This is not only an enormity, but it is also a great absurdity; for it ultimately fills our prisons with weaklings, and assures the nation a continuous prison population.
It seems very extraordinary that prison and prison alone should be considered the one and only place suitable for the afflicted children of the poor when they break any law, but so it is.
The moral hump is tolerated, even patronised in reformative institutions, but the physical hump, never! Cunning, dishonesty and rascality generally may be tolerated, but feebleness of mind or infirmity of body never! All through our penal administration and prison discipline this principle prevails, and is strictly acted upon.
Let me put it briefly; prison, and prison only, is the one and only place for afflicted youth when it happens to break one or the other of our laws.
We have numerous institutions, half penal and half educative, that exist absolutely for the purpose of receiving homeless, wayward or criminally inclined youthful delinquents.
These institutions, I say, although kept going from public funds, refuse, absolutely refuse, to give training to any youthful delinquent who suffers from physical infirmity or mental weakness.
Think of it again! all youthful delinquents suffering from any infirmity of body or mind, are refused reformative treatment or training in all publicly supported institutions established for delinquent youth.
He may be a thief, but if he is a hunchback they will have none of him.
He may be a danger to other children, if he has fits he will not be received.

He may rob the tills of small shopkeepers, but if he is lame, half-blind, has heart disease, or if his brain is not sound and his body strong, if he has lost a hand, got a wooden leg, if he suffers from any disease or deprivation, prison, and prison only, is the place for him.
So to prison the afflicted one goes if over fourteen; if under fourteen back to his home, to graduate in due time for prison.
This is no exaggeration, it is a true picture, and this procedure has gone on till our prisons have become filled with broken and hopeless humanity.
Could any one ever suggest a more disastrous course than this?
Why, decency, pity, or just a grain of common sense ought to teach us, and would teach us if we thought for a moment, that it is not only wrong but supremely foolish.
For there is a very close connection between neglected infirmity, mental or physical, and crime, a connection that ought to be considered, and few questions demand more instant attention.

Yet no question is more persistently avoided and shelved by responsible authorities, for no means of dealing with the defective in mind or body when they commit offences against the law, other than by short terms of useless imprisonment, have at present been attempted or suggested.

It seems strange that in Christianised, scientised England such procedure should continue even for a day, but continue it does, and to-day it seems as little likely to be altered as it was twenty years ago.

Let me then charge it upon our authorities that they are responsible for perpetuating this great and cruel wrong.