Not inaptly does this illustrate, or serve to point out the true process for the diminution of crime. The arrest, conviction and punishment of here and there a rogue, is scarcely felt. It is but a unit subtracted from the appalling aggregate of crime. If we would have the ratio of our criminal population palpably and permanently lessened, we must lay hold of the young ones in the nest, and whatever the trouble or cost, we may rest assured it is by all odds the cheapest and only effectual way of dealing with the pest.
Among the prominent causes of, or excitements to a criminal life which are operative upon childhood, especially in cities and populous towns, have been reckoned 1, and chiefly drunkenness. 2. The absence of education and industrial training. 3. The inadequacy of home-accommodation to secure the ordinary decencies of life. 4. The demoralizing influences of cheap theatres, and other low places of amusement, association with fire companies, and the liberty to dispose of the whole or a considerable portion of their own earnings. 5. The example, instruction or orders of parents constraining them to vicious acts, and 6, the connivance or co-operation of receivers of stolen goods to prompt them. We might indefinitely enlarge this catalogue, but these causes are adequate to account for the greater part of juvenile crime.
The readers of our Journal cannot fail to be aware of the unusual interest which has recently been awakened on this subject. Our present number contains sundry evidences of it, and by referring to the cover, a notice will be found, the design of which is to provoke inquiry and discussion, with a view to reformatory measures. As human nature is substantially the same all the world over, and as like causes produce like effects, we have transferred to our pages several interesting and important passages from the last report of the inspector general of English prisons, bearing particularly on this subject.
In respect to the first cause of juvenile depravity, which we just commented on, drunkenness—
“Statistical returns show that the amount of money expended in intoxicating drinks of one kind or another in Great Britain, is between fifty and sixty millions of pounds sterling per annum,—a sum fully equal to the whole national revenue.
“Now such an enormous expenditure on any one object must produce a noticeable effect upon our social condition. Were such a sum annually expended on the reclaiming of waste land and the improvement of what is but partially cultivated, and the erection of comfortable dwellings, in a few years our whole island would be a garden of beauty and fertility.
“But what are the results produced?
“The physicians of our lunatic asylums tell us that intemperance is the cause of a large proportion of the cases of insanity.
“The medical officers of our infirmaries and dispensaries tell us that many diseases are caused, and more are made fatal, by habits of intemperance.