MEMORIAL.

To the Honorable,

the General Assembly of Maryland:

The undersigned, members of the Grand Jury of the Crim-
inal Court of Baltimore city, respectfully represent to your
Honorable Body that, in the discharge of their duties, many
cases of offenses on the part of negro children, from the
age of ten to fifteen yeari, are brought before us which do
not seem to be of sufficient magnitude to demand punishment
by imprisonment in the Penitentiary, and which, because of
the absence of any other place of detention, are dismissed.
Yet experience has shown that the effects of imprisonment
with older criminals, and the absence of all punishment,
generally are, to harden these childrenin guilt, and to embol-
den them to the commission of other crimes—leading to
repeated imprisonments.

We believe that a remedy which would go far towards cur-
ing this great evil could be found by the establishment of an
institution similar to the House of Refuge, with the same
powers to receive and hold negro children as is possessed by
that institution.

We are satisfied that the future welfare of these children,
and consequently also the interests of the community, would
be promoted by such action as we have indicated.

And to show to your Honoroble Body that we are not alone,
in the opinions here expressed, we beg leave to present the
following extracts from the Report of the Grand Jury for
January term of 1866 to the Criminal Court of Baltimore :

" We have found confined in the jail quite a number of
young negroes of both sexes between the ages of ten and fif-
teen years. Most of them are committed by magistrates upon
trivial charges, and after an imprisonment of from ten to
thirty days are discharged. Others are held upon charges
which require the investigation of this body; of this class
many are discharged, not from the want of legal evidence
of guilt, but from a belief in the minds of the jurors that
from their youth and ignorance of right from wrong, they
are not morally accountable to the law for their actions. But