To-day, in legal proceedings where juvenile offenders are concerned, remarkable incidents occur. For example, the judge or magistrate asks the child to repeat the ten commandments and the catechism. If the child can do this, it is supposed to possess the requisite understanding. It is left quite out of consideration that the child has probably learned the commandments by rote, without understanding them in the least. Or, again, the judge makes the child describe the act it has committed, and then asks, “Do you know that such acts are punishable?” But in the proceedings in court the child has been made well aware of the fact that it has committed a punishable offence, and yet it may not have known this at the time the offence was committed. In the case of the offences with which the enormous majority of juvenile offenders are charged, namely, theft, fraud, and bodily injury, a knowledge of the punishable character of these offences is apt habitually to be assumed by the courts. This assumption is justified, but it suffices to show the impracticability of the conception. _The School._--The proposal has been made that when petty offences are committed by children of school age, the school should deal with the matter; and that only when a more serious offence has been committed should the case go before the law-courts. In proportion to the seriousness of the case, the punishment should be apportioned by the class-master, by the head-master and class-master together, or by the united teaching faculty. The suggested punishments are--a reprimand, task-work, sitting on the punishment form, being kept in after school hours, corporal punishment, &c. Investigation by other authorities is not to be regarded as superfluous, but in minor cases it will suffice to leave the whole matter in the hands of the school authorities. The following reasons are given for this proposal. In the case of petty offences, the tedious and laborious intervention of the criminal authority is quite uncalled for. It may even be said that we misuse and make light of the criminal authority, when we invoke the aid of this gigantic apparatus, and as a result of this the child is discharged with a hardly perceptible punishment. If the State undertakes to deal with all petty offences, it is left no time for the proper consideration of the graver and more important ones. The aim in view can be attained by less expensive and less elaborate means. These considerations notwithstanding, this proposal can be approved only to this extent, that in the case of juvenile offences which do not render necessary a coercive reformatory education, it will suffice that the child should be punished by its parents or by the school authorities.