Criminals and crime : some facts and suggestions / by Sir Robert Anderson.

  • Robert Anderson
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Criminals and crime : some facts and suggestions / by Sir Robert Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    128/204 page 112
    chief. Were the mischief not so serious and deplorable, it would be intensely amusing to hear people talking “Habeas Corpus” and the British Constitution generally, in defence of the right of pauper youths in their teens to loaf about the streets all day and half the night. If such lads will not or cannot find work to do, work should be found for them before they drift into crime, and they should be made to do it. Neither mawkish sentiment nor a spurious philosophy ought to be allowed a hearing in this matter. It is not a case of committing a wrong upon the few in the interests of the many, or of doing an injustice to the poor in the interests of the rich. What is here advocated is that those whom it is both the duty and the interest of the community to rescue should be rescued promptly and in the most practical way. In the vast majority of cases, youths who become street loafers at sixteen are either street loafers or criminals at twenty. Every true philanthropist, therefore, should hail this suggestion with approval. And those who take a sterner and more selfish view of such questions may be influenced by the con- sideration that our present system involves a wanton waste of lives that might be made useful to the community. Whether do we confer a benefit, or commit a
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