Family Government and Juvenile Crime
Of the 2,974 persons arrested by the Oakland police during the year just passed, 418 were under eighteen years of age. In the police court a few mornings ago, when the judge pronounced sentence upon two youngsters, he said:— "It is the hardest duty I have to do—this sentencing of boyish misdemeanants to imprisonment in the public jail. But if I show mercy, and suspend sentence, the lads take advantage of the leniency, to commit other and greater crimes. I know that it will do these lads no good to send them to jail, but society must be protected from their depredations." This is a sad state of things, and indicates a great lack of family government, without which all other government is not much of a success. As the Tribune says: "Unfortunately the spanking power is not vested in the officers, and parents, in whom it is vested, will rarely exercise it." Solomon knew what he was talking about when he said: "He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes."