Education and crime.

  • United States. Bureau of Education
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Education and crime. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    soil. Bosidos, iu tbo old slavery times, many petty olFences for which persons were sent to jail at the North wore punished at the Sotith, if punished at all, on the plan- tation. It was the interest of the masters to keep their slaves out of the courts. For these reasons there may have been more convicts proportionally, in 18G0, in the ])risons of the North than in those of the South ; hut the cause is not to he found iu the pub- lic schools, for iu both sections it is the ignorant that curse our communities with crime and fill our prisons with wretched human beings. And, apart from all mislead- ing statistics, it is an undeniable fact that wherever in this country you find public schools long and well established there you find iu the highest degree comfort, thrift, intelligence, culture, and whatever else goes to make happy homes and a pro.sperous people. No inquiry into the relation of education and crime can be complete without taking into consideration the effect of education upon erring or neglected children, as shown by its results iu our houses of refuge, schools of reform, and homes for the friendless. If the worst of children gathered into institutions of this character—children who, if left to themselves, would almost certainly follow a life of crime and end their davs iu prison—can be made by education and favorable surroundings, iu large proportion, useful citizens, no one can doubt that a most effective mode of preventing crime has been discovered. It may seem marvellous to those who have not given attention to the subject, but the results of our reformatories for the young lead to the conclusion that if the population now filling our penitentiaries and prisons had been properly cared for and educated when young, at least three-fourths of them would have been saved to society and themselves. Let the plain facts be stated. We have before us a table carefully compiled by the best authorities and contained in the proceedings of a convention of managers and sirperinteudeuts of houses of ref- uge and schools of reform, held in the city of New York iu May, 1857. This table shows, among other things, the whole number of inmates, their average age, the aver- age iieriod of detention, and the per cent, of reformed in some 17 institutions of the class represented, located iu eleven different States. The whole number of children , admitted was 20,658, their average age 12f years, the average period of detention about 20 months, and the iDorcentage of reformed seventy-five. Seventy-five per cent. of these incorrigibly bad children, these young criminals, reformed iu 20 mouths! Such h ‘ state of Prisons and Child Saving is the official record. The late Dr. E. C. Wines, in his work on the Institutions,” estimates that of the 12,000 children now in the reformatories of the country 60 per cent, at least will be trained into good citizens. “ Some would claim,” he says, “75 or 80 per cent., but statistics do not bear them out.” “Perhaps,” he adds, “the percentage of worthy citizens trained up among the whole 25,000 iu preventive • and reformatory schools would be as high as 75 per cent.” | The State Public School of Michigan is known all over the country. Its object is “to save children who are in danger of becoming criminals before they have actually ' become such.” It is a school for pauxjer and vagrant children, children of evil deucics, and children whose circumstances and surroundings would almost certainly j’ keep them in ignorance and lead them into vice. Hear the cautious statement of results as contained iu the reiJort of the superiutoudent for 1878: “ Considering,” he says, “the heredity of these children and the iulluences which surroundod most or them previous to entering the institution, I am myself surprised at the results. Thei'c is no doubt that a large majority of them, left where they were, would have become criminals or chronic paupers; but it looks now as though 80 or 00 per cent, woidd be- come respectable if not ideal citizens. Coming years can alone determine what the complete results will be.” In .a paper ])repared two years later the sujieriutenilent says; “Enough is known to satisfy us th.at there arc very few of the ehihlren who through the school who will not prove as good iu morals and life as the average chil- dren iu the community. I could not iilaco the loss as low as 5 per cent.” One of the nineteenth century miracles is the work of the Children’s Aid Society of
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