366 ANNUAL REGISTER, J817. 



trade, are driven into the streets 

 every morning, and dare not return 

 home uitliout plunder; others are 

 orphans, or completely abandoned 

 by their parents, who subsist by 

 begging or pilfering, and at night 

 sleep under the sheds, in the 

 streets, and in the market places ; 

 when in prison no one ^isits tiiem, 

 nor do they seem to possess one 

 friend in the world : they are oc- 

 casionally treated witii severity, 

 sometimes sentenced to be flogged, 

 a practice tlian which nothing 

 tends more to harden and degrade. 

 Mr. Crauford, who gives this af- 

 fecting picture of the sufferings 

 of these children, adds, that many 

 of them occasionally apply to the 

 members of the committee solicit- 

 ing their advice and relief, and 

 declaring their readiness to shun 

 their former connexions, and to 

 abandon their vicious pvirsuits ; 

 but how are they to subsist ; with- 

 out friends or character, who will 

 give them employment? ^^'ithollt 

 temporary aid, where can they 

 procure food ? He is convinced 

 that many are driven to lenew 

 their depredations by their neces- 

 sities. He knows of several in- 

 stances in which this has been the 

 case ; and thus some boys are no 

 sooner discharged from prison 

 than they are again brought in, 

 for in reality a prison is their only 

 home. 



Your committee decline enter- 

 ing at present, even if at any time 

 it was within their province, into 

 a minute investigation of the va- 

 rious causes which have produced 

 this alarming increase of juvenile 

 delinquency : many of these causes 

 may be traced to the peculiar situa- 

 tion of the country, and to the e.\- 

 Istence of poverty and distress. 



unknown perhaps at any former 

 period to tlie same extent. But 

 your conmiitee hope, that with the 

 gradual removal of these causes, 

 their lamentable effects will cease. 

 They, however, feel it their duty 

 to observe, that as long as any 

 means are left untried, by which 

 those who are of authority in a 

 state have it in their power to 

 check, indirectly by educaiion, or 

 the enforcement of religious ob- 

 servances, the tendency wliich the 

 young and the ignorant have to 

 fall into the snares and allurements 

 which are spread around them by 

 the guilty and designing, tiie de- 

 linquencies that are tiie result of 

 such neglect are not wholly to be 

 set to the account of the offenders ; 

 and that till all the ways are ex- 

 hausted by which the morals and 

 manners of a people can be re- 

 formed, the existence of an aug- 

 mented state of crime, the severity 

 of the penal law, and the freqviency 

 of capital punishment, are evi- 

 dences little creditable to the sys- 

 tem of which such evils are the 

 result. In order, then, to remedy, 

 if possible, some of these evls, 

 and more particularly those which 

 result from the deplorable state 

 and management of the different 

 prisons of the metropolis, your 

 committee have examined various 

 plans that have been offered to 

 their inspection, for the establish- 

 ment of a penitentiary, or place 

 of separate confinement for juve- 

 nile ofiendeis ; and they are of 

 opini(m, that it is expedient to 

 construct a prison to be peculiarly 

 set apart for that ))urpose. They 

 have thought fit to print two plans 

 of prisons of this description in 

 their appendix : both have their 

 separate advantages ; but your 



com- 



