CHILD CRIMINALS.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 November 1923, Page 2

CHILD CRIMINALS.

SUNDAY WICKEDNESS. LIVERPOOL, Sept. 17. The problem of the delinquent child including truants and petty thieves, the girl who runs away from home and tlie hoy who has put the kitten on the lire was examined from many points of view by learned doctors and scientists meeting at the Briti-h Association today. l)r C. Burt, of London, classifying the evidence of 200 cases examined, said it was impossible to maintain that criminality was iiiheient to any gieal extent. Only 10 per cent of the children had relatives who had been sellIciicoil for crimes. Poverty and bad housing were not the causes of the evil, for more than four-fifths of the eases came from homes that were quite comfortable. Occasionally one found a starving child driven by hunger to steal, hut in these days of school feeding these eases were rare. More frequent stolen money was rare. More frequently stolen money was trinkets, vi-ils to the kinema. ami l ramv. ay-ear rides. The absence ol facilities lor innocent occupation anti amusement in many homes was a more serious lat-ior than poverty in producing petty crime. Ihe effect- of defective family relationships was striking. In 40 per cent of the eases the mother or father was dead or tlie parents were separated or divot cod. Resentment against a stepmother or jeal jusv oi the baby also exerted an inflnence, ami when Hobby stole a banana or Mary stole money and ran away, they wore taking to adventure very much as a grown-up took to alcohol as a sedative or a distraction. They did not want to hit the stepmother or throw the hahv out of the window, but they wanted to find an outlet for their feelings in something not quite so wicked. Excessive facilities for amusement were sometimes as dangerous as too few. "I once mapped the whole of London from the point of view of juvenile delinquency.” said Dr Hurt, “and 1 found it centred in a small district of the West End. In a set of streets where every other building was either a theatre, a kinema. a restaurant, or a public house, there was the blackest spot for juvenile crime. "In the dreary suburbs crime is less frequent, and where there are parks or open spaces there the delinquent child is rarest.”

Speaking of children wdm had nothing to occupy them getting into trouble. Dr W. A. Potts, Birmingham, said it was found ill Scotland that three times as many offences were committed by children on Sundays as on other days. In an address on Theories of the •Soul. Dr K. H. Thouless. of .Manchester, said in some parts of England lie had met with lhe belief that the spirit leaves the body at night;. A man walking along a country road one night encountered the I'gurc of a woman of his acquaintance. He learned afterwards that at Thai precise moment she was dreaming that she was walking there. The man's explanation was that tli? form lie saw was the spirit of the dreaming woman.