WHAT REFORMATORIES HAVE DONE.
There has been a Meeting, not of theoretical, but practical, Reformers, at Birmingham, in favour of the Reformatory movement. As usual at such meetings, Mr. M.D.Hill, the energetic Recorder, took a prominent lead. He proved, by the strong force of figures, how much better it was to send young criminals to school, where they were instructed, instead of locking them up in gaols, where they only got corrupted. To them the gaol was as good as a College of Crime, and the juvenile Jack Shepherds confined there were perfect Undergraduates of Vice,- with this simple exception, that the young rascals paid more attention to their studies than Undergraduates generally do. The difference of the two plans of treatment is so largely in favour of the former, that the only wonder is, that it was never put in force years ago. By the Reformatory, young sinners, whose sins are more the fault of their parents than themselves, are reclaimed, and the ranks of good citizens strengthened; and by the prison, a sacrifice is consummated of a poor miserable young creature to ignorance, “to be returned again into society as a double vengeance and as a redoubled punishment upon society which had so ill-treated him.”
The wrong thus committed by society falls with a two-fold severity upon itself. Mr. Hill fixed the number of our felon population at 160,000, and he stated that the amount of property annually stolen by them was no less than £13,000,000 sterling.
Mr. Kynnersley, another philantropic labourer in the same good cause, remarked that the general diminution of crime in the whole kingdom, since 1856, was according to the report of Mr. Sydney Turner, 26 per cent – a clear gain of rather more than one-fourth. “How was a fact so incredible to be accounted for?” inquired the honourable gentleman. “In a great measure (is his reply) to the Reformatory movement, that puts it in the power of Magistrates to send young criminals to these institutions for reformation for a leugthened period.”
Since these Reformatories have had the effect of diminishing crime to the extent of one-fourth, it is but fair to conclude, that that sum of £13,000,000, stated to be annually stolen, would have been one-fourth larger supposing that these schools of redemption had not been in existence; and since this diminution has been in operation ever since the year 1856, the gain resulting to the country by their establishment during those three years has been a sum of not less than £12,000,000, representing a saving of a clear four millions every year. To this sum must also be added the cost of maintaining the children constantly in prison, supposing the old method of allowing them to ripen in gaol into adult criminals had been persevered in. This, however, is only the ledger view of the question, and that is a very small consideration when compared with the large practical utility, and the great humanising charity, which are the principal moral features of this movement, whose beneficial effects will be felt by succeeding generations even to a greater extent than by ourselves. As schools are better than prisons,- as it must be more agreeable to teach than to punish,- as prevention has usually been considered a more rational course of treatment than cure,- we are astonished that the Government does not interest itself a little more warmly in the establishment and increase of these valuable institutions, than have aided most materially the cause of civilisation by preventing so many young pupils of crime growing up under able tuition into so many trained professors.
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