CHILDREN’S COURTS
No work on boy-training would be complete without a reference to an
instrumentality of recent origin for reclaiming the wayward boy which
marks a forward step in the solution of the child problem--the juvenile
court. The most notable change in American jurisprudence in the last
decade has been the establishment and development of such courts for
child saving and the prevention of crime. Before the advent of these
courts, all children charged with the commission of offenses were tried
in criminal and police courts as criminals and with criminals. While
awaiting trial, they were confined in jail with thieves, confidence
men, beggars, drunkards, burglars, hold-up men, and murderers, because
the state had made no provision for their separate detention pending
trial.
Under such conditions the child acquired through association and
conversation the viewpoint of the criminal as well as an education in
crime which he would put into practice after his release. Amid such
surroundings were laid the foundations for the careers of many of the
criminals who now crowd our jails and penitentiaries to overflowing.
Speaking of such conditions, Judge Richard S. Tuthill of the Children’s
Court of Chicago said, “The State had educated innocent children in
crime and the harvest was great.” A thoughtful police official once
remarked of a boy in such surroundings, “He is on a toboggan, the lower
end of which rests in hell.”
The gradual recognition, by an aroused public conscience, of the evil
results of such a system put into operation the forces which in many
states have abolished the old plan of regarding and punishing the child
as a criminal and substituted the principle that the wayward child is
a dependent whom the state, like a wise parent, will restrain from
evil and educate in the paths leading to good citizenship, through
the agency of the juvenile court and its efficient aid, the probation
officer.
We now recognize the inability of the child to commit a crime, judged
by the standards applicable to the adult criminal, for the reason
that his mental and moral concepts have not yet reached the stage of
development which can distinguish between right and wrong with the
clearness of the adult. What in the adult with full consciousness of
the import and effects of his acts would be trespass, assault and
battery, larceny, and burglary, are in the child varied forms of
moral disease which it is the state’s business to cure--not punish. It
is conceded that it would be monstrous and brutal to punish a child
for contracting measles, scarlet fever, or whooping cough, and it is
equally monstrous for the state to punish the same child before he
attains moral maturity, for contracting a moral disease which manifests
itself in acts which are crimes only when committed by adults with full
comprehension of their moral significance.
Again we revert for our guidance to the child’s viewpoint which in many
instances is closely akin to that of the untutored savage. During a
summer which I spent in the wilderness of the great woods of the North
I encountered an Indian who habitually killed deer out of season and
in violation of the laws of the state in which he lived. When I asked
him why he did not obey the law, he replied, “God made deer for Indian
before white man made book [the law].” From his viewpoint, he was not
guilty of wrongdoing in killing deer to supply food for his family;
from the viewpoint of the law he was a lawbreaker.
The underlying principle of the operation of children’s courts is
the recognition of the fact that the offender under sixteen years
of age should not be judged or punished by adult standards; that he
should not be arrested, indicted, convicted, imprisoned, or punished
as a criminal. Evidence of the offense is not regarded as proof of
criminality but rather as light on the question as to how the state,
standing _in loco parentis_, can best exercise its parental function
in the formation of the embryo character needed to make the boy a good
citizen.
The child is not punished to make an example of him, nor to reform
him--but to form him. Reformation implies the change of a character
already formed. The child’s character is in an evolutionary period,
susceptible to formation but not to reformation. The criminal power
of the state metes out punishment for reformation and as a deterrent
to other persons who may be tempted to violate the law. The parental
authority of the state is exercised to train the boy to be good and to
remove him from the vicious environments which chain him to delinquency.
Boys are naturally good--not bad. A study of the records of juvenile
offenders will show that there are four dominant causes of delinquency,
stated here in the order of their importance, for none of which is the
boy himself directly responsible, namely: environment, poor training
or lack of training, the bad example of parents, and heredity. I do
not subscribe to the theory of the “innate cussedness” of boys. The
“innate cussedness” of parents, in the last analysis, is usually the
propelling factor in juvenile delinquency.
The establishment of children’s courts has been significant in the
awakening of the public mind to the state’s duty toward those of its
children who from parental neglect or otherwise are delinquent or
dependent. This moral awakening to the consciousness of governmental
responsibility for the child has manifested itself in many states in
the enactment of laws for the establishment of juvenile courts, and
in others in the revivification and enforcement of sleeping statutes
designed to meet the juvenile problem.
But the state’s duty does not end with the placing of laws on the
statute books; it still remains for them to be made effective by a
judge who not only knows the law but who is inspired by a sympathetic
understanding of child problems and child-nature; one who is able to
ingratiate himself into the confidence of the boy and thereby become
his friend, helper, and co-worker in his salvation. A knowledge of
adolescent psychology will be of great help in getting the juvenile
viewpoint which is so essential for a solution of the problems of
wayward children. In a report by the Honorable Samuel J. Barrows,
Commissioner for the United States on the International Prison
Commission, he has this to say concerning the fitness of a judge of
such court: “The personality of the judge, as well as that of the
probation officer, is an element of vast importance in the success
of any juvenile court. Such a court cannot be run on automatic or
mechanical methods. Let it be reduced to a mere technical mechanism
of rules and procedure and it will fail altogether. A firm yet
sympathetic, tactful man of magnetic personality, as well as of legal
knowledge, who understands boys and can secure their confidence is the
man needed for this work; and some such men have already been called to
this position.”
To the same effect is the testimony of Judge Stubbs of the Juvenile
Court of Indianapolis as to the necessity of securing the offender’s
confidence: “It is the personal touch that does it. I have often
observed that if I sat on a high platform behind a high desk, such as
we had in our city court, with the boy on the prisoner’s bench some
distance away, that my words had little effect on him; but if I could
get close enough to him to put my hand on his head or shoulder, or my
arm around him, in nearly every such case I could get his confidence.”
The probation system and probation officers are necessary and
effective elements in the operation of juvenile courts. The function
of the probation officer is to investigate the facts before trial, and
after probation to visit the child in his home; keep in close touch
with his conduct and school attendance; admonish or cite for punishment
parents who in any way have contributed to the child’s delinquency;
advise and encourage the child and report conditions to the court.
Most courts have one or more paid probation officers, the others being
volunteers. One Indiana court was fortunate in having the assistance of
two hundred volunteer probation officers who responded in turn whenever
needed to assist in the work of probation and parole. The effectiveness
of a juvenile court is measured by the ability, efficiency, and
character of its judge and probation officers.
Judge Ben B. Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver, a leading
authority on this subject, said:
“Of course a juvenile-court system, while under any average
circumstance, is bound to be a step in advance of the old methods
of the criminal law in dealing with children, yet its permanent
and more complete success depends upon the individuals to whom its
execution is intrusted. We have heard a great deal about probation
officers. Upon the character, tact, skill and intelligence of the
judge and his assistants--the probation officers--largely depends the
success of the court. Without personal touch, influence, patience,
encouragement of the child, and attempt to arouse all the nobler and
better impulses, and to subdue and suppress the discords of the soul,
complete success is not likely to be attained. The law itself is of
small importance compared to these elements. There is no higher or more
important position of a public character in the community than that
of a probation officer, unless it be the judge of the juvenile court.
Perhaps this might illy come from one occupying that position, yet I
have no apology to make for the statement. I am sure the statement
can be appreciated by few more than by one who occupied so important
a position. As this work progresses and its wonderful results are
constantly observed, the force of the statement impresses itself more
and more upon the mind of the judge of the juvenile court.”
The same authority gives the following résumé of his method of dealing
with the boys brought within the jurisdiction of his court: “In my
opinion the best way to reform a boy waywardly disposed is first to
understand him. You have got to get inside of him and see through
his eyes, understand his motives, have sympathy and patience with
his faults, just as far as you can, remembering that more can be
accomplished through love than by any other method. But I would not
have you misunderstand me. It has been well said that love without
justice is sentiment and weakness! We must be just. There is no justice
without love and yet we can judge in the light of both, forgetting
not firmness and the right of others. We cannot be just without the
exercise of patience and a plentiful supply of those higher qualities
of the soul which must be brought to bear if we are able to call out
the noblest impulses and the highest and most energetic forces of
a child. The juvenile court and the probation system simply supply
the machinery for doing this where heretofore such machinery was not
permitted by the law. We pursued the blind, brutal, incongruous methods
of recognizing a child as an irresponsible being in dealing with its
dollars and cents, and denied it the right of contracting even while
it was a minor, whereas when it came to offending against the law,
when its moral welfare, its very soul, was involved, we denied its
irresponsibility and placed it upon the same plane and in the same
category with an adult.”
Supplemental to the juvenile law is the adult delinquency law, now
on the statute books of certain states, which makes it a misdemeanor
for any parent or other person to encourage, cause, or by any act
contribute to the delinquency of a child, punishable by a fine not to
exceed $1,000 or by imprisonment not to exceed one year or by both
such fine and imprisonment; and the juvenile court is given exclusive
jurisdiction over such offenders. Such statutes are a complete
recognition of parental responsibility for many cases of juvenile
wrongdoing, such as visiting saloons to obtain beer for parents;
stealing coal from railroad yards; stealing brasses or appliances from
cars; breaking open cars and stealing goods, usually edibles, which are
taken home and used either with the tacit or express consent of the
parents; and many other thefts the fruits of which are shared directly
or indirectly by the parents.
From this class of depredations the boy graduates into burglary and
highway robbery. The adult delinquency law punishes such parents
and drives home the consciousness of their responsibility to their
children. Practically all delinquent boys who appear in our juvenile
courts have one or both parents delinquent--delinquent either in the
active, direct sense stated above, or in the passive, indirect sense of
indifference or ignorance whereby their sons do not receive the moral
training which is their birthright.
The result of the new method of boy-control now used by children’s
courts is to reduce the number of commitments to industrial schools,
reform schools, and other similar agencies of detention and correction
from seventy-five to approximately ten in each hundred. Where the
environment of home life is bad, the court does not hesitate to remove
the child from his home to a place in which he will not be handicapped
by such influence.
Our juvenile courts are at once a standing reproach to thoughtless,
indifferent, ignorant, and wayward parents and a beacon light for the
guidance of the unhappy children of such parents to useful citizenship.
They inspire the admiration, sympathy, and coöperation of every lover
of children who sees in them the future of our great republic.