Crime -- Great Britain; Criminal anthropology; Punishment -- Great Britain
The young person is more likely to fall into error than his elders because
of his inexperience. Whatever the law may hold, no business man expects
the kind of service from a youth that he looks for from a man. The young
man may have more knowledge than his senior and more recent information on
many things, but only time can enable him to co-relate his knowledge. The
question whether a lad knows right from wrong is all that some people will
consider; which shows how little they know, if they really believe that
the answer will enable anyone to assess a man's responsibility. We are
taught "right and wrong" from our earliest years by way of principles to
guide us, but they are not always easy of application. The difference
between a young and an old man is one of experience. Practice has enabled
the one to use his knowledge in a way that the other has yet to learn. Our
conceptions of many things on which we have been given information
apparently full and accurate have been proved time and again to be quite
wrong; experience enables us to discount our anticipations, but it only
comes with years. In judging young people it is specially necessary to
bear in mind the fact that with all their apparent knowledge they may have
totally wrong conceptions of things, and that thus they have been misled.
On many occasions I have had to note the fact that a young man had
committed an atrocious crime; that he knew perfectly well it was wrong;
that it was not due to imperfect powers of control; that he had brooded
over and visualised it before the act; and that its accomplishment had
left him shocked beyond expression, for it was all so different from his
conception of it.
No punishment could intensify the shuddering horror with which these lads
regarded their own acts, "so different from what I thought it would be";
and yet in ordinary affairs we are well acquainted with the phenomenon.
Why we should lose sight of it when a crime has been committed and we are
seeking to unravel the causes is a mystery. Know right from wrong? Yes,
and conceive the whole matter wrongly. This state of mind is not peculiar
to the criminal, and may sometimes be present in those who take upon
themselves to judge and condemn him.
In early life a lad is not only more liable to go astray, but having
fallen it is more difficult for him to recover. He is more impressionable,
and the impression of his crime and of the way in which he has been
treated stands in his way. He has no record of experience behind it to
which his memory can turn and by which he can be helped to seek the right
road when he leaves prison. "Learn young, learn fair," is as true of crime
as of other things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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