FEDERAL DELINQUENCY

Municipal and state advances in the tare of juvenile delinquents have blinded many to the callousness of the federal government in dealing with the young criminal. The United States government, practically alone among the civilized nations, makes no distinction between the child and the adult criminal. When a few days ago President Hoover-recommended that the Attorney General be empowered to forego prosecution of children and turn them over to the state authorities for special care, he was proposing no startling advance but was merely advising a step that long since should have been taken.

During the last year, over a thousand boys and girls under eighteen years of age were confined with hardened criminals to regular federal penal institutions; over ten per cent of the entrants at the institutions were under twenty years of age. While it may be possible to reform these young delinquents before they are confined to jail, it is virtually impossible to accomplish it once they have been treated like confirmed felons and have been forced to associate for months with men of long criminal records. The crimes of children are now recognized as being the result as much of accident and thoughtlessness as of inherent criminal character. The discoveries of child psychologists have been many and valuable, but these discoveries could do much more practical good if they could be applied to offenders against the federal as well as the state law.

Granting that a distinction between the juvenile and the adult criminal is necessary, the proposed method is the most desirable one. The state governments are closer to the site of the crimes, and can more conveniently look into the peculiar circumstances of each case. They already have facilities for dealing with the child criminal so that the added expense from juvenile federal offenders would not be considerable.