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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    the most accurate and comprehensive returns we have to go by are the returns relating to the offences committed by the population committed to prison. According to the United States census of the prison population in 1890 it appears that there were twenty- three children under the age of fourteen under detention for the crime of homicide, and 388 juveniles between the ages of fifteen and eighteen under detention for the same offence. In England, on the other hand, according to the criminal returns for 1893 and 1894, there were no cases of conviction for homicide among the juvenile population under sixteen years of age, and only six cases among the juvenile population between sixteen and twenty-one. If the United States returns relating to homicide include manslaughter as well as murder it will still be found that the numbers per million of the juvenile population are much higher in America than in England. In England there were only seven cases of manslaughter in the two years 1893-4 among children under sixteen, and eighteen cases of the same offence among juveniles between sixteen and twenty- one. Whatever allowances we may make for dif- ferences in judicial procedure between the two countries, it is hardly possible to resist the conclusion that homicide among the young, whether in the form of murder or manslaughter, is more prevalent in proportion to the population in the United States than it is in England. The difference with regard to this capital offence may be accounted for on a variety of grounds. In the first place it is possible that the American comes
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