the French call it, boys are sent to a reformatory or “preservative school,” where they will be under stronger discipline. For the third class, from fifteen to sixteen or eighteen, stricter measures are necessary, so as to dispose of them in specially selected penal colonies, as has already been done at Eysses, where the discipline is severe, while embodying technical and industrial instruction.
Germany.—In most parts of the German Empire juvenile delinquents and neglected youths are treated in the same establishments. No child of less than twelve years of age can be proceeded against in a court of law, although in some German states destitute or abandoned children have been taken at the ages of six, five and even three years. Youths between twelve and eighteen may be convicted, but their offences are passed over if they are proved to have acted without discretion. There are many kinds of correctional institutions and a number of schools not of a correctional character. These last are generally very small, the largest taking barely a hundred, but are very numerous. Many private persons have devoted themselves to the work. Count A. von der Recke-Volmerstein (1791–1878) about 1821 founded a refuge for neglected children in Düsselthal, between Düsseldorf and Elberstadt. Pastor T. F. Fliedner (1800–1864) built up a fine establishment at Kaiserswerth from 1833, in which was an infant school, a penitentiary and an orphan asylum. Another famous name is that of W. von Türk (1774–1846), who studied under Pestalozzi in Switzerland.
A school which has largely influenced public opinion in Great Britain, as in Germany, is the Rauhe Haus, near Hamburg, founded by Dr Wickern in 1833. This began with a single cottage but had grown in twenty years to a hamlet of twenty houses, with from twelve to sixteen inmates in each. The establishment is a Lutheran one; both boys and girls are admitted, in separate houses, and a marked feature of the place is the number of “brothers,” young men of good character qualifying for rescue work as superintendents of homes, prison officers and schoolmasters. They take part in the work and are in constant touch with the boys whom they closely supervise, being bound to “keep them in sight day and night, eat with them, sleep in their dormitories, direct their labour, accompany them to chapel, join in their recreations and sports.” These “brothers” are honourably known throughout the world and have performed a large work in distant lands as missionaries, prison officers and schoolmasters. The Rauhe Haus receives three classes of juveniles: first, the boys, mostly street arabs; second, girls of the same category; third, children taken as boarders from private families, who confess their inability to manage them. The instruction given is in trades, in farming operations, gardening and fruit-raising. The pupils are largely assisted on release, through the good offices of the citizens of Hamburg.
Holland.—In the Low Countries, refuges, called “Godshuis,” were founded as early as the 14th century, intended for the care and shelter of neglected youth and indigent old age. In the 17th century people came from all parts of Europe to learn from the Dutch how orphans and unfortunate children could best be cared for. The Godshuis of Amsterdam was a vast establishment, into which as many as 4000 juveniles were sometimes crowded, with such disastrous effects that its name was changed to that of “pesthuis,” and the government in the beginning of the present century ordered it to be emptied and closed. Other reformatory institutions in Holland are the Netherlands Mettray, the reform school of Zetten, near the Arnheim railway station, for Protestant girls; and that of Alkmaar for boys; the reformatory school of St Vincent de Paul at Amsterdam for both sexes; the Amsterdam reformatory for young vagabonds, male and female; the reform school of Smallepod at Amsterdam. The Netherlands Mettray, which is about five hours’ journey from Amsterdam on a farm called Rissjelt, near Zutphen, is planned on the model of the French Mettray and was founded about 1855 by M. Suringar, a veteran Dutch philanthropist, long vice-president of the directors of prisons in Amsterdam.
Italy.—In Italy there is no distinction between the treatment of the offending and the neglected or deserted in youth. There are seventeen or more correctional establishments, eight of which are state institutions and the rest founded by private benevolence or by charitable associations or local communities. None of these is exclusively agricultural; ten are industrial, seven industrial and agricultural combined. In Italy the age of responsibility is nine, below which no child can be charged with an offence. The Italian schools are mostly planned on a large scale. That of Marchiondi Spagliardi accommodates 550, divided among three houses under one supreme head. The Turazza institution at Treviso holds 380, and there are eight others with from 200 to 300 inmates. The régime is very various; the larger number of schools are on the congregate system, with daily labour in association and isolation by night. The “family” method is also practised with small groups, divisions or companies, into which the children are formed according to age or conduct.
Sweden.—All children below the age of sixteen may be sent to a correctional establishment or boarded out in respectable families:—
1. If they have committed acts punishable by law which indicate moral perversity and it is deemed advisable to correct them.
2. If they are neglected, ill-used, or if their moral deterioration is feared from the vicious life and character of parents or friends.
3. If their conduct at school or at home is such that a more severe correctional treatment is necessary for their rescue.
Under this law the state is also to provide special schools to take all above ten who have shown peculiar depravity; all who have reached eighteen and who are not yet thought fit for freedom; all who have relapsed after provisional release. Sweden is rich in institutions devoted to the care of destitute and deserted children, all due to the efforts of the charitable. The largest correctional establishment is that founded at Hall, near the town of Sodertelge on the shores of the Baltic. This admirable agricultural colony, modelled on that of Mettray, owes its existence to the “Oscar-Josephine society,” founded by Queen Josephine, widow of Oscar I.
United States.—In the words of a report made in 1878 by F. B. Sanborn, secretary of the American Social Science Society, “America can justly plume herself upon the work accomplished by her juvenile reformatories since their inauguration down to the present time.” The first in point of date and still the most considerable of the reformatories in the United States is that founded in 1825, thanks to the unwearied efforts of the great American publicist and philanthropist Edward Livingston, which now has its home on Randall’s Island in New York City. In the following year a reformatory of the same class was founded in Boston, and another in the year after in Philadelphia. All were intended to receive criminal youth. There are state reformatories now in almost all the states of the Union, and those for juvenile adults in New York and Massachusetts have attracted world-wide attention, aiming so high and with such an elaboration of means that they deserve particular description.
The great state reformatory establishment of Elmira, New York, called into existence in 1889 with the avowed aim of compassing the reformation of the criminal by new processes, partakes of the system involved in the treatment of juvenile offenders. It was based upon the principle that crime ought to be attacked in its beginnings by other than ordinary punitive and prison methods. Under this view, the right of society to defend itself by punishment was denied, and it was held that a youthful offender was more sinned against than sinning. It was urged that his crime, due largely to inherited defects, mental or physical and vicious surroundings, was not his own fault, and he had a paramount claim to be treated differently by the state when in custody. The state was not justified in using powers of repression to imprison him in the usual mechanical hard and fast fashion and then return him to society, no better, possibly worse, than before; it was bound to regenerate him, to change his nature, improve his physique, and give him a new mental equipment, so that when again at large he might be fitted to take his place amongst honest citizens, to earn his living by reputable means and escape all temptation to drift back into crime. This
