E.—3

4

described as criminal or criminally disposed. The reformatories should contain those who are viciously uncontrollable, or are criminally disposed, or who are actually criminals too young for prison treatment. These must be separate for the two sexes. It has been suggested that children (vagrant, uncontrollable, &c.) who have been convicted of any indictable offence might be committed to an industrial school up to the age of fourteen; but that no one should be detained as a resident inmate of an industrial school after the age of fifteen, except for brief periods, as when being transferred from one employer to another, unless he or she be physically unfit for work. Any one between the ages of ten and eighteen convicted of an indictable offence should be committed to a reformatory, with or without a previous sentence of imprisonment; notwithstanding this, children under twelve convicted of indictable offences, but not previously convicted, might be sent to an industrial school, unless it should appear that they had already become habitual criminal offenders. All children or young persons committed to industrial schools or reformatories should be under control until the age of twenty-one, unless discharged earlier. Inmates of reformatories might within the first six months be transferred to industrial schools, and inmates of industrial schools might at any time be transferred to reformatories. These precautions would be necessary in order to secure a classification based upon character, for the order of committal is by no means a reliable index of the character of the inmate. Inmates of prisons under eighteen years of age might be transferred to reformatories. In both industrial schools and reformatories there should be further classification ; in the former the classification may be on the basis of age, and need not amount to complete separation. The classification in a reformatory should be thorough; there should be at least three classes, and promotion from class to class and early release should depend on good conduct and diligence in learning a trade. The lowest class would be governed by rules which resemble prison rules, but the educative purpose of the institution should even there be the most prominent. The planning of the building would be an important point, so as to fit in with the classification. The training in both industrial schools and reformatories should be really industrial; a boy or a girl should be so taught that a taste for manual employment should be acquired, and a trade properly learnt, or the learning of it properly begun. Several trades should be taught, and each reformatory should be to a large extent self-supporting. Farming and other country occupations may be looked upon as the most important of all " trades " for children of this class. And, reverting to the causes of all the evils we are attacking, effort should constantly be made to direct the attention of inmates towards a country life, except in cases where there was an obvious unfitness for such a life. To give concrete form to these ideas, one might suggest for New Zealand some such scheme as the following :— (1.) Day industrial or truant schools—to begin with, one in each of the four large towns; (2.) Two industrial schools— (a) For boys, with 50 to 100 acres of good land; (b) for girls; (3.) Two reformatories — (a) For boys; (6) for girls; and (4.) That trades (including agriculture) should be taught; (5.) That fuller supervision should be exercised over boarded-out children and inmates licensed out to friends or employers; and (6.) That receiving-homes should be established in places at a distance from the industrial schools. It is on these lines that the Government has been proceeding during the past year. When the changes are completed, there will be a reformatory for boys at Burnham; a reformatory for girls near Christchurch; an industrial school for girls at Caversham; an industrial school for boys in the south of the North Island; an auxiliary industrial school for girls and young boys at Auckland; receiving-homes for girls and young boys at Wellington and Christchurch.