THE BOY CRIMINAL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 29 August 1942, Page 3

THE BOY CRIMINAL

MAIN CAUSE OF INCREASE IN JUVENILE CRIME Mr Arthur Morley, it.C., Recorder of Leeds, in a speech reported in the “Yorkshire Post,” said: — *‘l have adopted the system introduced by the late ‘Billy’ Waugh when Recorder of Sheffield. Waugh’s method was to bind over a boy not to come up tor judgment if called upon, but to come up for judgment in any event. The boy was released on his own recognisances. Waugh told the bov it was about time he learned to look after himself, and that he (the Recorder) was giving him a chance to do so.

“I have had sufficient cases in my Quarter Sessions calendars to enable me to draw some conclusions from | adopting a similar method, and I can say that in 92 per cent of cases in : which boys have been bound over in , that manner they have not since been j in the hands of the police, i “I have also found that a night or j two by themselves in the cells has ; done boys good because they get no 1 glory or satisfaction from it. whereas !if they are sent to prison for six j months they get used to it, and when ! they come out think themselves somej thing of heroes. ! “I agree that the pictures and fun i fairs may not always help in keep- ! ing young people from crime, but in !my view the increase in juvenile ' crime is due far more than anything | else to the lack of religious training and of a religious background. * “There is an absence of any standard of conduct, either in parents or children. If they have any standards at all they are arbitrarily fixed by themselves to suit their own convenience and they owe no allegiance to anything higher than that. “When a police officer reads out a : prisoner’s record, and adds: ‘There is nothing to be said in his favour,’ I very often go out of my way in .sentencing the prisoner to tell him that I do not believe that statement. "I often advise police officers to concentrate on what they know to be in a prisoner’s favour rather than on what they know to be against him, and letters 1 have received from discharged prisoners leave no doubt at all in my mind »lat very often some such observation ' when passing sentence makes all the 1 difference between hone and despair.”