The following measures are recommended for the prevention of the maltreatment of children. (a) Cruelty to children on the part of those legally responsible for the care of such children must be the subject of official prosecution. (b) Parents who maltreat their own children must at once be deprived of their parental authority, for unless this is done, after they have been punished, the parents will be likely to maltreat the child more than ever, merely taking more care to avoid discovery. (c) It should be made the legal duty of anyone who becomes aware of a case of cruelty to a child to lodge official information without delay.
Children are not in a position to protect themselves against adults, nor are they able on their own account to initiate proceedings against anyone who has misused them. This difficulty is especially great when the offender is one upon whom the child is legally dependent.
Suggested Reforms.—Recently the necessity has been recognised that many offences against children should be punished much more severely than they now are, and that many acts not otherwise punishable should be made punishable if committed against a child.
(a) It is suggested that a new criminal offence should be defined in the following terms:—“A parent, 1, who, although possessed of the requisite means, fails, wilfully or neglectfully, to provide for the child’s proper maintenance; 2, who, in consequence of a disorderly life, is rendered unable to provide for the proper support of his child; 3, who neglects his child—shall be punished in the following manner.... A guardian or a foster-parent shall have the same liabilities to punishment under this clause as the real parents of a child.”
(b) It is suggested that, in the case of offences against the laws regulating child-labour, the criminal legal authorities, and not the local authorities, should have the right of intervention, that in the case of the graver breaches of these laws, the offence should be regarded, not as a petty offence, but as a misdemeanour, or as a crime, and that, for this reason, the description of these offences should be incorporated in the criminal code.
(c) It is suggested that the employment of children in mendicancy, vagabondage, &c., which is at present treated as a petty offence merely, should be constituted a misdemeanour.
(d) It is proposed to make it a punishable offence to supply, or cause to be supplied, in a public place, to any juvenile, alcoholic drinks whereby that juvenile becomes intoxicated.
(e) As regards the sale of tobacco, similar legal provisions are considered desirable.
(f) It is suggested that parents should be severely punished, when in the case of one of their children being ill they fail to summon medical advice, or when they send the child to school suffering from one of the acute infectious disorders, or from a house in which any such disorder prevails.
With regard to the first recommendation (a), people begin to recognise that a misuse of the rights and powers involved in parental authority must be visited, not by private condemnation only, but by that of the criminal law. It is seen that the standpoint of the existing law, by which only the gravest offences, such as the abduction of a child, or the infliction upon a child of grievous bodily harm, are specified as punishable, is inadequate. Ever more general becomes the demand that parental neglect of the proper maintenance or education of a child should be constituted an offence per se, and dealt with as such. It is only in the case specified in (a) 1 that deliberate or gross neglect constitutes the essential quality of the offence. (If all cases of neglect were punishable, the provision (a) 1 would operate chiefly against offenders of the lower classes, since it is in their case that such neglect most commonly occurs.) In (a) 2 deliberate or gross neglect is no essential part of the offence, because the idler, the man led astray by his passions, &c., should not escape punishment. In (a) 3 simple neglect is made punishable, because in such cases the community becomes responsible for the maintenance of the child. Nothing must be done to encourage what is really quite common—that parents should neglect their child, simply in order that it should be taken away from their care, and that in this way they may be freed from the burden of its maintenance. It is essential that no complaint by the injured party or his representatives should be requisite to the initiation of a prosecution, for in most cases the child is itself unable to complain, and the legal representative is often the prime offender. Moreover, it is not the child alone that is injured, but also the State, which has entrusted the offender with the care of the child.