Unfortunately this branch of the administration is one which does not get must attention, as people do not take much interest in it, but I wish to ask the Minister what his views are on the desirability of instituting a Borstal Institution for women. No doubt the Minister is aware that the Minister for Education set up a Commission, presided over by Mr. Cussen, the Senior Justice, to inquire into the general question of reformatories and industrial schools, and at one time there was a suggestion that that Commission might go further afield and examine the Borstal question as well. I do not know whether that Commission has reported but up to a month ago the Minister for Education had not received the report. The present situation is that if a girl is arrested and convicted on evidence given before a court of summary jurisdiction, the court frequently finds itself in this difficulty, that it must either send her to prison or release her unconditionally. A girl can be asked before the court decides whether she will be sentenced to imprisonment, if she will undertake to go to a certain home if the Probation of Offenders Act is applied. Even if she goes to such a home, and gets the benefit of the Probation of Offenders Act, she can immediately afterwards break the undertaking and leave the home. The circumstances surrounding these cases are not present to the mind of most people who have not addressed themselves to an investigation of the general conditions governing prison requirements in connection with courts of summary jurisdiction. I am assured by responsible justices that if these girls were taken away from their home surroundings, and placed in the care of prudent people they would get out of the trouble into which they had got and be put back on the right road, and very often after a period of three or four years careful training, could make a decent livelihood, whereas if sent to prison they would be irreparably destroyed. In the alternative if mercy is shown and a girl is released, she may drift to the streets or fall into the hands of people who are her enemies. While the court missionary is there it is not always possible to deal with people of 17, 18 or 19 years of age effectively through the machinery of the court missionary.
At first glance one is reluctant to advocate the establishment of borstals, because they are associated in the mind of the public with all sorts of unpleasant things, but the alternative, in many cases, is jail, when we begin to envisage borstals on their merits. The only place that a borstal has been established for women is in Great Britain where I am informed it has been an unqualified success. The whole object of that institution has been the reform, education, and training of the inmates. Naturally discipline in a borstal is stricter than in an industrial school or a reformatory, because the persons who go there are between 17, 18, or 19 years of age, and are usually much more difficult persons to deal with than children who are incorrigible and are sent to industrial schools and reformatories. It is a mistake to think that a borstal is a punitive institution. Whatever punitive element it may have, its application to women is almost exclusively one of reform, and, as far as reports of the system in Great Britain show, it has been beneficial. Two or three books have been written on the subject and have, I am sure, been brought under the notice of the Minister. The acting Minister may not have perused them, but the results have been beneficial and of great assistance in the administration of law. I should be glad to hear from the Minister whether he could see his way to make a borstal experiment for girls in this country. Naturally, it would cost money, but when it is a choice of sending girls to jail or reforming them, by putting them on the right road again, we should not hesitate to spend whatever money may be necessary to achieve that purpose. I have no doubt once the Government made up its mind that such a borstal was necessary they would not hesitate to come to the House for the money.
I should like to know from the Minister how he feels about the borstal institution for youths. We had two reformatories but the difficulty is that reformatories are part of the Vote of the Minister for Education. I want to submit now that one of two things should be done, either reformatories should be taken under the Department of Justice or the borstal institution put under the Department of Education. In my opinion the reformatories ought to be done away with and we ought to have a system of schools for convicted persons, in which event I think they ought to be administered by the Department of Education. It is a wholly evil system to have divided authority, as we have in respect to reformatories, and further to divide the system of places of detention for young persons makes it extremely difficult to view the whole problem as it ought to be viewed. Frequently you find a young person convicted in a court of summary jurisdiction, and it is a question for the justice to say whether that young person is to be sent to a reformatory or to an industrial school. It is very hard to examine the problem as it ought to be examined with such division of responsibility. We have only one borstal for boys and I should like to hear from the Minister his views as to the success which has attended that institution up to the present. I want to submit that his problem of borstal administration is one of great difficulty and would take all the precautions which devolve upon a Government to take and be no easy task.
I feel that in a country like this where 90 per cent. of the population is Catholic, we ought to consider seriously placing the borstal institution here in charge of a religious order, which deliberately consecrated itself to the mission of reforming youth. There is an order in the Catholic Church founded by Dom Bosco, the Salesians, whose sole vocation in life is looking after that type of persons who ordinarily find their way to a borstal home. Nevertheless, we are bound to recognise that in a borstal or institution of that kind we must provide for our fellow countrymen who do not share our faith. That could be overcome by appointing chaplains from other denominations in institutions of the kind. I am not sure if that would meet the situation. If not, I recognise that the Minister will have special difficulties to overcome, because it would be no remedy for non-Catholic boys because they would be so few that that would be impossible to administer. He might also have one boy in a non-Catholic establishment.
I would like to see one or two Borstal institutions opened in this country, run by the Salesian Fathers, with a purely reformatory purpose and designed to enforce within them the discipline of a strict school, with the object of turning out, at the end of the period of confinement, tradesmen trained in whatever trade they might take up. If that is going to be done, we are up against an extraordinary difficulty which, so far as I am aware, perplexes reformatory administration both here and in Great Britain. If a youth, who would ordinarily be going to serve his apprenticeship, gets himself into trouble, is sent into one of these establishments and has to spend three or four years there, the object is to teach him a trade by which he can earn his living, when the period is finished; but if you teach him a trade, when he comes out the trade unions will not let him work. The trade unions have a case. They say that there are enough people in the trade already and so forth—all the stock arguments—but the fact remains that the State finds itself confronted with the problem of a young person who is in danger of becoming an habitual criminal. They reform him, give him a trade, and when he comes out he is in a difficulty. Now, I see the problem, but what I would like the Minister to do is to ask the trade unionists to meet him, discuss that problem with them and ask them have they any suggestion to make whereby he would be facilitated in turning out these young people, at the end of their period of reform, equipped to earn their livelihood in some other capacity than as a common labourer, because trade unionists, social workers and the Government will all agree that the greatest social problem we have is the unskilled labourer who is so desperately vulnerable in any trade depression that may come upon the country.
This is a matter in which, as I say, comparatively few people take very much interest, because it is not a subject that comes under their attention at very frequent intervals, but, nevertheless it is one, to my mind, of enormous importance. I should like to say a word in connection with the treatment of young persons in the Children's Court. Would that more appropriately arise on the Courts Estimate?
