a far graver
degree of odium from her own sex; it is much more difficult for her to
get into the way of earning an honest livelihood, and a woman who has
once been shut up within bolts and bars is much more likely to be
irretrievably lost than a man. If it is important to keep men as much
as possible out of prison, it is doubly necessary to keep out women;
but it is, at the same time, a much harder thing to accomplish. This
arises from the fact that the great bulk of female offenders enter the
criminal arena after the age of twenty-one, and can only be dealt with
by a sentence of imprisonment. If females began crime at an earlier
period of life, it would be possible to send them to Reformatories or
Industrial Schools, and a fair hope of ultimately saving them would
still remain; but as this is impossible with grown-up persons, prison
is the only alternative, and it is after imprisonment is over that a
woman begins to recognise the terrible social penalties it has
involved.

[29] Ages and proportion per cent. of males and females committed
in 1889-90.

Ages Males Females

Under 12 years 0.2 0.0
12 years and under 16 3.1 1.1
16 years and under 21 17.5 10.7
21 years and under 30 28.4 31.4
30 years and under 40 23.9 28.6
40 years and under 50 14.2 17.5
50 years and under 60 6.4 6.8
60 years and above 6.2 3.8
Age not ascertained 0.1 0.1

The proportion of offenders under sixteen years of age to the total
local prison population of England and Wales, has decreased in a
remarkable way within the last twenty or thirty years. The proportion
of offenders under sixteen committed to prison between 1857-66,
amounted to six and three-quarters per cent. of the prison population,
and if we go back behind that period it was higher still. In fact,
during the first quarter of the present century, the extent and
ramifications of juvenile crime had almost reduced statesmen to
despair. But the spread of the Reformatory system and the introduction
more recently of Industrial and Truant Schools for children who have
just drifted, or are fast drifting, into criminal courses, has had a
remarkable effect in diminishing the juvenile population of our
p