"Do you not think all this is bad training for boys? It must show them very clearly that it is a mere game of chance between the lawyers with a life for stakes. The best player wins. They must lose all sense of the seriousness of crime to see it treated in this way."
"Upon the other hand," said he, "they learn, if they stay about criminal courts much, that not one in ten who is brought here escapes conviction, and not one in ten who is once convicted, fails to be convicted and sent up over and over again. Once a criminal, always a criminal. If they get fetched here once they might as well throw up the sponge."
"Is it so bad as that?" I asked. He nodded. "Is there not something wrong with the penal institutions then?" I queried.
"You told me a while ago," I explained, "that almost all first crimes or convictions were of boys under seventeen years of age. Now you say that not one in ten brought here, accused, escapes conviction, and not one in ten of these fails to be convicted over and over again. Now it seems to me that a boy of that age ought not to be a hopeless case even if he has been guilty of one crime; yet practically he is convicted for life if found guilty of larceny, we will say. Is there not food for reflection in that?"
"I do' know," he responded, "mebby. If anybody wanted to reflect. I guess most boys that hang around here don't spend none too much time reflectin' though--till _after_ they get sent up. They get more time for it then," he added, dryly.
"Another thing that impresses me as strange," I went on, "is the apparent determination of the prosecutor to convict even where there is a very wide question as to the degree of guilt."
"I don't see anything queer in that. He's human. He likes to beat the other lawyer. Why, did you know that the prosecutor you heard just now is cousin to a lord? His first cousin married Lord--------."
This was said with a good deal of pride and a sort of proprietary interest in both the lord and the fortunate prosecutor. I failed to grasp just its connection with the question in point to which I returned.
"But the public prosecutor is not, as I understand it, hired to convict but to represent the 'people,' one of whom is the accused. Now, is the State interested in convictions only--does it employ a man to see that its citizens are found guilty of crime, or is it to see that justice is done and the facts arrived at in the interest of _all_ the people, including the accused?"