The Express.
London, England, 1861-08-02 00:00:00

TO OUR READER&

SPOICIING UTELLIOENCE.

♦ late edition el the Express is published every
Ong during the racing season, containing the
resalte ei tie day's races.

Twa Rey. SYDNEY Tunica', the Inspector ap-
pointed to visit the Cer:lfied Reformatory Schools
of Great Britain, has just presented his Fourth
Annual Report. Like those of the last three
years, it is a record of sustained and decided pro-
gress towards the chief end for which these insti-
tutions have been called into existence—the dimi-
nution in the amount of juvenile crime. We
learn from it that the number of offenders com-
mitted to prison in England and Wales, under the
age of sixteen, in the year ending Michaelmas,
1860, was 8,029 ; being nearly 900 fewer
than in the year preceding, when it was
8,913. Corresponding with this diminu-
tion is a decrease of crime among the older
clam of offenders, the number of whom fell
in the same period from 98,159 to 92,585. A
strong light is cast upon the steadily progressive
character of this improvement by the following
statistics, which we take from a table in Mr.
TURNER'S Report. The first set of figures shows
the number of commitments of offenders under 16
years of age in England and Wales through a
series of five years :

18.18. 1837. 1838. 1850. 1860.
Hoye . 11,)8$ 10,822 8,667 7,562 6,756
2,173 1,672 1,412 1,331 1,254

13,981 12,501 10,329 8,913 8,029
The returns of committed offenders above 16

years of age aro as follow :

1866. 1867. 18:16. 1860. 1850.
Males 510,206 80,2255 76,019 611.275 63,719
Females . 30,549 32,067 31,814 29,084 28,866

*755 112,V2 1W,11121 *l5O 92,506

There figures, taken in their simplest and
most obvious signification, are highly satisfactory ;
they become more so when contemplated in one
or two relations which Mr. TURNER elucidates..
If we look at these returns in connexion with the
increase of population, which acts alike on all
clams% the just and unjust, we shall find in
Ragland and Wales a decrease of juvenile deli!).
gummy of nearly 49 per cent., and of adult crime
of above 12 per cent., in the five years ending
September 29, 1860. But we have further to
take two sets of facts into the account. In the
first place, the reduction of commitments has been
brought about in the face of causes powerfully
working together to increase their number. In the
last five years the police force throughout the coun-
try has been increased, extended, and generally
rendered more effective for the detection and rion-,
victim of crime. Then, again, the effect of the ope-
ration of the Criminal Justice Act—underwhinh re-
gular offenders, on pleading guilty and submitting
to a summary conviction, followed by a short terra
of imprisonment, have escaped penal servitude or

transportation--haa been to return into the bosom
of the home community a considerable number
of persons who, a few years ago, would have either
been eliminated from it altogether or kept in close
confinement for a lengthened period. Secondly,
the decrease of adult crime, manifest in the years
1859-1860, and following upon a marked increase
in the years 1857-1858, showed itself exactly at
the date when the falling off in the amount of
juvenile offences had had time to bear upon the
supply of the older classes of criminals.

A system of remedial agencies which proves
itself thus successful, should, according to a natu-
ral anticipation, limit, and in the end obliterate its
own field ; become in the same moment victorious
and superfluous, and so disappear. This, however,
is not likely to be the fate of Reformatory Schools
just at present. It seems strange, but the factisthera
sere Dearly 500 more children and young people
loader detention in the certified reformatories of

Great Britain on the last day of 1860 than on tho
laid day at 1869, the numbers being 3,222, and
3,712 respectively. Mr. 'Nexus feels that the
anomaly of an increase of young criminals sent to
reformatories concurring with a diminut'on of juve-
nile crime Deeds examination, and he calls atten-
tion to its cause as one " bearing vitally on the
" cost and value of the Reformatory School Nye-
" tem." His tables show that of the children ad-
mitted into reformatories last year two-sevenths
were under twelve years old, and four-sevenths

were received on a first conviction, not having
been in prison before. Instead of seeing our re-
fonnatories become tenantless we shall have to
enlarge and multiply them if children so young
and relatively innocent are to be freely sent there.
Mr. TUtitilt fears that under the growing practice
of treating them as places for the prevention of
poisible rather than tho cure of positive evils, the
expenditure on them will grow up so rapidly ea to
prejudice the cause of these institutions vri.h the
public. Besides which he rightly questions the
justice or moral expediency of mixing together in
the same school the half *.rained child who has pil-
fered halfpence or stolen sweets, with the astute
young thief for whom systematic depredations
have been a chosen means of livelihood. The
first of these considerations is for the states-

Juan ; but the second is one which commit-
ting magistrates are bound to weigh maturely.
The committees of the institutions also have it in
their power to check the evil by declining to
admit children whose tender age or criminal status
render. them unsuitable as objects of discipline.
We are informed that the Committee of the
Castle Howard Reformatory act on this ruls, which
hoe also the approbation of Mr. Baawics Baum,
Mr. OaatrsrT, Mr. LATHAN, and other well.
known promoters of the Reformatory system. In
the following paragraph Mr. Tv11241.11 SUMS up his