rmatory
Schools of Great Britain (excluding Ireland) was in round numbers six
thousand (5,984). These must be added to the total juvenile prison
population in order to form a true conception of the extent of
juvenile crime. It is almost certain that if these young people were
not in Reformatories they would be in prisons, for, in almost the same
proportion as the Reformatory and Industrial School inmates have
increased, the juvenile prison population has decreased.

To the population of the Reformatory Schools must also be added a
large percentage of the Industrial School population. Since the year
1864, the number of boys and girls in Industrial and Truant Schools
has gone on steadily increasing. In that year the inmates amounted to
1,608; twenty-four years afterwards, that is to say, in 1888, the
number of children in Great Britain in Industrial and Truant Schools
amounted to 21,426.[30] It is true that a considerable proportion of
these children were not sent to the schools on account of having
committed crime; at the same time it has to be remembered that nearly
all of them were on the way to it, and would in all probability have
become criminals had the State left them alone for a year or two
longer. At the time of their committal the children we are now dealing
with were either children who had been found begging, or who were
wandering about without a settled home, or who were found destitute,
or who had a parent in gaol, or who lived in the company of female
criminals, prostitutes, and thieves. Such children may not actually
have come within the clutches of the criminal law, but it is
sufficient to look for a moment at the surroundings they had lived in
to see that this was only a question of time. We must, therefore, add
those children, along with the Reformatory population, to the number
of juveniles in gaol if we wish to form a proper estimate of the
extent of juvenile delinquency. If this is done we arrive at the
conclusion that the criminal and semi-criminal juvenile population is
at the present time more than 25,000 strong in England and Wales
alone; if Scotland be included it is more than 30,000 strong. These
figures are enough to show that it is only compulsory detention in
State establishments which keeps down the numbers of juvenile
offenders; and there can be little doubt, if the inmates of these
institutions were let loose upon the country, juveniles would very
soon constitute seven, eight, or, perha