The Criminal & the Community

by James Devon

In a young person the desire for pleasure is naturally too strong to be at first repressed by a sense of the rights of property. He does not need to be taught that sweets please the palate or shows delight the eye; but he requires to learn that in the long run honesty is the best policy. Children are not likely to steal if they can get what they want without stealing, but they may help themselves when they can if they are subjected to unreasonable prohibitions. Even men and women have been driven far out of the right path through attempts to repress their desires for harmless amusement and to make them take life solemnly.

The dishonesty of children arises not so much from a perverted nature as from an inability to appreciate the importance of honesty. It is a phase that passes as their experience of the world grows. They can be trained out of it, but attempts to knock it out of them are as likely to knock it into them.

There ought to be provision made whereby parents could be advised, admonished, and assisted in dealing with children whom they have been unable to control. Our Children Courts are not designed with this end in view, and I doubt whether it makes much difference to the child who is sent to one of our institutions that he was sent from one room in the courthouse rather than from another. Our money would be better spent in assisting parents who have the will to do well by their children, but who have not the power, than in taking the children away from them. As for those who are careless of their children, they should be dealt with for their carelessness. In many cases the apathy they show is a consequence of our methods. If, instead of taking the children away from those who neglect them, we trained and assisted them, we should have better parents and better children. If carelessness and callousness were then shown by the parents we could proceed with justice to deal with them for culpable misconduct. At present we are not in a position to do so, since we are not prepared to help them to discharge their responsibilities. We make it easier for them to neglect than to care for their offspring, and if they lose control of them to a sufficient extent we free them from the burden altogether.

The spirit of enquiry and experiment leads many boys into mischief, and some of their malicious acts are the result of it. Men too readily forget that the boy sees things in a quite different light and relationship from them. Some of the housebreaking adventures that look so bad on a charge-sheet appear quite different when the story is told from the boy’s standpoint, and they do not always show such depravity as one would expect. Some boys are always seeking adventures and becoming absorbed in them; others are content to read about deeds of daring, and the works they favour are often crude enough. Occasionally one is taken with a mask and pistol in his possession attempting to rob in the highway, and then we have homilies on the evils of pernicious literature of the “Dick Turpin” sort, which might be more convincing if the homilists were themselves free from connection with stuff that is worse.

The adventurous boys are not those who read much of any kind of book; they are too busy living. The “Blood” is devoured more by the boy who dreams rather than acts; but of the thousands of men who as boys read prohibited books and enjoyed them, few are likely to spend much time on the equally sensational publications that circulate in millions among adults. On the whole, the boy will not get a more distorted view of life from the highly coloured papers he reads than he would obtain from some of the newspapers; and when he is being condemned for his preference for “Bloods,” it would not be amiss to remember that these productions have never set themselves to foment in his mind feelings of ill-will against people of other lands. It is not the boys but the adults who are raised by the papers they read into hysterical outbursts of senseless rage or equally senseless fear now of one and now of another continental power; and if “literature” is to be judged by its apparent effect, then these papers are more pernicious than the “Bloods,” which the boy prefers to the books which are designed for his moral instruction. There is no comparison between his highwayman—a boy’s highwayman who robbed the rich and gave to the poor, to the inversion of all social order—and the industrious apprentice who married his master’s daughter, poor girl. The hero is a hero to him because he dares all risks, is true to his friend, is gallant and generous, and faces death with a brave heart. If he does the wrong thing he does it in the right way, and it is not the thief but the man who gains the boy’s admiration. As for the industrious one, even a boy knows that there are not enough masters’ daughters to go round; and if he revolts at the selfishness of the gospel of getting on, he is right in rejecting such a false basis of morals. We know that the boy’s Robin Hood or Dick Turpin never existed in fact; but if they exist in his fancy?

To those who denounce them these papers are only a glorification of theft of a particular kind, but there is no likelihood of its ever coming into vogue again. Dick Turpin is now a company-promoter and his cheques are in demand by Churches and political parties. He does not risk his life now, and we are very glad to be taken into his confidence; but the boy has not found that out yet. His books may be ill-chosen, but wholesale condemnation will not mend the matter; and in books, as in other things, it is impossible to tell what is good for the boy till something more is known about him than that he is a boy. When he reads it is safe to assume that he does so because he feels some need is supplied thereby. When its nature is discovered a step will be made towards its better supply, but not before. To take the boy away from the book he likes to a standard author on the ground that it is better for him, is to run the risk of creating in him a permanent dislike for the books chosen.

In the city most of the boys leave school when they are fourteen years of age, and entering on new pursuits are subject to fresh temptations. The employment they obtain is largely a matter of chance, but whatever it may be, they are less likely to go wrong when engaged at it than when free from it. Their playground is the street, and there is no adequate provision made for their recreation. On payment of a small sum they may obtain admission to the music-halls or the picture-shows, and these latter are largely patronised by boys. That they serve a useful purpose is undeniable, and if the entertainment they offer may not be all that is desirable, it is practically all that is to be had by many. Since it cannot be had freely there are temptations to find the means, and the boy amongst his neighbours who is worst off in respect of money is hardest pressed. It is deplorable that some should yield to the temptation to obtain money dishonestly, but it is idle to ignore the condition of things and neglect to provide reasonable opportunities for the recreation which is required after work done. There are private organisations taking the matter in hand, but their appeal, though wide, is, and must be, sectional. Boys’ Brigades in connection with the Churches can only reach a minority of the juvenile population, and the same statement applies to Boy Scouts. There are those who object on principle to both organisations on the ground that they foster the military spirit, but the militarists themselves do not appear to share this view. Boys like to play soldiers, but when they get sense they drop that; and meantime they play, greatly to their advantage. As for the Scouts, they seem to represent an improved edition of “follow my leader,” and their uniform prevents their being interfered with while they play. It does none of them any harm to believe that they are saving their country so long as they are really saving themselves, and no greater number of them develop a taste for a soldier’s career later in life than enlist from among those who have never belonged to one or other of the organisations. It may be that the intention of some of the promoters is to feed the army, but that is to leave out of account the boys themselves and the development of their minds. Whatever the intention, the result is good in so far as the interest of the game keeps the boys in healthy exercise.

The most popular of all the forms of public recreation is the football match. Week after week the grounds are filled by tens of thousands of spectators who find in the game they witness not only amusement for the time, but matter of conversation and interest which outlasts the day. Young and old they are mostly partisans, and though their conduct may leave much to be desired, that should not distract the observer’s attention from the main fact, which is that they are enabled to find a real interest in something which is at least harmless. There are those who lament the fact that the spectators are not players, and who condemn them for being merely vicarious partakers in the game. As a matter of fact, a good many of them have played, and some of them have got into trouble for playing. A very little acquaintance with the facts would make the Jeremiahs aware that there is no public provision made for allowing very many to play; that a great many who enjoy seeing others play have no time when free from labour to practise much themselves, even if a field were near; and that if any large number began to play football in the only spaces open to them—the streets—there would be no room to get about. It is not a bad plan to consider men’s limitations before condemning their pursuits, but it is too little practised.

The football match is a strong counter-attraction to the public-house or the aimless wander through the streets, and the football field would be an admirable playground for many of the young, as they would readily admit; but those who want them to play rather than to look on are never very prominent when an attempt is made to find them the means. Some of them use the public streets for a practice ground, greatly to the annoyance of the passengers and sometimes to their danger. The nuisance has to be stopped and the usual method is adopted; the universal panacea for all evils is applied, and the culprits are taken in charge by the police. A small fine is inflicted, with the alternative of imprisonment if the lads are over sixteen. I have seen a batch of them brought to jail because their fines had not been paid. All that had been done was to ensure that these boys would not play football in the streets for several days; yet the cost of their escort and board during that time, if expended on the hire of ground, would have provided them and others with opportunities of play for six months; and they do not play in the streets for choice—at least it has not been demonstrated that they do.

Alike in work and in play the boy’s pursuits are largely matter of chance. He has to seek employment and is generally ready to take anything that presents itself. Some of the situations that offer most attractions to him are of such a character as to prevent him from applying himself to work at which in his manhood he could earn a living. In the beginning he may earn more money at these occupations than he would if apprenticed to some skilled handicraft, but before many years he is cast off by his employers, unsettled by his work, and less fit and less inclined to spend time in qualifying either for a trade or a profession. There are far too many blind-alley occupations open to boys, and they should be closed to those entering on industrial life. There are many men who by advancing years are shut out from the work they have been accustomed to do; they are leaving the ranks of the skilled workers, and they could do the work at present done by lads with advantage to the community, since there would not then be numbers of young persons spending the most receptive years of their life in occupations by which they cannot hope to earn their living when they reach manhood.