CORRECTIONS
“Women are vastly more interested than we are in the administration of
the criminal law, in the preservation of law and order, and in the
suppression and punishment of crime,” declared the Hon. Joseph Choate a
few years ago in New York to a large group of women organized to help in
the non-partisan ticket which had Mr. Jerome at its head for district
attorney. Mr. Choate added that Mr. Jerome would owe his election more
to the women than the men. His prediction proved true; but whether the
women who worked so hard for Mr. Jerome were fully satisfied with his
administration is another story.
There are abundant reasons why women take so much interest in the whole
problem of criminal law and correction. A great many crimes are definite
offenses against women and children; their comparative defenselessness
makes them suffer more than men from brutality, neglect, and vices; and
there are certain technical legal requirements of the law that
constitute, in the matter of punishment, sex discriminations which
arouse rebellion on their part.
Perhaps other reasons predominate, however. The interest in public
correction is but a simple and inevitable extension of the function of
private correction which has been generally allotted to women in the
home and in the school. Even over husbands they have been urged by
church and moralists of all kinds to exercise reformatory influences and
their acknowledged sphere of “protection” and “prevention of
delinquency” is evident in the popular explanation of every great man by
the fact that “he had a good mother.”
Again, middle-class women have more leisure than men under modern
conditions of industry, and an army of women choose to spend their
leisure mothering the poor and the friendless or in the prevention of
poverty and dependence. Furthermore women spend more of the world’s
wealth than men spend, and hundreds of well-to-do women are becoming,
with their advancing education and travel and observation, satiated with
material possessions, and are spending their wealth for social
possessions—public health, public ornamentation, public recreation,
protection of girls and boys, infant welfare, and the like. Even the
“sheltered” woman has grown to realize that all children as well as her
own need homes, protection, education, sympathy and justice; that even
self-preservation and self-respect for herself, her husband and her
children are endangered by proximity to vice, crime, neglect, disease,
and immorality.
Moreover, there is no class line in crime or vice and the need of their
correction. No group or class of women has escaped the ravages of these
evils, and thus a feeling of solidarity is evolved in the fight against
the social evil and various forms of delinquency, which is not as yet
developed in the fight against poverty, the sting of which is a class
experience.
If, as Abraham Flexner says, “it is the unskilled daughters of unskilled
men” that become the prey of traffickers in human souls and bodies,
someone pays the money, and as a rule it is not the poor who have that
money. The well-to-do pay, not only with silver and gold, but with pain
and suffering, and with syphilitic and degenerate offspring.
The revelations made by men to mankind and by some women to all women
show how large a part sex plays in crime and vice of all kinds; and
women know well that sex cannot be understood by men alone or protected
by men alone. At least it is certain that one sex has failed as the
arbiter of the destinies of the other, and better results already are in
evidence from the combined occupancy of the field of public corrections
by men and women.
The full import of women’s advance into the field of criminal law and
administration is not yet widely appreciated, even by women themselves,
so gradual and unobtrusive has it been, for the most part. Women began
quietly as minor assistants to the courts of law, it being thought that
the mysteries of that great science were too deep for the feminine mind.
As the law schools and the secrets of the guild were opened to women,
they began to bring into the administration of the law here and there
the spirit of social service. As they acquired the technical equipment,
which was soon discovered to be not half as formidable as the gentlemen
of the powdered wig and lordly mien long represented, women began to
assume even judicial functions.
PROBATION
Protective and probationary work naturally fell to women’s share very
early in the growth of their interest in law enforcement. Even to the
most obtuse masculine mind, it became apparent that women were fitted to
look after women and children held temporarily under the tutelage of the
courts.[46] Even this, however, was a great gain for women. Probation
officers were called into daily consultation with judges, members of the
district attorney’s office, the chief of police and his subordinates,
and the opinions, reports and investigations of women officers were soon
shown to be of the highest value to the judges, attorneys and police.
Hundreds of women thus won by sheer efficiency the respect of those in
charge of law enforcement.
Regular probation officers are called upon to influence children, wives
and husbands by members of their families who feel that a formal trial
and sentence can thus eventually be avoided. All such officers seem
eager to respond to human appeals and their spirit is an indication of
the sincerity of their work. It is not only probation officers who thus
save the courts both time and money and promote individual and social
welfare. While official probation work is a part of the judicial
function, a great deal of unofficial probation work is done which,
through its preventive nature, relieves the court of labor. Teachers and
social workers of various types are doing similar work to that of
probation officers in their attempt to prevent crime and delinquency.
There are numerous probation associations and committees in the United
States. Sometimes these are composed of men alone and again of men and
women.
Probation and parole officers have helpful allies in the “Big Brothers”
and “Big Sisters” now coöperating in many cities to prevent further
lapses from grace on the part of young delinquents or offenders. The
work that the Big Sisters in New York regard of prime importance was the
Little Sisters’ Country Home where girls were sent to build up mentally,
physically and morally before they were placed in private homes or in
employment or again in their families. Such a home was established by
Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt at Little Neck, Long Island, Mrs.
Vanderbilt being the president of the New York Big Sisters, but
unfortunately it soon burned.
The Council of Jewish Women also does a great deal of protective work in
its various sections. Each section is urged by the national council “to
put itself in connection with the police and magistrates’ courts as well
as the county or city attorney’s office and all officers of the
department of justice and to make it known that wherever a Jewish girl
appears or is arraigned, the section stands ready to do whatever may be
necessary to help the accused or her family or the prisoner if she be a
prisoner.” Preventive correctional work is done by this association
along recreational and educational lines.
The New York Society for the Improvement of Urban Conditions among
Negroes is seeking to train colored men and women for probationary work
among their own race. In the past year 464 cases of adult and juvenile
delinquency were handled. “The Committee takes special pains to secure
thorough follow-up work. Each case is treated as one of special
importance in which the worker handling the same considers herself
personally responsible.” A class of girls which the magistrates’ court
assigned to the Association for care and which other associations have
turned over to it is being instructed in gardening by a teacher
furnished by the Board of Education. The Society also tries to reinstate
discharged employees when mere misunderstandings have led to dismissal
and in other deserving cases. It believes in labor organization as an
aid to this security.
So many other forms of social effort are working toward the same goal as
probation that it is impossible to estimate the number engaged in
preventing individuals from becoming public offenders and public
charges. Probation officers do use, and are urged to use further, all
existing organizations which are established to supply fundamental needs
like shelter, food, clothing, employment, medical help, recreation,
education and the rest. Indeed probation officers are dependent upon the
organized efforts to supply those needs—so dependent that probation work
can proceed only in proportion to the effectiveness of those
organizations.
Here then we have a condition of a great public service, one of the
greatest, being still dependent on private charity and effort. Many
elements, like competition, intermittency of help, and incompetency
owing to the volunteer nature of the organization, prevent the widest
usefulness of these allied agencies upon which success in probationary
work so largely depends. For that reason there are probationary as well
as other social workers who begin to emphasize the ideal of public
concentration of social effort in the city administration with the aim
of eliminating waste and securing certainty of support and steadiness of
trained effort. All the forces of the community need to be centrally
organized, it is argued, to meet the requirements of the probationary
system and such central organization must be governmental since the
probation function is a governmental one.
Thus probation work leads into social service in the widest sense. Every
disclosure of the shortcomings of the system of imprisonment shows this.
And it is natural that women who are so keenly concerned in every branch
of social service should give attention to the larger aspects of
probation: the reformation of the individual wrongdoer and the
protection of society. That many women probationary officers are not
content with a narrow view of their functions will be discovered by
anyone who takes the pains to read the discussions at the Fifth Annual
New York Conference of Probation Officers, held in Syracuse, in 1912, at
which, for the first time, there was a special meeting for women to
consider the special problems of women.
At the Fourth Annual Conference of the State Association of Magistrates
in Syracuse, in 1912, Dr. Katharine B. Davis, now commissioner of
corrections of New York City, presented a plan, which she had been
urging, for a state commission into whose care all women delinquents
should be given as soon as convicted and for a more rational use of
existing State institutions for women and the establishment of other
institutions needed to carry out the work of the commission. Miss Julia
O’Connor, a probation officer in the New York Children’s Court,
emphasized the need of dealing with defective children and Miss Gertrude
Grasse, Secretary of the Juvenile Protective Association, brought out
the fact that an inspection of school children for feeble-mindedness
would prevent defectives getting into the courts at all.
Women attended the sessions of this conference of magistrates and were
present at the dinner which formed one of the features of the occasion.
At that dinner the president said: “Ladies and gentlemen: For the first
time in the history of our Association, the chairman has to use the word
‘ladies’ in addressing the gathering, which shows that we have joined
the ranks of the progressives.” The Association of Magistrates firmly
believes in the value of salaried women probation officers in juvenile
courts and for women offenders and makes recommendations constantly to
the courts with reference to their appointment.
POLICE MATRONS
More difficult than the opening of probation work to women has been the
no less obvious task of installing a sufficient number of police
matrons. An examination of the records shows that these important
officers have been established through the efforts of women in all large
western cities and also extensively through the East. The Women’s Prison
Association of New York is seeking to secure police matrons in all the
stations instead of having women dragged about to different stations to
find them. This association was instrumental in getting patrol wagons,
moreover, so that women might not be taken through the streets by
policemen.
Boston has a street matron, Mrs. Thomas Tyler, an officer employed by
the Florence Crittenton Mission, who goes about at night wherever girls
are found in streets, parks, theaters, and cafés and gives help to them
where it is needed. The shelter of the Mission is a valuable aid to her
in her work. Mrs. Tyler is a private policewoman supplementing, not
supplanting, other agencies that work with girls.
The employment of women physicians in courts for women is a necessity
strongly urged by women’s probation and other associations. In some
courts they are already serving in that capacity.
POLICEWOMEN
From these various official positions occupied by women it was only a
step to secure the appointment of women on the regular police force to
aid in the protection of the young. This step was first taken in Los
Angeles, California, when Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells was placed upon the
police staff.
The present administration of Syracuse (1914) has appointed a woman as
police officer as a result of a movement begun over a year ago by women
and approved by the Chamber of Commerce. Mrs. Wells, the police officer
of Los Angeles, aroused the club women of Syracuse to the advantages of
such an official and later, when a moral survey of Syracuse was made
under the chairmanship of Miss Arria Huntington, the advice of Mrs.
Wells was more fully appreciated. The work of the policewoman will
involve the training, tact and ability of a social worker and the women
of Syracuse regard her as a constructive element in the city government.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Women’s Political Union and
the churches assisted in the movement to secure the policewoman. “The
number of cities and towns which have placed women on the police force
with full or partial power is increasing so rapidly that it is no longer
possible to keep count. Chicago, of course, is the recent shining
example. Within the past year San Francisco has changed its charter so
as to admit women to the force without meeting the physical requirements
which apply to men. Three women have already been appointed. Fargo and
Grand Forks, North Dakota; Topeka, Kansas; Ottawa, Illinois; and Kansas
City are other places which have recently intrusted police power to
women.”[47]
In Chicago, Mayor Harrison sent Mrs. Gertrude Howe Britton,
superintendent of the Juvenile Protective Association and a member of
the school board, to visit all the police stations of the city to
instruct the regular force of policemen how best to protect and promote
the welfare of the children on their beats. When one realizes the great
number of arrests of children, one will appreciate that a considerable
portion of the policeman’s time is concerned in the oversight of
children.
Under the caption, “Policewomen’s Efficiency in Danger,” _The Survey_
described the situation which prevailed in Chicago in the spring of
1914:
Some of the most influential clubs and civic organizations of
Chicago have protested vigorously against the action of Chief of
Police Gleason in regard to the city’s twenty policewomen. Under
Second Deputy Superintendent Funckhouser, the civilian police
official, they have proved effective in regulating public dance
halls. Under Deputy Superintendent Schuettler, to whose command they
have been transferred, they are assigned to regular police duty
scattered among various station houses and can no longer be used for
inspection of dance halls or other pieces of work requiring
concerted action.
In making over 1,500 inspections of dance halls, in which they found
many violations of law for which arrests might have been made, the
women officers, being more intent upon prevention than punishment,
determined to make no arrests at first, but to warn the managers and
to win the girls who patronize the dances. This policy has proved
successful in securing obedience to law and observance of propriety.
Such results in the dance halls made the second deputy’s
administration a shining mark for assaults from the underworld just
as his strict censorship of motion pictures has attracted opposition
from those who make and promote films suggestive of evil. Such
enemies of public safety and common decency are believed to have
found aid and comfort at the hands of certain police officials and
of those higher up.
It is feared that the fine _esprit de corps_ of the new women police
will suffer by being forced to conform to the varying standards of
the stations to which they have been assigned.
The ostensible reason for taking them away from Major Funckhouser is
that his use of their service transcends his function as the
civilian deputy and belongs to the active force. But his squad of
male officers is left under his command apparently without fear of
inconsistency, perhaps, because, under the surface, it is not
inconsistent with the purpose dictating the transfer of the women.
The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners announce that the
policewoman recently appointed by them is to be “the city’s mother to
the motherless.”
The work of Miss Roche in Denver, as described by George Creel, in a
recent number of _The Metropolitan_, illustrates the inestimable value
of the addition of women to the police force of cities.
JUVENILE COURTS
Following the example set by Judge Lindsey in Denver, women have been
active in creating the public opinion which has brought about the
creation of juvenile courts in so many cities of the South, as well as
of the North. In Atlanta, the women acted immediately upon the
suggestion of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, in
session there. It is generally conceded in Pennsylvania that the five
bills passed in that state providing for juvenile courts owe their
passage to the agitation and pressure brought to bear by the
Pennsylvania Federation of Women’s Clubs and its enthusiastic president.
In at least eight states it is claimed that the juvenile court system
owes its inception largely to the work of women. Coupled with their
interest in the court has often gone their desire to accompany the court
work with model reform schools for boys and for girls. In Alabama and
other states these were secured by the insistence of women.
In Iowa the Congress of Mothers took the lead for the Juvenile Court
Law, and this congress has pushed steadily in other states for the same
legislation. The Ohio law, passed in 1904, was due in a large measure to
the fact that the juvenile court was a paramount issue of club work in
that state at that time.
Club women feel that they deserve credit also for the St. Louis and
Kansas City Courts. In Michigan, when the law was declared
unconstitutional, women pledged their effort to the securing of a new
bill.
The Civic Club of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, together with the
Civic Committee of the women’s clubs, secured the organization of the
juvenile court of that county. They then sent women and men speakers
into neighboring counties and thus extended the movement. The first
juvenile court was organized and supported entirely by the Club for
several years, until it was legally incorporated and became independent.
The Club also established an industrial and training school for boys, to
solve the question of the care of boys that came before the court.
Detention homes preceded as well as accompanied efforts for juvenile
courts. The Civic Club of Allegheny County secured the proper
enforcement of the Juvenile Court Law in its provision as to rooms of
detention for children under sixteen who are in custody and awaiting
hearing or placement. The same club hopes soon to secure a model
children’s court building along the lines adopted in a few other cities.
By the year 1906 detention homes and a juvenile court law had been
actively taken up by women’s clubs in California and other western
states. Since then many places have been catching up, and these two
issues form part of the propaganda of club women everywhere.
The Municipal League of Utica, composed of men and women, secured
recently an appropriation for a detention home and juvenile court. The
Women’s Civic League, of Meadsville, Pennsylvania, also established a
detention home for juvenile delinquents.
The Woman’s Club, of Orange, New Jersey, through Miss Durgin, made an
investigation at the House of Detention, which was not only the means of
remedying several individual wrongs, but also of supplying the women and
the public generally with knowledge on which to urge the modification of
the prevailing system of dealing with detained boys and girls and also
the establishment of a parental school. Legal steps have been taken for
the parental school, and the present chairman of the Civic Committee of
this club has been named by the Board of Freeholders as one of the Board
of Guardians for the school.
The Chicago Juvenile Court has had a more or less stormy career. Its
whole history is indicative of the spirit and constructive ability of
women. For many years—before 1906—the Chicago Woman’s Club had been
maintaining a school in the Cook County jail. Determined to have the
children separated, they had a bill drawn up, which became a law in
1899, and forms the basis of many of the present juvenile court laws.
Jane Addams, in the _Ladies’ Home Journal_, in 1913, described the
Chicago movement very graphically:
Years ago the residents of Hull House were much distressed over the
boys and girls who were brought into the police stations for petty
offenses and gradually one of the residents gave all of her time to
these unfortunate children. The police justices in the two nearest
stations regularly telephoned her in regard to the first offense
case, and whenever practicable paroled the children in her care.
When the Juvenile Court was established in Chicago she was engaged
as the first probation officer with twenty-one other persons.
For six years this voluntary association called the “Juvenile Court
Committee” paid the probation officers with a well-known educator as
chief, and supported the detention home through which passed each
year twenty-six hundred children who would otherwise have been in
the police stations.
In connection with this home the Children’s Hospital Society
supported a medical clinic through which it was discovered that 90
per cent. of the sad little procession were in need of medical
attention. Gradually all of these things have been taken over by the
county, and now the probation officers, teachers, nurses and doctors
have become public officials while the Juvenile Court with the
detention home and quarters for medical and psychopathic clinics and
for a school under the Chicago Board of Education is housed in the
building erected for its special use out of the public taxes.
All went well through various administrations, but recently a
president of the Board of County Commissioners, realizing that this
developed apparatus of the Juvenile Court would be most valuable in
building up party patronage, began a series of attacks upon the
administration of the Court which, it is evident, will eventually
destroy its usefulness.
The positions of probation officers, formerly occupied by those who
had passed a careful civil service examination, were filled by
sixty-day appointees, one of whom had been a sewer contractor,
another a saloon-keeper. The chief probation officer, after a long
and wearisome trial, was dismissed, having been found guilty of not
doing those things which under the law he had no authority to do;
the physician in charge resigned because a so-called trained nurse
on a sixty-day appointment defied his authority, showing her
ignorance of nursing by wrapping up the infected leg of a boy in a
piece of old newspaper. The Funds to Parents Act, by which the judge
is allowed to give ten dollars a month for the care of a child in
his own home instead of in an institution, offered, of course, a
splendid opportunity for building up a political following among the
poorest people, and only through the action of the wise judge, in
coöperation with various philanthropic societies, was this
beneficent law saved from disaster.
When an aroused public sentiment finally demanded an investigation
of the Juvenile Court and the report of the Committee proved
favorable to the Court, the president of the County Board refused to
have it published and philanthropy, again appearing upon the scene,
paid for its publication from private funds.
It was not to be wondered at that a great many public-spirited women
of Chicago, through their clubs and other organizations, gave of
their time and best efforts last autumn to promote the election of a
wiser man as president of the County Board. They would have been
stupid indeed to sit quietly while their faithful work of years was
being demolished. Of course they were obliged to enter partisan
politics because there is no other way, owing to the American system
of party nominations, to secure the election of any official, good
or bad....
The larger plans for meeting these general needs can only be carried
out with the consent of all the people and the wisdom of such plans
must be submitted to them during a political campaign.
Certainly woman’s rôle of non-partisanship needs to be examined
afresh when a multitude of men and women have come to challenge the
sincerity and moral value of that combination of reverence and
disregard which does not permit a woman to fulfill the traditional
obligations to the community simply because to do this she must
participate in political life.
If women would bear their share in those great social problems which
no nation has yet solved, but which every nation must reduce to
political action if it would hold its place in advancing
civilization, they are fairly forced to choose between standing for
an impossible ideal, quite outside the political field, or upholding
moral standards within political life itself.
The entrance of women into the political combat in Chicago helped to
defeat the régime which was undermining the Juvenile Court. A
temporary setback was threatened by the decision of the state court
that probation officers were not included in the officers under the
civil service law, but until their position under that law could be
strengthened the situation was met by an advisory committee,
appointed by Judge Pinckney, in whose hands lay the appointment of
probation officers, to examine and pass upon all applicants. Louise
De Koven Bowen, president of the Juvenile Protective Association and
of the Chicago Woman’s Club, and Leonora Meder, president of the
Federation of Catholic Women’s Charities, were on this advisory
council.
In summing up the efforts of women for, and their attitude toward,
the Juvenile Court, Julia Lathrop, chief of the Children’s Bureau,
says: “Important as are the immediate services of a Juvenile Court
to the children who are daily brought before it for protection and
guidance, painstaking as are the Court’s methods of ascertaining the
facts which account for a child’s trouble, his family history, his
own physical and mental state, hopeful as are the results of
probation, yet the great primary service of the Court is that it
lifts up the truth and compels us to see that wastage of human life
whose sign is the child in the Court. Heretofore the kindly but
hurried people never saw as a whole what it cannot now avoid
seeing—the sad procession of little children and older brothers and
sisters who for various reasons cannot keep step with the great
company of normal, orderly, protected children.”
WOMEN JUDGES
In view of all their interest in juvenile courts, their labors to
procure their establishment, and their protective care for the children
passing through the courts, it was only natural that women should take
the next step and mount the bench to deal, particularly, with cases
involving children and girls. Fourteen years ago, Judge Lindsey, in
Denver, called a woman to his assistance, in cases pending before him,
and the experiment was eminently successful.
The St. Louis Juvenile Court has two women assistant judges to hear
all cases of girls. The change took effect January 12, 1914, and was
established by Judge Thomas C. Hennings, who appointed to these
positions two women probation officers, Mrs. E. C. Runge and
Catherine R. Dunn. No legislation was necessary to make the
appointments. The girls are heard by these women privately and then
their findings are submitted to him and entered as orders of the
court. Only in cases of disagreement between the two women will the
judge be called upon to hear the case.
St. Louis was the third city to take this step. Chicago and Denver
had already appointed women assistant judges, but the “move” in St.
Louis came quite independently as the direct result of a baffling
case which Judge Hennings had to meet. Four girls were brought
before him, from whom he was unable to get truthful statements even
after searching inquiry. He put two women probation officers at work
on the problem, and they got the facts truthfully from the girls at
once. When Mrs. Runge asked one of the girls, “Why didn’t you tell
this to the judge?” she said, “Why, I couldn’t tell such things to
any man.” When Judge Hennings heard this, he was moved at once to
the decision not to hear any more girls’ cases himself.
Mrs. Runge has been a probation officer in the Juvenile Court six
years and Miss Dunn four. Both of them had previously had long
experience in social work. It is hoped in St. Louis that these
appointments will lead to the appointment of a woman assistant judge
to give her whole time to it. At present these women are still
probation officers.[48]
In 1913, a court for delinquent girls up to the age of twenty-one was
created for Chicago, and Miss Mary Bartelme was appointed judge. As
public guardian of Cook County, Miss Bartelme had had excellent
experience with young people and children in preparation for her work on
the bench. “Miss Bartelme,” said Judge Pinckney recently, “is admirably
fitted for her position. She is an acute and well-trained lawyer, with a
distinctly judicial temperament. Her mind is quick and comprehensive.
She has poise, cool judgment, and a fine, discriminating sense of
justice.”
Judge Bartelme does not believe that the court can solve the question of
delinquency among children. She holds positive opinions on causes, and
would seek preventive measures, like all progressive men and women
today. The causes of delinquency, in girls, according to her ideas, are:
“Growing luxury of the age, man’s loss of chivalry toward girls who
work, immodest fashions in dress set by women of wealth, bad home
environment, inadequate wages, dance halls with bar attachments, saloons
with family entrances, immoral moving-picture shows, improper police
supervision of skating rinks, ice cream parlors, amusement parks, and
other places of amusement, activity of ‘white slave’ agents of
commercialized vice, laws which permit girls to go to work at an
immature age.”
As an auxiliary to the Municipal Court of Chicago, a psychopathic
laboratory is to be established very soon, on the theory that offenders
may have diseased brains and need mental treatment rather than
punishment. Miss Mary R. Campbell, of Milwaukee, who did research work
at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, will be associate director. The laboratory
will be used for all offenders who seem to need study.
In some of the domestic relations courts now in the larger cities, women
are serving as assistant judges.
PRISON INVESTIGATIONS
On the one hand, interested in all that pertains to court procedure and
the judicial function and the prevention of delinquency and crime, women
are, on the other hand, interested in the internal conditions of
correctional institutions of all kinds, and are suggesting remedies and
new experiments all the time.
Many states have their women’s prison associations. Indeed, since the
days of Elizabeth Frye, nearly a century ago in England, women have been
closely associated with prison work. The American name that stands out
in fitting companionship with the name of Elizabeth Frye is that of
Isabel Barrows whose death two years ago laid to rest one of the
foremost prison reformers of the world.
In Chicago, boys in the county jail have been studied by the Juvenile
Protective Association, and a report based on the study is issued by
Mrs. Louise Bowen, who suggests a court for the juvenile adult—the boy
between seventeen and twenty-one years of age, who is too old for the
Juvenile Court—as an effort toward the rehabilitation of boys in the
later stages of adolescence.
In New York, the Women’s Prison Association was organized in 1844 as the
Female Department of the Men’s Prison Association. Members soon
discovered that it existed to raise funds for others to spend. In 1853
they formed a separate society, the Women’s Prison Association, and
founded the Isaac T. Hopper Home. They have brought about many reforms,
such as laws concerning police matrons, patrol wagons, probation
systems, appropriations for Bedford Reformatory, and the State Farm for
women misdemeanants.
The nature of their legislative efforts is indicated by this extract
from their report of 1914:
It was decided last fall, at a special meeting of the Women’s Prison
Association, to try to get five bills through the Legislature. They
failed in toto, but one clause which was incorporated in the
Goldberg Bill abolishing fines for women misdemeanants was a
suggestion made by this Association.
The bills were:
An Act to provide for the appointment of police matrons for duty in
places of amusement.
An Act to change the present method of temporary care of prisoners,
insane, injured, or dangerously ill.
An Act to provide a Board of Managers and a Woman Superintendent for
the State Farm for Women.
An Act to provide a separate Court for women.
An Act to provide a resident physician for Blackwell’s Island.
The Women’s Prison Association, the Salvation Army, and charity
societies often coöperate, and are discussing at present a national
association for the promotion of prisoners’ aid.
Such associations are always deeply interested in the advanced
experimental methods aimed to improve, through scientific study and
observation, the systems of dealing with delinquents in private and
public institutions. They are equally interested in extending present
facilities for the care of these wards of the state.
For example, boys’ home and training schools have been inaugurated in
many places by women. The Women’s Municipal League of New York, in
connection with the Cornell Medical College, established a research and
experimental station to develop the best methods of reaching and helping
deficient and delinquent boys—Hillside Farm School. The technique of a
hospital including clinical study has been introduced into penal
institutions, notably women’s, in the last few years. At the
Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at South Framingham this work is
being well developed under the superintendency of Mrs. Hodder. Dr.
Katharine Davis established a laboratory at Bedford Reformatory, when
she was head of it, for the social and psychological study of the
inmates.
The visitation of jails has been part of the duty assumed by state
federations of clubs as well as other women’s organizations, such as the
Women’s Municipal League of New York. The reform and proper management
of state charitable and penal institutions is taken up by the club women
in state after state. Kentucky clubs are active just at present in
seeking to secure women on the governing boards of public institutions
and proper training for juvenile offenders.
OFFICE HOLDING
Many states do have women on their institutional boards, and women are
superintendents, in some cases, of penal institutions for women, and
generally of reform institutions for women. The application of civil
service reform to these institutions is urged enthusiastically and
earnestly by women members of the civil service reform leagues as well
as indorsed by clubs and other women’s organizations.
A public tribute to woman’s ability in correctional work was made in New
York in 1914 by the appointment of Dr. Katharine B. Davis to the post of
city commissioner of corrections. Dr. Davis is a national figure, owing
to her work at the Bedford Reformatory. In answer to critics of her
appointment, it is agreed that her present work “is not a man’s job nor
a woman’s job; it is a job for one who knows how.” Dr. Davis, it was
decided, knew how. Soon after she entered upon her public duties, Dr.
Davis said: “Everybody knows New York’s prison institutions to be little
better than medieval. I hope to bring them up to something nearer to the
modern standard.... The thing for which I hope most earnestly is light
upon the mental and physical causes leading to the production of the
individual human type which commits crime. Such knowledge would lead us
to prevention.”
Dr. Davis, by virtue of her office, is _ex-officio_ member of the New
York City Board of Inebriety, created and established to maintain a
hospital and industrial colony for inebriates—the first municipal
institution for these unfortunates.
It is not merely in public and official capacity that women are helping
in the improvement of the conditions of correction. They are to be found
among the leading students and original investigators who concern
themselves with prison methods.
REFORMS
One of the most courageous and useful pieces of prison investigation was
that undertaken in 1914 in Auburn prison, New York, by Elizabeth Watson
and Madeleine Doty, a member of the State Commission for Prison Reform,
who voluntarily incarcerated themselves in the prison under disguise to
study at first hand the conditions under which women were confined
there. Both of these women were experienced investigators, the former
having worked with child labor committees for years and the latter, a
lawyer, having worked with the juvenile court. They found bad physical
conditions which they were unable to endure themselves for more than a
few days: bad food, commingling of sick and well, and other physical
evils. They also condemned the lack of classification of youthful and
hardened offenders, the inadequacy of the educational system and the
failure to teach such occupations as would enable the prisoners to be
self-supporting on their release. They deplored the fact that the
prisoners were not allowed to form a single tie—social or economic—that
could help them in attempts to live a normal life later. As a direct
result of the report of Miss Watson and Miss Doty, John B. Riley, State
Superintendent of Prisons, ordered a number of changes to be made in
institutional procedure at that prison: the extension of the
letter-writing privilege; more conversation among prisoners; less
confinement; more water; more reading matter. These reforms were to
apply only to that institution. The superintendent will ask the
legislature, however, for a new prison for women.
Another important investigation—that of the convict labor system—was
supported by the Consumers’ League and carried out by Julian Leavitt,
who showed the effect of this system on the outside labor market as well
as on the prison workers themselves. Men were found to be working at
women’s trades and thus undercutting women workers in the regular field
at the same time that they were learning nothing which would serve them
on their release.
That other women in addition to those in the Consumers’ League have been
aroused to this grave evil is shown in the agitation against it by Kate
Barnard, Commissioner of Charities and Corrections of Oklahoma. Martha
Falconer is working to destroy this system in Maryland’s institutions
for delinquent children.
LEGAL AID
The difficulties that the alien meets in American courts have been
investigated by Frances A. Kellor, managing director of the North
American Civic League for Immigrants, and described in a late number of
the _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_. It
is shown that his fate in smaller communities depends on the character
of the justice of the peace, and that character is not of the highest
order often, owing to the low requirements for the office and the fee
system that prevails. In the higher courts it is frequently difficult
for the immigrant to receive justice because of his ignorance and
inadequate legal defense.
It was to remedy such conditions as those cited by Miss Kellor, for one
thing, that legal aid societies have been formed here and there. The
Legal Aid Society of Chicago is a consolidation of the Bureau of Justice
and the Protective Agency for Women and Children. It is an auxiliary of
the Chicago Woman’s Club. Its objects are: “To assist in securing legal
protection against injustice for those who are unable to protect
themselves; to take cognizance of the workings of existing laws and
methods of procedure and to suggest improvements; and to propose new and
better laws and to make efforts toward securing their enactment.” Women
appear among the officers, directors and counselors as well as among the
financial backers of this society. In 1913, legal aid was given to more
than 15,000 poor people in addition to 2,400 old clients. The
superintendent, Mrs. Wm. Boyes, has to interview about 125 people a day.
She says: “The Society last year investigated 2,700 complaints growing
out of domestic relations. This class of case requires more work than
formerly, as the courts require fuller and fuller investigations. We
have a representative from our Society in the Court of Domestic
Relations all the time. She has handled during the year 473 cases in
that court. The other cases have been advised in the office, and
although they are the most heart-breaking kind, involving the
drunkenness or failure to provide on the part of a husband, or the
insanity of a mother, or custody of a child, we are fortunate in having
on our staff three or four women who are most successful in the
adjustment of these tragedies.”
A plan of the Women’s Committee to give greater publicity to the work of
the Legal Aid Society has been carried on with success in women’s clubs
of Chicago. The superintendent, Mrs. Boyes, does much of the speaking
that this work involves. A young woman lawyer has been placed in the
Boys’ Court to advise those who need defense and are unable to pay
attorney’s fees.
The workers for the Society include many women, as the work is of a
social character with which they are familiar and in which their
interest lies. These workers are akin to probation officers, as the
courts are continually calling upon them to investigate cases. In two
cases these workers are assigned to courts and give their full time
there. Cases are also referred to this Society from other
agencies—police, newspapers, charities, settlements.
The Legal Aid Society has promoted loan shark legislation, among other
reforms. It helps the Wage Loan Society and kindred agencies. Its great
effort now is directed to enlisting the interest of the regular legal
profession in an attempt to make that profession accept social service
in connection with its work, just as hospitals and the medical
profession accept social service in health work. Lawyers should make the
Legal Aid their own work, it is claimed.
A National Alliance of Legal Aid Societies was started in 1912, and this
will doubtless have considerable influence on labor and protective
legislation.
Of wider scope than the legal aid societies are many other associations
concerned in work that is more or less correctional in character. Of
these only a few can be mentioned here.
LEGISLATION
The Juvenile Protective Association, of Chicago, to which reference has
been made, is a very forceful group of women and men working together
for the prevention of juvenile delinquency through legislative and
social means. The objects revealed in its charter are:
1. To organize auxiliary leagues within the boundaries of Cook County.
2. To suppress and prevent conditions and to prosecute persons
contributing to the dependency and delinquency of children.
3. To coöperate with the Juvenile Court, compulsory education
department, state factory inspector, and all other child-helping
agencies.
4. To promote study of child problems and to work to create public
sentiment for the establishment of wholesome, uplifting agencies such as
parks, playgrounds, gymnasiums, free baths, vacation schools, communal
school settlements, etc.
This Association’s vigorous legislative demands and its education of
public opinion are shown by the following proposals: A more adequate
bastardy law making it a crime and extraditable, applying to the
deserted wife as well as to the unmarried woman; a law to make even the
first offense in pandering punishable by a term in the penitentiary and
seduction a felony; an amendment of the marriage law providing for a
period of ten days or two weeks between the issuing of the marriage
license and the ceremony in order to give guardians time to act, the
girl to appear to testify in person to her own age; an amendment to the
adult delinquency law so that a wife can testify against her own husband
in case he is charged with violation of such a law. “As the law stands
at present the man can force his child to do all kinds of disreputable
things—even immoral things—and yet the testimony of the mother, anxious
to save her child, is not admitted. This law should further be amended
so that it will clearly cover all persons even if they are not parents,
if they in any way contribute to the delinquency of the child.
Unfortunately the law is not very clear on that point, and some of the
judges refuse to hold others than parents.”
The Association has made careful studies of theaters, department stores,
and wage conditions in their relations to vice, crime, illegitimacy, and
has definite proposals for remedying evil elements therein. Among these
proposals are those for the regulation of messenger and delivery service
for boys; better regulation of employment agencies, of loan sharks, of
poolrooms; dance halls; separate travelers’ aid for immigrants; liquor
regulation; and inebriate hospitals and farms.
The Woman’s Department of the National Civic Federation took up prison
reform for survey and constructive work during the year 1914 as a
uniform activity for all sections. In New York, conferences on this
subject were held last March by the Metropolitan section at which a
comprehensive legislative program of prison reform and an educational
campaign to promote it were promulgated. The delegates and visitors were
handed circulars of the Prison Association of New York stating why Sing
Sing prison must be abolished and a farm industrial prison established
in its place. A woman’s farm in place of Auburn prison was also
advocated.
PREVENTION
Other women’s associations are giving attention to the problem of
delinquency and its prevention, as these notes from _The American Club
Woman_ indicate: “The City Federation of Clubs of Dallas, Texas, so
changed the street conditions for boys that instead of two-fifths of all
juvenile arrests less than two per cent. now come from the cotton mill
district. Playgrounds largely accomplished this result. A Public Schools
Athletic League now controlled by the Board of Education has helped
also.
“The Atlanta Woman’s Club has been urging the daily papers to refrain
from publishing details of revolting crimes.
“By educating mothers through social centers, the Civic Club of
Philadelphia believes that many juvenile crimes will be averted, because
the mothers will take proper precautions to safeguard their children.
Mrs. J. L. Pickering, chief probation officer of the city, concurs in
this view.
“Mrs. M. Gordon McCouch, a well-known clubwoman, says that properly
supervised playgrounds reduce crime in the neighborhood about one-half,
and that the taxpayers should be interested in them, if only from an
economical standpoint.
“A militant campaign against the illegal sale of liquor has been started
by the clubwomen of San José, Cal. When the police department refused
its coöperation, a committee of women gathered their own evidence.
Already they have done much to improve conditions.
“Prosecutions against violators of the State anti-cigarette law will be
initiated by the Women’s Clubs of Madison, Wis. Cigarette dealers have
been warned of the impending campaign for the enforcement of the law,
also that women detectives have already collected evidence of
violations.
“Juvenile courts, uniform child labor laws, anti-tuberculosis
appropriation, women on school boards, restriction of liquor traffic,
also of cigarettes—these are some of the measures which the West
Virginia clubwomen expect from their legislature this year.”
REFORMATION
“Reforming the convict by means of education as practiced at the
Moundsville penitentiary meets with the unqualified approval and support
of the West Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs. At the annual meeting
in Huntington, recently, a resolution was adopted recommending to the
next session of the legislature that steps be taken to enlarge the rooms
and increase the educational facilities at the prison school so that all
prisoners who wish may avail themselves of the instruction provided. The
present facilities at the school limit the enrollment to 125 men.
Another important resolution passed was that petitioning the legislature
to establish a reformatory for women who are beyond the age limit for
admission to the industrial schools and who are now committed to the
county jails for misdemeanors.
“A reformatory for women is greatly needed in Maine, according to Miss
Mabel Davies of the Prison Reform Association. The Woman’s Council of
Portland indorses the plan and asks all women’s organizations in the
state to join in an effort to secure the legislation necessary to
maintain such an institution.
“A woman member on the new state board of control for penal and
charitable institutions is strongly urged by the New Hampshire
Federation of Women’s Clubs.
“Minnesota women’s clubs are working for a woman’s reformatory and one
of their leaders who has had long experience in prison work insists that
reform can only be a success ‘when society makes good its teaching to
unfortunates that it pays to be good.’”
THE GUARDING OF A CITY
With the advent of the policewoman, the prevention of harm to women and
children comes as a new note in the protection of a city, and brings
this municipal service into harmony with other services where prevention
is the dominating purpose. Gradually policemen are being converted into
social workers with the idea of controlling those forces that lead to
delinquency in all its forms. Policemen too are sometimes sanitary or
housing or poverty inspectors as well as custodians of the criminal and
vicious.
As yet the police department is distinctly removed from feminine
control. Policewomen as a rule do not supplant male police, but are an
additional force established for a specific purpose. In Cleveland,
Mildred Chadsey is head of the sanitary police. In Hunnewell, Kansas,
Mrs. Marshal was appointed by Mrs. Wilson, the mayor, as local police
officer. New York has a woman as deputy sergeant, and Dr. Katharine
Davis, the commissioner of corrections, thinks a woman might make an
excellent police commissioner there; but this radical step has not been
taken.
By their activities, however, women sometimes affect the number and
distribution of the police force: when they agitate for better
patrolling of parks and playgrounds or other poorly protected districts
and when they influence the number of saloon licenses issued.
Women and policemen are each a problem to the other of the deepest
concern. The uncorroborated testimony of a plain-clothes policeman
against the girl or woman whom he arrests on the street is often
accepted in the court whereas corroborative testimony is required in the
case of a man arrested for sexual irregularity. Voteless women strikers
have been grossly mistreated by the police in industrial centers and the
graft exposures have revealed the all too frequent alliance of the
police with the vice interests to the injury of the city’s womanhood.
Women’s entering wedge into the police department, the policewoman, we
venture to predict, will not be withdrawn, but rather will attacks be
made until, through a constructive program, all human life is better
safeguarded in the communities of this country, and the idea of social
service permeates the police departments, as it does other municipal
departments.