselves and others.

There are some who are content to accept the statements of others and to yield an easy obedience to those over them, but in early life the number is not great; and where the elders are too busy to pay much attention to the young there is a greater need for the boy to find out things for himself. Rules of life as they are presented to many boys consist of a series of prohibitions, and it is not always the worst boys who kick against them. Wild and intractable boys do not always grow up into bad citizens; but if they are taken in hand by the penal machinery of the State there is not much chance for them. They may imitate the showy vices of their elders not because they are vices, but because they are showy. They do not admire the wrong things more frequently than grown-up people, but they show their admiration in a way that is sometimes awkward both for them and for us. They are misunderstood and condemned when they persist in going their own way, although the cause of their vagaries may be simple enough if an attempt were made to find it. X 20 was a boy of ten, the son of a man in a comfortable position who had lost all control over him. The boy had run away from school, and had left his home more than once and gone wandering in the country. His father had coaxed and beaten him alternately without any beneficial result. His schoolmaster informed me that the boy was usually quiet and tractable, but did not take much interest in most of his work. He was not of defective intellect and he would not apply himself to some parts of the school course. He was fond of animals. I found him suspicious and reserved; but as he had been told that he was to be seen by the prison doctor, and as he evidently had expected to be confronted with an animated bogey-man, there was nothing surprising in that. He answered questions in monosyllables or not at all, but he promised that he would come himself to my house and see some things which I thought might interest him. I would not allow him to be brought to me, though he lived some three miles off, and he kept his promise and came. With the aid of some other juveniles he was made to feel at ease, and I found he could tell a good deal about animals, such as tadpoles and frogs, and that he had a real interest in such things. He came back several times, and in an indirect way he was advised of the danger of doing what his father had objected to; but it was perfectly evident that his conduct had been the result of the way in which he had been treated, and fear had caused him to commit at least some of the actions that had given cause for complaint. Those who had charge of him were more in need of direction than he was; for they had acted on the assumption that they understood what was best for him, whereas the fact was that they had not the faintest idea of the disposition of the boy, and were simply driving him to extremities in their efforts to keep him right. They were repressing instead of directing his tendencies, with disastrous consequences. His schoolmaster understood; and he was permitted to act on his knowledge with satisfactory results, the parents never having thought that he was as likely to be able to instruct them as to teach their boy. In this case the boy was fortunate beyond many others in respect that his parents were able to seek and obtain advice when they became alarmed because of his behaviour. They were in a position which enabled them to give him the necessary attention when they learned what was required.

X 21 was a boy who had developed the habit of playing truant from school and had come under the observation of the attendance officer. He was in danger of becoming an associate of city undesirables. His mother was a decent widow who had to support him and herself by casual labour. She was obliged to go out in the mornings to clean offices and he was left to himself. She was loth to have him sent to an Industrial School, but she preferred that that should be done to running the risk of having him get into the hands of vicious persons. There was no question as to her rectitude, and as little of her ability to look after him when she had the power; but she could not be out working and at the same time be discharging her maternal duties in guiding him. So he had to be sent to the institution. In a case like this—and they are not uncommon—it would be far better to free the woman from the need of leaving her child and see that she looked after him. She has a greater personal interest in him than any official person can have and it need cost no more; while the gain in character cannot be measured in terms of cash. The mother’s burden is greater than she can bear, and that is a reason for relieving it; but it is no reason for breaking up the family and loosening the tie between parent and child, and the practice cannot even be justified on the score of expense.

Boys get the name of being bad when they are intractable, but bad boys are fewer than bad men. There are too many people who are driven to assume that they know what is best for the boy—or the man—and that without making any attempt to understand those for whom they prescribe. When a boy rebels against the line of action laid down for him it is taken as evidence of his wickedness, though it may only show his good sense. He may be doing the wrong thing with a purpose more reasonable than that of his mentor, but he is likely to find that his intention will meet with no sympathetic consideration even if he reveals it, and his action will meet with punishment if he owns it. He is encouraged to lie in the hope of pleasing his master, and when he is found out his iniquity is magnified.

Boys are far more given to the attempt to find the point of view of those who are in authority over them than grown-up people are to find the standpoint of the boy; and children will often show a deeper knowledge of their parents than the parents have of them. If instead of assuming knowledge and showing ignorance parents would try to understand, there would be less disposition to rule the young by general prohibitions and a freer hand given to them in the choice of their pursuits. Left alone, the child will show its bent; it is not for the parent to thwart its aptitudes, but to direct them into useful channels. Many are made miserable by being set to books, and others are made equally wretched by physical drill. Every year brings forth its own fad. The adult may keep free from its tyranny to some extent, but let it find a place in some code or other and every juvenile runs a grave risk of being subjected to it, because someone in authority who knows nothing about him or his needs has so ordered it.

The boy is kept at school for nearly as many hours in the week as many men work, and when he is set free from its restraint he runs wild—if he is not too tired, or if he has not been set tasks which cause him to work overtime at home. He gets into mischief, and is denounced for his misdeeds and the trouble and annoyance he causes; but boys are not more mischievous than they were. There are few adults who have not been a great nuisance to others in their own early days, but too many of them seem to have forgotten all about that. By all means let the boy who has played some mischievous prank be restrained and corrected, but in choosing the method it might not be a bad plan to remember the exploits of a boy who was no better in his day than the culprit is, if no worse. When we show that we recognise a clear distinction between cramming juveniles with knowledge and educating them, they will learn at the school how to amuse themselves without annoying others. At present they are in this respect left mainly to their own devices, and in very few cases is there any serious ground of complaint against them. Considering their imitative tendencies and the incitements many of them have towards wrongdoing, it is wonderful how few go far astray.

When a boy is sent to a reformatory he has opportunities given him for play, and the importance of providing different forms of recreation for him is not ignored. This is by some called “putting a premium on wrongdoing,” and yet in spite of the reward there are few boys who deliberately adopt a course of law-breaking in order to have the advantages of life in that institution. Either they are too stupid or there is not such a bias on their part towards evil as some would have us suppose. The recreation which forms part of the means adopted to reform the boy who has transgressed might conceivably prevent transgressions if it were placed within the reach of others, especially as the association of boys whose common interest is that they have all been before the courts is not likely to make for their improvement.

Whatever its defects as an educational institution, the school has this to its credit, that a better standard of conduct is maintained than could be acquired by many of the scholars if they were left to grow up under the conditions that obtain in their homes. Now and then someone does a particularly shocking thing, and until quite lately when this occurred the offender was liable to be brought to the police court. Now there is a special court for dealing with children, but as there is no change in the judge or in the officials before whom the child appears, all that has been gained is his separation from older offenders. This is something to be thankful for, but it is a minor mercy compared with what ought to be done. He is more a subject for treatment by those whose experience enables them to understand children than a “case” to be tried by a magistrate whose traditions are those of the criminal courts.

Most of the charges are acts of malicious mischief or petty thefts. The offenders have got out of parental control or have eluded the supervision of their parents. In some cases the parents are culpably careless or negligent, taking little interest in their children and making their home worse than it need be. They spoil the child without sparing the rod, for the boy is often hammered without mercy when he annoys them. He keeps out of their way and may fall into bad company and bad habits. Most of these boys show evidences of neglect in their appearance; but they are not, though they may become, desperadoes. Others go astray not so much from the culpable neglect of their parents as because, with the best will in the world to guide the boy, the parent is either incompetent to do so from sheer stupidity, or, more frequently, from being too busily engaged in trying to make a livelihood to have the necessary time to give to his care. A smaller number are the children of parents who are quite competent to look after them, but who have failed to keep themselves in sufficiently close touch with them—which is a more difficult thing to do than it seems.

At school the boy may be under good guardianship, but he is away from his mother during the greater part of the day, and he may pick up companions who will not exercise the most favourable effect on him. They need not be bad, but they may be bad for him. Out of school hours he seeks for recreation, and in the effort to obtain amusement of a special kind he may take what does not belong to him, and be found out and complained of; or not be found out and continue the practice. It is all very simple and not at all uncommon—except in the result. Honesty has to be learned, and some people never learn it; though they never commit crimes. There is a difference between being honest and being dishonest within the law. There are few women or men who have not at some time or other “dishonestly appropriated property,” though they did not express it that way when they abstracted sweets well knowing the penalty if caught. Some boys do not steal sweets, but they steal money to buy sweets; and in the same way others steal money to pay the price of admission to a place of entertainment. Sometimes they break into shops to steal, and they are then young criminals; but this rarely happens when the necessary money can be picked up at home.