The Committee of 1894 made an emphatic declaration in favour of some action being taken to deal specifically with this class. They reported:--"The age when the majority of habitual criminals are made lies between 16 and 21. It appears to us that the most determined effort should be made to lay hold of these incipient criminals, and to prevent them by strong restraint and rational treatment from recruiting the habitual class. We are of opinion that the experiment of establishing a Penal Reformatory under Government management should be tried, and that the Courts should have power to commit to these establishments offenders under the age of 23, for periods of not less than one year and up to three years, with a free exercise of a system of licence." The proposal to found a State, or Penal, Reformatory, confirmed and emphasized the opinion that had been rapidly gaining ground, both in England and abroad, and especially in the United States, that _up to a certain age_, every criminal may be regarded as _potentially_ a good citizen: that his relapse into crime may be due either to physical degeneracy, or to bad social environment: that it is the duty of the State at least to try and effect a cure, and not to class the offender off-hand and without experiment with the adult professional criminal. It seems difficult to believe that, until recently, a lad of 16 was treated by the law, in all respects, if convicted of any offence, as an ordinary adult prisoner, and that for lads of this age, the principle had not been recognized that a long sentence of detention under reformatory conditions can be justified, not so much by the actual offence, as by "the criminal habit, tendency, or association" (Section 1 (b), Borstal Act, 1908), which, unless arrested at an early age, must lead inevitably to a career of crime.