The problem of juvenile delinquency

Abstract

NOTHING stimulates and arouses in us emotions so diverse as the problem of juvenile delinquency. We cannot disregard the increasing importance of such a problem, and if we have to enquire into the stark reality it is only with a shameful eye but a merciful heart. Bacon says that ''judges ought (so far as the law pennitteth) to cast a severe eye upon the example, but a merciful eye upon the person." The reason is manifest. All anti-social tendencies require to be repressed ; and this is more so in the case of a child if we are to make of him a dutiful citizen rather than a hardened criminal. Malta supp/et aetatem; Hale tells us, so that that if the offender is not doli incapax it is in the interest of all that the significance of his guilt be brought to his mind. But, on the other hand, we are not to lose sight of the fact that the transgressor is young-and here mercy comes in. There must have been something subversive in his education, in his environment, or maybe heredity has played its part as the criminal pedigrees of various young offenders show. Hence it is that ''the law is disposed to look upon the child rather as a victim than as an aggressor, and to him it extends, with greater eagerness, its aid, its sympathy and its indulgence" (I).