_Gradual Transformation of the Classical Criminal Law._--In the nineteenth century the provisions of the classical criminal law no longer meet the case of juvenile criminality. Their inefficiency is demonstrated by the enormous proportion of recidivists among juvenile offenders. The number of recidivists continually increases, and criminality tends more and more to be the work of habitual offenders. Indeed, the criminal, in most cases, continues to repeat the very offence for which he was first punished. This is especially true of offences against property. The oftener anyone has been punished, the greater is the probability that he will commit another offence, and the sooner is this likely to take place. In reality the frequency of recidivism is even greater than appears from the official statistics. These relate to those persons only who are regarded as recidivists by the existing laws. They take no account of how many individuals leave the country after their first conviction for a criminal offence. An examination of these facts, and the study of the child-mind, have led to the conclusion that criminality in youth is the main source of the general stream of criminality, and that we cannot depend upon our present methods of dealing with crime and criminals to dry up this source. Hence even the dogmatists are coming more and more to admit the failures of the classical criminal law, and to recommend that mere punitive methods should give place to the educative treatment of criminal offenders, punishment being used, if at all, only as an educative influence. Even in those countries which lag behind the rest in development, this conception begins to influence legislation. This conviction that youthful offenders require not punishment, but education, was acquired by mankind many decades before it was generally realised that it is equally true of adult criminals--that they should not be punished, but improved, or, if unimprovable, rendered harmless. It is understood that those punishments only can be justified which exercise a lasting educative influence, by removing the child from its former environment into a better and healthier one. It is recognised that the difference between punishment and education is not absolute, but relative merely, inasmuch as education cannot dispense entirely with punitive methods, and punishment, properly utilised, exercises an educative influence. It is also now understood that by the proper legal treatment of youthful criminal offenders, many thousands of children can be saved every year from the permanent adoption of a career of crime, and their working powers thus preserved for the community. This was seen first of all, where it more especially applies, in the case of manufacturing towns. For the reformation of criminal and neglected youth by educational methods, the first steps were taken, and taken most effectively, by the country in which the modern