Juvenile offenders / by William Douglas Morrison.

  • William Douglas Morrison
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Juvenile offenders / by William Douglas Morrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Austria a large number of cases of petty theft, false pretences, and offences of a somewhat similar descrip- tion, are not included in the criminal returns. Offences of this character are very prevalent among the youth- ful population. The Austrian returns relating to juvenile crime must therefore be regarded as very far from being either complete or even comprehensive. But, incomplete as they are, they still tell the same tale as the returns of other civilised communities. From year to year, almost without interruption, the number of young offenders continues to increase. German criminal statistics include many of the minor offences which are excluded from the Austrian, and conse- quently enable us to measure the movement of crime in the German empire with greater precision. But the comprehensiveness of the returns, instead of modifying our opinion as to the growth of juvenile crime on the continent of Europe, is calculated to deepen the conviction that it has assumed the propor- tions of a general phenomenon. Whilst crime among the adult population in Germany has increased between 25 and 30 per cent, within the last ten years, juvenile crime has increased more than 50 per cent. Our review of the criminal condition of the European populations across the Channel has been a fairly wide one, and wherever we look we are confronted with the fact that the moral status of the juvenile population, as far as it can be exemplified in the statistics of crime, is the reverse of satisfactory. It has for many years been customary to look at England as the one bright spot on the European horizon, and continental observers, when bewailing
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