Boy Criminals

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 3, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 47.

THE following quotation from the Times-Echo, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, states a problem which the people of that city are not alone in trying to solve. This instance, however, serves to illustrate that not only mature minds are susceptible to hardened sin and crime, but that juveniles are incredibly, precociously developed in lawlessness:

“The problem of what to do with the boy thieves in Eureka Springs remains unsolved still, just as tho hundreds of people had not been counseling together, seeking to find some way to curb the evil in these young degenerates. The parents alone have the power to restrain them, and it might be well for them to confine them at home, even if they have to resort to chains to hold them fast.

“They made the boast that no law can touch them.

“The fathers seem anxious to have something done, but one of the leaders in the gang even cursed his father while at the court-house the other day.

“Our people are aroused, but what to do is the trouble. Only boys between the ages of 14 and 17 years may be sent to the reform school, and then only after a conviction and sentence to the penitentiary. Boys of 12 and less than 14 may be arrested and confined in jail.”

In a later issue of the paper appears the following, under the heading of “Young Boy Thieves Again at Work,” and still later the subsequent paragraphs:

“Constable Gordon and Chief of Police Fain recovered $6.45 yesterday from young boys, the money having been stolen from Mrs. Champ.

“Deputy Constable Claude Pike recovered a lot of things stolen to-day from the Whitcomb cottage, home of Mrs. Mary Birk. The tracks of a barefoot boy made the clue which led to the boys’ capture.

“A report came to us yesterday that an elderly lady was held up and robbed on Main Street by the bad boys who have made themselves so obnoxious to every decent person in Eureka Springs of late.”