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U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
JAMES J. DAVIS, Secretary
CHILDREN’S BUREAU
GRACE ABBOTT. Chief
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE
ON JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDSHELD
UNDER
T H E A U S P IC E S O F T H E
U. S. CHILDREN’S BUREAU AND THE
NATIONAL PROBATION ASSOCIATION
Milw aukee , W isconsin , June
2 1 -2 2 , 1921
Bureau Publication N o . 9 7
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1922
36 .3-1
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CONTENTS.
T ,
Letter o f transmittal___________ _______________________________________________
Page.
5
FIRST SESSION.
Introductory statement: Julia C. Lathrop_______________________________ ___
7
The contribution o f the juvenile court to the child-welfare movement:
C. C. Carstens___ :____________________________ _______________/ ___•___________
g
The fundamental principles o f the juvenile court and its part in future
community programs for child w elfare: Judge Charles W . Hoffman____
Study of the individual child as a preliminary to treatment: William
Healy, M. D ____ ___________ _____ _____ ' { _____ ______________________ ________
13
23
SECOND SESSION.
The field of the juvenile court: Judge Edward Schoen_____________________ 32-44
General discussion________________________________ ______________________
37
Where does the responsibility o f the court begin?______ _____________ _______44-54
Judge Henry S. Hulbert__:_______ %_________ ______________________ _____
44
Judge Kathryp Sellers_____________________________________ ________ •_____
43
General discussion__________________ ;_____________________;_____ ■
____ ___
, qq
H ow far can court procedure be socialized without impairing individual
rights?---------------------------------- ------------ _ _ _ _ _ _ ------------ ------------------------------------55_73
Judge Edward F. W aite________________ :____________________ _____________
55
____
32
Judge Samuel D. Levy________________ _________ ___ x _ __________
Miriam .Van W aters, Ph. D _______________ ______________________ _________
04
General discussion___________________ ,____ ________________________________
7q
THIRD SESSION.
The organization of county juvenile courts in a rural S ta te: Mrs. Clarence
A. Johnson____________________ ________ ___ ____________________________________75-87
General discussion_________________ ____ __________ _________ $____ ________
Adjusting treatment to individual needs_________________________i______ _
87-102
Louis N. Robinson, Ph. D ______ _____________________ ;____________________
g7
Jesse P. Smith__________________________ _l_i___________________•___ ‘________
gg
General discussion_________________ 1_______ ___ t__________________________
gg
Committee on juvenile-court standards.
General discussion_______________
4Q7
Index______________ ______________ _____________________________________
3
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LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.
U. S. D epartment of L abor,
C hildren ’ s B ureau ,
Washington, October 29,1921.
S ir : I transmit herewith a report o f the Proceedings of the Con
ference on Juvenile-Court Standards held under the auspices o f the
Children’s Bufeau and the National Probation Association, M il
waukee, Wis., June 21-22,1921.
The conference brought together judges and probation officers, as
well as representatives of social agencies interested in the funda
mental problems o f the juvenile court, and important differences of
, opinion appeared in the course o f the discussion. A continuing com
mittee nominated by the conference and including judges, probation
officers, the secretary o f the National Probation Association, and the
secretary of a State probation commission, specialists in the psycho
logical and psychiatric study o f delinquents, and individuals with
special experience in private child-caring agencies, has been ap
pointed as an advisory committee to the bureau. Miss Emma O.
Lundberg, the director o f thé social-service division of the bureau,
will act as secretary o f the committee. It is hoped that through the
joint efforts o f the committee and the bureau some progress may be
made in the development of standards, particularly in the adminis
trative aspects o f juvenile-court work.
Respectfully submitted.
G race A bbott, Chief.
Hon. J ames J. D avis,
Secretary of Labor.
5
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE
JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
ON
FIRST SESSION—JUNE 21—EVENING.
The Conference on Juvenile-Court Standards was opened by the
Hon. Herbert C. Parsons, president o f the National Probation Asso
ciation, with a brief statement o f the purpose o f this conference
under the joint auspices o f the Children’s Bureau o f the United
States Department o f Labor and the National Probation Association.
He then introduced the chairman o f the first session.
C h a ir m a n : H on. M ichael S. S heridan , Judge of the Juvenile
Court of Milwaukee County, TVis.
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT.
J u l i a C . L a t h e o p , Chief of the United States Children’s Bureau.
A conference like this offers certain marked advantages to a Gov
ernment bureau. First, it brings together the stimulating, free
activity o f a voluntary organization and the traditionally calm pla
cidity o f governmental method. Second, it subjects us to each other’s
candid criticism in a friendly atmosphere that is good for the Gov
ernment bureau, at least. Third, and most valuable, it exemplifies
and encourages cooperation between public and private agencies.
And this cooperation—intelligent and disinterested—must exist if
the public which supports us by taxes or by voluntary contributions
is to secure the services it is endeavoring to purchase from us both.
We may hope that what is described as the “ Government stroke ”
may be quickened by our deliberations, and, on the other hand, that
you may feel more inclined to trust your cargoes to craft which can
not turn turtle nor stop moving forward, however slow the rate of
progress.
The history o f the juvenile-court movement in the United States
affords many examples of continuous cooperation between public
and private agencies. Thus, in the Illinois juvenile-court law of
1899 no provision was made for the payment of probation officers,
and the court in Chicago was able to operate only because public
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JU V E N IL E -C O U R T STANDARDS.
spirited individuals, the organizations which urged the law, and
other agencies which necessarily brought children into the court or
which were intrusted with children by the court all joined in placing
probation officers at the service of the judge. Gradually the tax
payers have assumed their rightful duty of paying for the probation
service, without which the juvenile court is ineffective.
The earliest mothers’ pension laws lodged administration in the
juvenile-court judges, who had urged for their wards legislative
relief from the poverty which was at the bottom of the delinquency.
The Illinois law allowed no money for paying administrative offi
cers, and again thé law operated only because citizens and organiza
tions came forward and placed under the judge’s direction a com
mittee o f experts on family rehabilitation, later supplemented by a
competent family budget authority. At present the Illinois law per
mits payment for this subsidiary juvenile-court work. Similarly,
the history of the mental examination of juvenile-court children be
gan when a woman o f extraordinary vision gave the psychiatric wis
dom o f Dr. Healy to the Cook County (Chicago) Juvenile Court.
I have confined myself to the one court whose development I know
personally; the instance could be duplicated many times and as to
other services. But this voluntary stimulus and cooperation is
needed in all our courts and doubtless always will be needed, because
the juvenile court, although, formally speaking, 22 years old, is really
very young. It is experimental, disturbing to the authority of legal
precedents, endeavors to weigh social values unknown to penal codes,
uses social measures, and it therefore requires the informed sympathy
o f social students.
I need not point out the danger o f emphasizing the social aspects
of the juvenile court at the expense o f its legal authority. The day
is long past when a judge could say good-humoredly, “ What you
need is a humanitarian, and not a judge.” Men o f such high legal
standing have self-sacrificingly accepted the wearing duties of juve
nile-court judges, that no intelligent observer would now be found to
justify lack of legal training in a juvenile-court judge. We agree that
the more the juvenile court departs from the old penal method, the
more its bench needs legal ability o f a high order, with a clear sense
o f law as an instrument for perfecting social justice.
O f well-equipped courts, of fine judges, our country has splendid
examples—but that is not enough. Have we prevailing and accessi
ble for the children and youth o f our country who are brought into
courts those provisions for their protection, guidance, or restraint
which have failed them elsewhere?
Recent studies have shown clearly that this question must be
answered in the negative. We have laws providing juvenile courts
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in 46 States and providing juvenile probation in all the States save
one; but our performance lags behind our laws. The juvenile court is
22 years o ld ; we can never revert from its idea. Is if Dot possible to
awaken fresh interest in a nation-wide realization o f its ideal o f
justice? I f judges and laity could join in-a committee to study
practicable recommendations for juvenile-court standards, would not
much public interest be awakened in its work and a genuine advance
be made in juvenile-court provision in those areas where it is now
lacking ?
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE JUVENILE COURT TO THE CHILDWELFARE MOVEMENT.
C . C . C a r s t e n s , Director of the Child-Welfare League of America.
There thas been an increasing inclination during the last few
years to study the juvenile court as an institution and to attempt to
define its proper function and its place in relation to the other childwelfare agencies o f the community. In many cities and States
juvenile courts have not been established except as the result o f a
struggle; but on the whole the movement to establish them has
had a tremendous sentimental backing in many places and has
suffered therefrom. That backing and that influence have largely
disappeared. The sentimental period of the history o f the juvenile
court is over. It is appropriate at this time, two decades after the
first court was established, to study it in the light o f its development,
properly estimate its contributions to the child-welfare movement,
learn its shortcomings, and endeavor to determine— out of 20 years’
experience— what services a juvenile court o f the present day ought
to render to its community and what the trend o f its development
should be.
Distinctive Features of a Juvenile Court.
First. A juvenile court that is fully entitled to be called a juvenile
court must have a man or woman as its judge who, besides being
reasonably well versed in the law, has a deep and abiding interest
in the care and protection o f children and in the improvement of his
fellow men. A juvenile court may have all the mechanism and
auxiliary services, so that it would rank in those respects with the
best; but i f the judge has not the time for the stupidest parent,
and patience with the meanest youngster, he is probably out o f place
on the juvenile-court bench. For this reason the juvenile-court
work should take a considerable part o f the time that the judge
spends on the bench, so that the services of the juvenile court may
become his major interest.
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JU V E N IL E -C O U R T STANDARDS.
Second. The juvenile court needs a specialized service for proba
tion. Men and women both are needed where the services o f more
than one probation officer are required. I f only one, a woman would
probably meet the needs better than a man, as both girls and
younger boys can be taken care o f by a woman satisfactorily, while
girls should not be placed on probation to a man. Where probation
officers are used for investigation and a considerable staff is required
for all the services o f the court, it is advantageous to recognize that
the making o f a social investigation is a specialty, and certain
probation officers might very well be assigned to that specialty if
they are particularly well fitted for such service. Some of the most
capable probation officers have not been able to make a good social
investigation.
Third. A court that is worthy of the name should be so organ
ized and equipped that there is privacy for its hearings and no pub
licity with regard to the facts brought out in the hearing,'either in
newspapers or through attendance at court. It is entirely suitable
that both child and parent appearing before the court should beimpressed by the dignity o f the proceedings and the demeanor of all
the court’s attendants; but pomp, uniforms, and talking to the gal
lery should have no place in the proceedings.
Fourth. The court worthy of its name has the important task of
finding its place with reference to the other children’s and social
agencies in the community, and o f maintaining such relations that
it becomes the bulwark for establishing family responsibility for the
care o f its children throughout the community. Here and there one
still finds a court which considers itself the only children’s agency
o f any importance in the community, and which attempts to do
everything but does nothing particularly well—not even the adminis
tering of justice to those who have the misfortune to be brought
before it. For a temporary period a court may now and then have
to undertake various forms of administrative service that have no
close relation to the judicial function, but it seems best that such
undertakings should be temporary and that the court should be the
first to assist in the establishment of agencies best equipped to under
take the nonjudicial functions in a community. Ambition on the
part o f judge or probation officer is sometimes to blame for excur
sions into the general field of child welfare.
The Distinctive Services of the Juvenile Court.
Most o f the juvenile courts have been organized on the chancery
basis. Even where the juvenile court has existed as a modification
o f the criminal court, the chancery idea of protection in dealing with
a child has been foremost, and this, to my mind, has been the great
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contribution o f the juvenile court to the child-welfare movement.
Implicit in this protection is not only the protection o f his person,
but also the protection o f his relationships to his parents and to the
other members o f his family, and o f his rights to training, education,
and proper development.
When judges began to give patient thought to the child problems
that came before them, they very soon learned that one o f the great
faults o f the previous court system had been that the child’s point of
view had rarely been taken into consideration, and that the child
had therefore had small opportunity to be understood. There were
also revealed limitations in his physical and mental development
which led to even greater misunderstandings. Out of this has grown
a movement which has come to be of the greatest importance to the
child. No juvenile court at present deems itself well equipped with
out medical and psychological service for at least half its cases. It
is no longer sufficient to determine whether the child is feeble
minded, backward, or psychopathic; but a study o f the child’s per
sonality, his outlook on life, his attitude toward important questions
o f behavior must be ascertained. The establishment of such service
is comparatively in its infancy, but it has already affected in a
powerful way the equipment and the work o f many other child
helping agencies. Where the psychiatric service understands the
court and the possibilities of service inherent in the other social
agencies o f the community, there comes about a teamwork between
the three groups that is of the greatest significance in modem child
helping work.
Juvenile courts have been a conservative force for the maintenance
o f family life and family responsibility. Before the day o f the
juvenile court family relations were often broken, without an ade
quate examination o f the facts and without a persistent effort to
conserve the family tie. It was doubtless equally true that children
were left in demoralizing circumstances and surroundings, to their
undoing, because o f the legal limitations imposed upon the court’s
action. The juvenile-court movement has on the whole encouraged
a careful analysis o f the facts in each case, a recognition of the
spiritual power o f good family life, an effort to reshape and improve
the family whenever it seemed reasonably possible, and such team
work among the social agencies as will eliminate waste and result
in a fair amount of success. There are communities where the
court, through its recognition o f case work, has held children’s as
well as other social agencies to their responsibilities in a more sub
stantial way.
The analysis of the hereditary and environmental factors in each
case and the case-work process in dealing with each family problem
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are scientific methods. They have revealed to the court, and through,
the court to the community, the failures o f the community in safe
guarding childhood. They have led to a discovery of causal factors
that has been a stimulus for community action in many lines. The
truancy problem as dealt with in prejuvenile-court days—and, alas,
even by juvenile courts in certain jurisdictions at the present time—
was an excellent illustration of what a physician would call the
treatment o f disease through the treatment of symptoms. An intelli
gent juvenile court has helped both social worker and educator to
find that truancy indicated family neglect, child delinquency or
defectiveness, or very frequently a maladjustment o f teacher or
curriculum to the child. An intelligent juvenile court has found
remedial physical and mental problems, and has led the community
to equip itself with better medical and psychological service. The
probation officers in many juvenile courts have been the first to recog
nize the value o f directed play, or supervised amusements and recrea
tion, and of a well-managed boys’ club as a preventive against de
linquency.
A juvenile court stands at a peculiarly strategic place in the com
munity’s scheme of child welfare. In it are registered the results
o f family and community breakdowns in the preservation o f a whole
some family life. Without necessitating any undue amount of time
or money, the tabulation and summarizing of the elements entering
into each case will quickly inform a judge who is interested to find
not only the solution in each individual case but also the flagrant
weaknesses in a community’s organization. Without being unduly
alarmed over every indication of serious delinquency, he should be
en rapport with the other social agencies, so that there may come
out o f their joint experience plans for greater protection and care
o f the community’s children.
The Juvenile Court is Still on Trial.
Few o f the many juvenile courts in the land have as yet con
tributed all or most o f these services to the child-welfare movement.
The juvenile court has suffered in the house o f its friends. They
have too often been satisfied with only part o f the necessary equip
ment, and have stupidly vaunted themselves in the thought that they
had a juvenile court, but the name has no virtue in it unless it is
attached to an institution o f substance. It is for this reason that
the juvenile court is still on the defensive in many communities, for
it is making bricks without straw. The juvenile-court movement
where it is adequately exemplified is the best expression o f a com
munity’s interest in the protection of its children and the prevention
o f their falling into adult crime. The friends of the juvenile court
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must seek for certain recognized standards o f organization and
procedure and organize an educational campaign, so that this hon
orable and promising institution may come to be better standardized
and a more efficient instrument for the carrying out o f its task.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE JUVENILE COURT AND
ITS PART IN FUTURE COMMUNITY PROGRAMS FOR CHILD
WELFARE.
Hon.
C harles W. H
Judge of the Hamilton County Court of Domestic
Relations, Cincinnati, Ohio.
offm an,
In a recent contribution to the literature on juvenile courts, Judge
Edward F. Waite, o f Minnesota, stated that “ it would be interesting
to consider in detail the wonderful advance in the legal status of
disadvantaged children during the nineteenth century.” 1 The judgie
assumes as a fact that the legal status o f unfortunate children has
improved, and in this assumption we concur. The most important
consideration, however, taking it for granted that the laws of the last
century and the organization of juvenile courts have changed the
legal status o f children, is that o f determining whether this change
has brought the delinquent child any relief.
From the earlier days of English history there have been persistent
attempts to save offending children by the mere force o f a statute,
and the history of law discloses that in many cases such attempts
have failed.
In the reign o f ^Ethelstan there was a statute that embodied many
o f the beneficent provisions o f our present-day children’s codes, but
there are few records o f any children who were accorded the privi
lege o f this and subsequent statutes, “ It is recorded in the Year
Books o f Edward I that judgment for burglary was spared to a boy
of twelve years (Year Book 32 Edw. I ) . Yet in the seventeenth
century John Dean, being o f the age o f eight years, was hanged at
Abingdon for arson, and in 1833 the death sentence was pronounced
upon a child who broke a pane of glass and stole twopennyworth of
paint.” 2
It would indeed be interesting, as Judge Waite suggested, to trace
the legal status of children during the nineteenth century. We
would find that while the law in New Jersey in 1828 professed great
solicitude for Ihe welfare of children, a boy 13 years o f age was
hanged there for an offense committed when 12 years o f age. It
1 Waite, Edward F . : The Origin and Development of the Minnesota Juvenile C ou rt;
address before the Minnesota Association of Probate Judges, Jan. 15, 1920. Minnesota
State Board o f Control, 1920, p. 1.
3 Garnett, W. H. Stuart: Children and the Law. John Murray, London. 1911 pp. lay,
147.
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would be found on further investigation that numberless children in
this country were tried as ordinary criminals and imprisoned in
reformatories and penitentiaries. About the middle o f the last cen
tury or earlier, the so-called “ houses o f refuge ” were founded, the
harsh and cruel management and discipline o f which were in direct
contradiction to the benevolent implications o f the name. There
were but few o f these prisons—for such they may be called—that
were in any way different from that which existed in Cincinnati
until the early years o f the twentieth century. Stone cells and iron
bars were characteristic o f practically all o f them, and finally the
name “ house o f refuge ” itself signified in the public mind all that
the term “ prison ” implies. These institutions that the law so gener
ously and mercifully provided for the correction and reformation o f
delinquent children were no more than camouflaged penitentiaries in
which children were incarcerated as a means o f punishment.
Previous to 1899, notwithstanding the advanced legal status, un
numbered thousands o f delinquent children perished either for want
o f a proper administration of the law or because of the revengeful
and vindictive attitude, born of primitive instincts, against the law
breaker, even though the offender be a little child. Whatever the
advance in the legal status in the nineteenth century may have accom-'
plished for the dependent and neglected child, it failed in its pur
pose, if it had any definite purpose, in saving or protecting delinquent
children.
It is said that the year 1899 marked a new era in child welfare. It
was then that the juvenile courts o f Denver and Chicago were or
ganized. Permit me again to quote Judge Waite, who says that the
acts authorizing the organization of these courts were no more than
the affirmation or incorporating into the statute law of the State
principles already well grounded in English and American jurispru
dence.3 It has been reported by this association that since 1899 every
State in the Union except two has enacted a juvenile-court law. It
should, however, be stated that the juvenile-court laws o f many
States are not so comprehensive as those o f Illinois, and because of
these limitations their usefulness is proportionately reduced—some
times is minimum.
It was the evident purpose o f the founders o f the first juvenile
courts to save, to redeem, and to protect every delinquent child for
the benefit o f himself and o f society and the State. -In most o f the
codes this idea seems to be incorporated in both the letter and the
spirit of the law. After two decades this exalted conception of a>
great law— the greatest, as one juvenile-court judge has said, that has
* Waite, Edward F . : The Origin and Development of the Minnesota Juvenile Court, p. 3.
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been enacted by any civilized people since Magna Charta was wrung
from King John on the plains of Runnymede—has not been realized
i in its fullness.
Children whom it was intended to take out o f the pale o f the crimi
nal law and save by all the means that education, religion, science,
and medicine could command have been subjected to treatment and
conditions but little different from those of the last century. The
juvenile court is now, by law, an established institution; yet in one
State two boys were recently imprisoned in a row o f cells filled with
adult felons and murderers, and in full view of the boys a scaffold
was erected on which to hang the murderers. In another State, two
children of tender years were placed in a cell in a lonely district, with
a guard pacing before the cell door. Children within the last five
years have been placed in death cells waiting for their execution,
only to be finally pardoned by a high-minded governor. The country
but recently has been aroused to the barbarity and savagery o f it all
by the trial o f an 11-year-old boy for first-degree murder.
But we need not cite these extreme cases only. The Federal Chil
dren’s Bureau, in its report o f a survey of children’s courts in the
United States, gives us an instance o f a judge stating that in one
* year he sent 65 children to jail, 40 to a chain gang, 12 to a reforma
tory, 1 to an orphanage, and further that during the same year he
fined 156.4 With few if any exceptions, in every State children of
juvenile-court age, sometimes numbering into the hundreds, are
found in such penal institutions as the reformatory and peniten
tiary. The industrial schools, often semipenal institutions both in
conception and management, are filled even now to overflowing; and
for want o f detention homes in hundreds of jurisdictions children
when arrested are placed in jail until the hearing. What has the
advanced legal status accomplished for children thus situated? Is
it not clear that the juvenile courts are not functioning?
W hy have the juvenile courts failed to provide the machinery
necessary for the redemption o f offending children? Is the cause
o f this default inherent in the juvenile-court law, or is it to be found
in administration?
It is our contention that the cause o f so large a percentage of the
courts not functioning is because of a misconception, willful or
otherwise, o f the purpose of these institutions, not only on the part
o f laymen but o f lawyers and judges as well. It may be found on
final investigation that the greater part o f the responsibility for this
condition o f affairs must rest on the legalists.
*U. S. Children’ s Bureau: Courts in the United States Hearing Children’s Cases;
results o f a questionnaire study covering the year 1918, by Evelina Belden. Bureau
publication No. 65, Dependent, defective, and delinquent classes series No. 8. Washing
ton, D. C., 1920, p. 42.
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JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
The courts o f last resort in at least a score o f States have definitely,
interpreted and defined the law. We need cite but two cases, as
they are illustrative o f practically all the others.
In the case of Januszewski (196 Federal, 123), Judge Sater said:
The purpose of the statute is to save minors under the age of 17 years from
prosecution and conviction on charges o f misdemeanors and crimes and to re
lieve them from the consequent stigma attaching thereto; to guard and protect
them against themselves and evil-minded persons surrounding th em ; to protect
and train them physically, mentally, and morally. It seeks to benefit not only
the child but the community also by surrounding the child with better and
more elevating influences and training it in all that counts for good citizenship
and usefulness as a member o f society. Under it the State, which through its
appropriate organs is the guardian of the children within its borders, assumes
the1custody of the child, imposes wholesome restraints, and performs parental
duties, and at a time when the child is not entitled either by the laws of nature
or of the State to absolute freedom, but is subjected to the restraint and cus
tody of a natural or legally constituted guardian to whom it owes obedience and
subjection. It is o f the same nature as statutes which authorize compulsory
education of children, the binding of them out during minority, the appoint
ment of guardians and trustees to take charge of the property o f those who
are incapable of managing their own affairs, the confinement o f the insane, and
the like. The welfare o f society requires and justifies such enactments. The
statute is neither criminal nor penal in its nature, but an administrative police
regulation.
,
. ' ~N'
In the opinion in the case o f Commonwealth v. Fisher (213 Penn.
Reports, 62 Atlantic, 198), Justice Brown says:
To save a child from becoming a criminal or from continuing in a career of
crime, to end in maturer years in public punishment and disgrace, the legisla
ture surely may provide for the salvation of such a child, if its parents or
guardian be unable or unwilling to do so, by bringing it into one of the courts
o f the State without any process at all, for the purpose o f subjecting it to the
State’s guardianship and protection.
In view o f these decisions, expressly stating that the objective is
saving rather than destroying children and that trials in the ordinary
meaning o f that term have no place in a juvenile court, let us turn
for a moment to the administration o f the juvenile-court law in a
State in which these decisions are in point. In 1918, 22 children
from one county of a southern State were sent by the juvenile-court
judge to the county workhouse—“ a sort of half-way station between
the detention home and the house of reform.” One hundred and five
children from 21 counties in this State were sent to the house o f re
form, but the conditions at this institution were such that the grand
jury of one county “ turned in a severe indictment o f the manage
ment, concluding with a recommendation to the governor that h
either pardon or immediately transfer to the State penitentiary at
least 150 white men and 50 colored men who do not belong in fhis
corrective school for children.” Nine children were committed to
county jails, 3 o f them after having been transferred as “ felons”
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from the county to the circuit court ; 77 children were fined, to 55 o f
whom, being unable to pay, the fine meant imprisonment in the county
jail. In addition, there were a number o f children held in jail pend
ing hearing or transfer to an institution. A ll this occurred in a
State in which it is plainly written in the juvenile-court laws that no
child under 14 years shall be imprisoned in a jail or “ any place where
he can come in contact with criminal adults.” The penalty for the
violation o f this provision is $100, but there is no one to defend the
child, and he is lost and forgotten. In the State cited there are other
means employed for saving a child, among which is that o f whip
ping.5 A survey o f conditions in other States would reveal that the
treatment o f children differs from this in degree only. It can not be
said that the improved legal status of children has resulted in benefit
ing in great measure the delinquent ¡child.
So long as the juvenile-court laws o f practically all the States are
ignored, conditions such as I have described will persist. It can not
be urged in defense o f the failure o f those who preside over the
juvenile courts that the necessary facilities for caring for delinquent
children have not been provided. It is the duty and business o f the
courts to enforce the law and to administer relief to every delinquent
child. We can not too strongly emphasize the doctrine that it is the
duty o f the judge—the legal duty, if you please—to save the child.
It is not possible to dispose of a child wisely until all the social,
pathological, and psychological factors that contributed to its de
linquency are known, and no judge or anyone associated with the
juvenile court is justified in disposing o f children until all that
science dictates has been brought to bear upon the case.
In the study of juvenile courts made by the Federal Children’s
Bureau, few courts were reported which had connected with them reg
ular clinics for the physical and mental examination o f the children,
only 7 per cent reporting mental clinics.6 I f the court has no facili
ties for conducting these examinations it is then its duty as one o f
the social agencies o f the community to reveal this defect to the com
munity. But it has been urged and strongly asserted in discussions
and criticisms of the juvenile codes that the summary hearing of
children’s cases, the investigations as to social conditions, and the
psychological and physical examinations tend toward the “ institu
tionalization o f the courts,” and that lawyers and judges rightfully
resent this process. Objection is made to the judge being the “ com
plaining witness, the prosecutor, the jury, and thé executioner.” 7
e Child Welfare in Kentucky; an inquiry by the National Child Labor Committee for the
Kentucky Child-Labor Association and the State Board of Health, under the direction of
Edward N. Clopper, Ph. D., 1919, pp. 235-238. Also Ky. Stat., 1915, s. 331e, 4.
6 U. S. Children’s Bureau: Courts in the United Slates Hearing Children’s Cases, p. 14.
7 Baker, Herbert M .: “ The court and the delinquent child,” in The American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. XXVI (September, 1920), p. 178.
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* In reply to this it may be said in the words o f Judge Edward F.
Waite, as found in the February, 1921, number of the Minnesota
Law Review, that—
One need not be a profound student of affairs to have observed that in the
last quarter century the emphasis of public opinion, as expressed in statutes
and decisions o f the courts, has made a notable shift away from preservation
o f the rights of private property as the chief object of the law, and toward
securing and safeguarding the welfare of people— people as individuals and as
grouped in the community. This process o f humanizing and socializing the
law and its administration has gone on more rapidly in substantive than in
adjective law, probably because the influence of the conservative legal profession
has been most effective in the field o f procedure. But, beginning with the
juvenile court in 1899, one can trace the process of socialization in the latter
field expressing itself in the wide and rapid spread of juvenile courts and
the development o f courts of conciliation and small claims, morals courts,
traffic courts, and courts of domestic 'relations; in quasi-judicial instrumentali
ties, such as rate commissions, industrial-accident commissions, minimum-wage
commissions, the so-called “ court of industrial relations ” in Kansas, and in
agencies for securing justice for the poor, such as legal aid bureaus, private
and municipal, and the public defender, and in the increasing use by criminal
courts of scientific aids and organized probation.
He adds:
The basic ideas of the juvenile court are not n ew ; they are as old as chancery..
The new things that happened in Chicago in 1899 were the working out of these
ideas to their logical conclusions as legal concepts and the creation of an
agency to make them effective; that is, an organized and socialized piece of
judicial machinery. The child in need of the guardianship o f the State,
whether dependent, neglected, or delinquent, was cared for in a single court
instead of several, as before, with adequate administrative aid at its command.
Prof. Eugene A. Gilmore, quoting Dean Pound, of Harvard, in the
Journal of the American Bar Association, states:
There is a traditional mode or habit of thinking upon legal questions which
becomes a part of the mental equipment of a lawyer. The traditional principles
arrived at by this method of thinking are taken to be fundamental principles
of all law. It is assumed that the only measure of critique of legal rules is an
ideal development of these traditional principles. All questions are looked at
from the standpoint of this received juristic tradition. Subconsciously all new
elements of the law are molded thereto. Legislation at variance with these tra
ditions is viewed with indifference and suspicion, if not with hostility. Per
sistency by law teachers in training men in this mode of juristic thinking and in
teaching these traditional principles as universals of all law makes for a rigid
body of law out of harmony with prevailing notions concerning social interests
and social progress. Moreover, this method of teaching is responsible for the
attitude of our law toward legislation, which attitude wholly ignores the im
perative element and treats the law as if it consisted of the traditional element
only. Further, our traditional law is individualistic and regards its end as the
protection of individual interests; whereas, the center of modern juristic theory
is no longer the individual; it is society.
The Chicago Bar Association did not conceive that the juvenile-court act of
Illinois was “ repugnant to every tenet of the science of the law,” 8 as is evidenced
* Idem.
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by their report in 1899, in which it is asserted that “ its fundamental idea is
that the State must step in and exercise guardianship over a child found under
such adverse social or individual conditions as develop crime. It proposes a
plan whereby he may be treated not as a criminal or one legally charged with
crime, but as a ward of the State, to receive practically the care, custody, and
discipline that are accorded to the neglected and dependent child, and which,
as the act states, * shall approximate as nearly as may be that which should be
given by its parents.’ ”
The true principle upon which the juvenile court is constructed is
well stated, in the article cited, in the following criticism o f the court
and its w ork: “ That the child who breaks a law is not a lawbreaker,
that crime is not a crime when committed by a juvenile, and that so
far as children are concerned things are not at all what they seem.”
I f this principle were recognized and applied in the juvenile courts,
we would not find judges, lawyers, and others discussing the courts
in terms o f criminal law. It would be observed that the charge that
the court prejudges, before the trial, “ the guilt or innocence” of a
child is not true. We would find also that the statement that the
judge is the “ complaining witness, the prosecutor, the jury, and the
executioner ” in children’s cases has no foundation whatever in law.
It is just this conception o f the juvenile-court law that has prevented
the saving o f multitudes o f children. It has perpetuated the terms
“ guilty,” “ not guilty,” “ arraignment,” “ sentence,” etc. It has sur
rounded the court with sheriffs, policemen, bailiffs. It has encour
aged the doctrine that the laymen without any information whatever
as to the causes of child delinquency may advise the judge as to what
disposition should be made of a child or as to the cause o f the child’s
delinquency.
The juvenile court has a place in the community as a child-saving
institution. Its work can not be wholly taken over by other agencies,
as children afflicted with conduct disorders, because of the peculiar
nature o f the ailment, will come in the first instance in contact with
the law and therefore with the courts. But when the child comes into
court by any process, or, as said by the Supreme Court o f Pennsyl
vania, without any process at all, it must be realized that that child
is there for relief and salvation, and not for the purpose o f being
tried for any offense. To afford the relief necessary will require the
combined efforts o f all the social organizations at the command of
the court. I f it be alleged that the court lacks these facilities for ac
complishing the work, this is no justification or excuse for disposing
o f the child, without a protest on the part of the court, by sending
'-him to a reformatory or an industrial school. We have no right to
ignore the law and imprison a child or place a stigma o f criminality
upon him because o f the want o f the means to dispose of him other
wise. An adult criminal can not be deprived o f the benefits of the
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safeguards which the Constitution and laws have placed about him,
and if a judge were to attempt to do so he would be impeached.
Offending children, however, numbering into the thousands, are de
prived o f that most precious right of being protected and shielded
from the harsh and cruel methods that characterize the ordinary
criminal procedure and saved from a life of crime, for a life of
usefulness and happiness, and few—very few—utter a protest.
It has been well urged that some agency, preferably the schools,
may be able to handle the problem of delinquency more efficiently
than the court, but it must be remembered that there will always be
the necessity for some legal adjudication o f the rights of the parents
and some procedure authorizing the administration o f the relief
needed. In thousands o f cases it is possible for the juvenile court
to show that the child of abnormal physical or mental structure has
been in the public schools for seven or eight years, and his ab
normalities have not been detected. In numberless instances it can
be demonstrated by the juvenile court that the egocentric boy,
because o f the failure o f the schools to ascertain his abnormal
tendencies, has been permitted to pass through the grades, only to be
finally engulfed in the stream o f delinquency. It is said by those
whom we consider to be experts in psychology and psychiatry that \
in dealing with the egocentric individual it is necessary to determine
the fault at an early date, otherwise the case may become hopeless.
It can be shown, as some courts have demonstrated, that from 10 to
25 per cent o f the children who appear in the court for offenses o f
various kinds are feeble-minded.
I f the courts were specially organized and represented to their
respective communities that a large percentage o f the delinquent
children were feeble-minded or of the types I have mentioned, it
would not be long until educators and all interested in child welfare
would realize that it is within the province o f the schools so to
educate and train this abnormal and feeble-minded class that they
may not finally become victims of delinquency— which, in fact, means
destruction.
It is not possible to transfer the work o f the juvenile court to the
schools or to any other administrative agency until the juvenile court
itself demonstrates to the public the necessity for such a transfer.No juvenile court that is disposing o f children without any
physical or mental examination—imprisoning them, whipping them,
or disposing o f them in any way as criminals—is o f any particular
consequence or benefit to the community; in other words, it is just,
such courts as these which “ excite the contempt of lawyers and
social workers and laymen.” I repeat that the lives of hundreds of
thousands of children in this country will be jeopardized until the
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juvenile-court laws are enforced. The question is no longer as to
the necessity of disposing o f children as criminals for the purpose of
? protecting life or property or society. The law expressly forbids
such treatment or disposition.
It is immaterial what a priori opinions those who preside over the
juvenile courts may have in reference to delinquency, crime, and
criminals, so far as the law is concerned. The law is to the effect
that it is our business to save the child, and no process o f reasoning
can relieve us of this duty. The legal mind is not always infallible
in its deductions. In England, when there were 160 offenses pun
ishable by death, it was declared by Lord Chancellor Eldon, in his
speech in the House of Lords when Sir Samuel Romilly proposed the
mitigation of this cruel system o f the law, “ that the very existence
o f society depended upon the power to deal out the punishment of
death for these offenses.” It may be that in some instances the legal
mind conceives that life, liberty, and property can only be secured
and society benefited by harsh, repressive measures in respect to the
delinquency o f children. It may be, too, that this conception, wholly
unwarranted under the law, has perpetuated a system of punishment
by imprisonment and whipping that has undermined the juvenile
courts. I f the delinquent children of our country are to be saved,
the doctrine must be disseminated that the juvenile court exists not
for the purpose o f trying children as criminals but for the purpose
o f saving them, and that no judge is keeping faith in his jurisdiction
who does not insist upon the child receiving the benefit o f the law.
This will not be accomplished by the distribution by mail of pam
phlets and tracts only. There must be some means devised to obtain
personal contact with the courts and to bring directly to the public
the object and purpose o f the juvenile-court acts and the existence of
the present knowledge and information in respect to child welfare.
I f we expect to “ sell this idea,” it is necessary that we have sales
men who are willing to go into every community in which children
are imprisoned and whipped and advertise the fact that this pro
cedure is not warranted by the law; that it is inhuman in all its
tendencies, and that by reason thereof unnumbered thousands of
children perish every year.
There is no hope for the betterment o f conditions in respect to
delinquent children until the juvenile courts demonstrate that it is
necessary in dealing with the problem o f delinquency that every
social-service organization o f the community and State be enlisted
in the cause.
The schools unquestionably can finally take over the great part of
the work, but other organizations must assist in cases that can not
be handled by the schools. An intensive study o f the individual
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child must be made in the first instance by the juvenile court. In
some cases the child can be referred to the schools. In other cases,
such as the psychopaths, it may be found necessary to provide special
ized treatment in an institution or in a home. It is, of course, not
possible to save every child. It is never presumed that the physician
can save everyone who is i l l ; neither can it be presumed that it is
within the power o f those who deal with conduct disorders to save
everyone thus afflicted.
We suggest that hereafter in all jurisdictions every child afflicted
with conduct disorders that may eventually lead him again to the
courts be given mental and physical examinations by the court, and
that the combined social organizations o f the district in which the
court is located provide for the care o f that child. I f it be said that
in the rural communities there are no social organizations that can
take over the work o f caring for delinquent children and administer
ing proper treatment, then it is the first duty o f the juvenile court
to advise the public o f their respective districts that contrary to law
children are permitted to perish for lack o f facilities for caring for
them.
It should be noted, however, in pleading lack o f facilities, that in
States having juvenile-court codes provision is made for the placing
o f children on probation and for the appointment o f probation
officers, yet there is probably no State in which there are not some
courts that have no probation service and have not even exercised
their right to appoint probation officers.
In Ohio eight counties have no probation officers. It may be ob
served, further, that in many courts having probation the service'
is o f little consequence, as the officers are appointed without partic
ular regard to their especial qualifications for the work.
It was said by Edwin J. Cooley in his address to the National
Probation Association last year— an address that ranks among the
best statements of the principles o f probation—that “ definite qualifi
cations as to character, ability, and training should be required o f
those who seek to become probation officers. Merit and fitness alone
should be the basis o f appointment.” No hospital would countenance
for a moment the employment of nurses who had had absolutely no
experience or knowledge o f the profession o f nursing. I f a pro
fessional nurse is not always demanded, a so-called practical nurse is
at least the representative of the minimum standard. Children
afflicted with conduct disorders have been placed in the charge of
men and women with no knowledge whatever o f the principles o f —
child welfare or o f the ailments with which the child may be suffer
ing. Cooley declares that adequate probation requires “ that same
painstaking study of the structure o f human personality that the
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physician makes o f the human body; that same study o f the func
tions o f the human spirit that the physician makes o f the human
conduct, character, and personality that the physicians make o f the
toxicology and the hygiene o f the human body.”
Judged by this standard, there are but few of us who are rendering
the service demanded.
There must be no further temporizing or compromising on this
problem. Delinquency is a disease shadowing and destroying the
lives of more children than any other disease known to man. Chil
dren afflicted with this disease must no longer be sacrificed on the
altars o f vengeance, vindictiveness, and hate, such as has always
characterized our emotions against the lawbreakers. Science has
proclaimed that these children are “ not guilty” o f any offense.
Principles that the great sociologist Lester F. Ward laid down in
respect to human behavior have been corroborated by the research
and laboratory work o f Dr. William Healy, as set forth in his epochmaking book, “ The Individual Delinquent.” I f these principles are
not applied in the juvenile court, the result will be .that in the future,
as in the past, distressed children, broken in body and mind, must
Travel along the trail of tears that leads finally to destruction.
This association can render no greater service to this^ country and
its children than that of sending its emissaries into every community
and demanding in the name of the law and humanity that the juve
nile-court laws be recognized and that the barbaric and savage
treatment given children in the past must cease.
STUDY OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHILD AS A PRELIMINARY TO
TREATMENT.
W
il l ia m
H
ealy,
M . D ., Director of the Judge Baker Foundation, Boston, Mass.
Theoretical generalizations in our field are not as much in vogue
as they were 20 or even 10 years ago. To be sure, every now and
again argument arises concerning some old questions, such as
whether heredity or environment is really responsible for delin
quency, as if either could be gauged by itself, as if there were not all
sorts o f admixtures o f reactions of myriad features of the environ
ment on each distinctive personality, and, above all, as if there was
no such thing as the inner mental life, the mainspring and the reguator of conduct tendencies.
In legal circles frank theorizing about the foundations o f criminal
law, about forms o f punishment, the age and fact of responsibility,
and so on, is certainly not the fashion nowadays, although many
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would still consider them matters for discussion. All such theoriz
ings and anthropological dialectics in general seem learned. The
heredity versus environment argumentation is echoed in the news
papers, for instance, as representative of learning in socio-legal
affairs.
But our getting away from such bare generalities, even if they
are “ philosophical ”—in some quarters rapidly getting away, in
others hardly at all—marks, unless I am greatly mistaken, the first
stages o f the evolution o f a science that deeply concerns us all, a
science o f conduct.
This leaving the earlier attempt at classification and deduction
before thorough studies o f any sort o f the material or phenomena
under discussion have been made has its analogy in the development
o f other sciences dealing with simpler material than human beings.
I need mention only how botany for long was in the naming and
classification and theorizing period, and how then came the mod
ern idea of the closer analysis o f material, of processes, of genetic
processes, whether o f health or disease. Yes, part of the work of
botanists, I would remind you for the sake o f this analogy, is termed
plant behavior. And out of this and the experimentation with en
vironment and growth that always is necessary for such study have
come the conquests that have set the agriculture and plant indus
tries of to-day very far ahead of anything that any civilization has
known before.
And shall we not remind ourselves once more, for the sake of our
own encouragement, if we would consider what might be done if a
similar effort was made for the study o f human beings in their be
havior reactions, how great an expenditure o f time and money there
has been, comparatively, for some o f these other sciences ? The study
o f plant life, for instance, has many laboratories and many college
courses devoted to it (with psychology, the study o f human behavior,
often relegated to attics); it has a large share o f the effort o f one
department of our National Government with a splendidly working
system o f agencies and experiment stations (and no national recog
nition whatever in the way of study or attempt to diminish the great
excrescence on our social life, American delinquency and crim e);
and there is the fine private support given by such institutions as
the Carnegie Foundation, which willingly sends men to the wildest
desert regions to observe the environmental reactions o f a plant
growing there (with not a single psychological institute yet estab
lished in this country).
A ll these, by comparison, are indicators o f what is not being done
in our field, and o f what might be done and perhaps will be done
when we realize that the most important concern o f civilization is the
conduct o f human beings.
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We have not neglected the great names; for help in solving the
( problems o f delinquency we did long ago earnestly look to the works
^of the thinkers. There were the theories of the theologians— original
sin, possession by the devil, temptation by the same hypothetical
individual, or possibly the trial of this world to determine the fitness
for a next life. There were the philosophers with conceptions o f the
rational and responsible and self-guided man, as against the sharply
discriminated irrational man drawn by the eddies and side currents
of this life’s ebb and flow ; and from philosophers we learned about
evolutionary ethics, and so on. There were the many sociological
theories o f delinquency— economic, parasitic, failure o f adaptation.
And then we absorbed the biological ideas that were multiplying fast
two or three decades ago—with heredity, degeneracy, the stigmatized
man, atavism, the born criminal, etc., especially to the fore. The
theories of criminal law and of penological science, as it is euphe
mistically called— for really very little science has one ever discov
ered even lurking in the corners of penal institutions—these showed
nothing but slight modification of the theory common to mankind,
namely, that somehow punishment does avail something. Only I am
afraid that a large share of alleged theory in these last connections
consists in a couple o f bare facts, namely, that an offender out of
society’s way is, at least for the time being, considered an innocuous
person to society, and that the outraged feelings o f the injured one
and of the community are assuaged by punishment rendered.
Psychological theories there were, too, psychological in name but
purely philosophical in trend; I mean, not based on real studies of
the mind. Such psychological generalizations as have come recently,
however exaggerated they have been for a time, have at least had
the merit o f being founded on some direct observations. ‘
Thus having eagerly frequented doctor and saint, like the genial
Omar, what then? So far as actual help in solving the problems
of delinquency, I am afraid that we, also, for the most part, came
out by the same door wherein we went.
The first really big step, it was obvious, would be to make an at
tempt to know what one was doing when one did something. Or,
better still, to know with some more show o f reason than formerly,
what specifically ought to be done when face to face with a matter of
delinquency that requires definite action, whether it be of the drastic
or the let-alone kind. Cases must be treated, decisions and judg
ments must be formed, generally bits of social machinery must be set
n motion. -Now, for this, some sort of opinion must be held; if one
.Is not entirely inert mentally, some sort of opinion must be formed
about the given case.
Considering general theories as guides to action in the adjustment
of given situations, it becomes clear from any wide look about us
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that there is breakdown oftentimes of whatever parts of the above
theories are practicably usable to-day. And thus it becomes certain
that it is about the given concrete affair at hand, about the delin-'
quent as he stands before us, different in a thousand ways from
others, differing from all others, that we must know, if we are to be
o f much aid in solving or in helping him to solve his delinquency
problems.
Shall we clearly recognize the realities of the situation and speak
about them plainly, perhaps even with brutal frankness, to our
selves? That is surely good sense.
Here is a work o f the deepest importance for the well-being of
society, this treating with the problems of delinquency. It belongs
to and has many bearings upon the whole problem of human con
duct which, after all, is the main concern of civilization. One
doubts if the importance of their problem is well realized by
workers in this field, even by judges o f juvenile courts. Certainly
with the ample proofs that can be mustered, it has not been made
plain enough to the world at large.
The most delicate organism in the world is involved, the human
being—body and, more especially, mind. We are concerned, then,
with affairs that invite, yes, and require the very deepest scientific
understanding.
Most strangely it has been somehow felt that this work could be
done without professional attitude, professional training, knowl
edge, or technic. O f course, it is easy enough to see reason for this
in the newness o f juvenile courts and other agencies treating spe
cifically with juvenile delinquency, or in the fact that our methods
o f administrative government in this country stand in the way of
the development o f a really trained personnel. And, then, why
should we expect to know it all in two or three decades, even if the
world does move so fast nowadays ? As a matter o f fact the whole
o f civilized progress has long been waiting on a better understand
ing o f conduct tendencies of human beings for the development of
a better relationship o f man to man.
It is plain that a great deal o f our work with juvenile delinquents
is a botch. The vastly important fact of what happens to the indi
vidual in the future is kept in the mind all too little. O f course,
devoted men and women do accomplish much through good per
sonal touch and through a common-sense outlook. And we observe
self-initiated rightings o f conduct tendencies, sometimes through
fear o f punishment, perhaps more often as the result of the passing
o f the general instabilities of youth.
But through the courts a steady stream comes and goes and con
tinues to be delinquent. And the same is true of a considerable
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jroportion o f those who go to institutions. One sees very little
account taken of this. What judge has kept an accurate record,
ver years, o f the outcome of his judgments? After these 20 years
o f the juvenile court we are, for the most part, in a very chaotic
Stage as far as knowing the effectiveness of measures employed. To
the onlooker there is nothing so curious about courts as the fact that
there are no studies by them o f the effects of their own decisions and
efforts.
Such bare statistics as are occasionally worked up are o f no.
major value because they are figures without groupings of causes,
o f potentialities, and o f treatments. Such figures would not go far
in any scientific work or any business, for that matter, where
analyses o f all kinds compare effort, as calculated in terms of cost
and qualities o f material, with production, or saleability, or income—
that is to say, with results.
What have we from chief probation officers, or from officers in
more intimate contact with offenders, or from institutions, that
really tells us the essentials of successes and failures? We alto
gether lack studies o f outcomes as compared to the possibilities of
the human material, or to the possibilities according to the nature of
idie offense, of the living conditions, of the habits, of the direct causaions, etc. We lack the good self-criticism which can develop only
upon the basis of knowing two fundamentals, (a) the relation of
specific causation to the given delinquency and the given case, and
(5) what is practicable to know of the human material which is
being worked with, particularly its potentialities. We lack conclu
sions and judgments centered about two plain, practical issues, (1)
how the court can cope with various causes o f delinquency, (2) with
what reasonable expectation can it prescribe particular sorts of treat
ment when dealing with various sorts of individuals—individuals so
different in needs and possibilities that what will serve in some cases
will unquestionably fail in others.
There is often much satisfaction with formalization, with the es
tablishment of a system; and to a considerable extent this has been
true with the building up of the juvenile court as such, particularly
in regard to probation, which to some seems almost like a magic
word. As a matter of fact, probation may mean nothing constructive
being done, and unfortunately little does happen in many cases to
prevent further delinquency, even if there be a routine glance at the
child’s home and a few other aspects of his life. For example, part
fth e regular procedure in some courts is attention to physical needs;
child comes in for breaking a window, and to the astonishment of
his parents gets his tonsils taken out. This systematic physical over
sight is certainly admirable, but it has little bearing upon delin
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JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
quency. In several phases of court work there is apt to develop &
mere formalism.
We may note in this connection an attempt recently to take over*
a little psychological science, just a little, with a jump at the idea that
there can be handed out overnight a percentage statement which shall
represent the so-called intelligence o f delinquents, or at the idea that
some few words of classification will tell a valuable story about the
individual.
• But sometimes in courts we meet the easy-going conception that
any scientific attempt whatever to study the elements which are in
the background of conduct is academic. There is some talk about
still hanging on to common-sense methods, phrased almost in the
terms o f the “ conservative” farmer who does not know what the
agricultural schools can teach.
Most unfortunately, however, only too often decisions are made,
and have to be made under present circumstances, with quick judg
ment and with inadequate knowledge o f personalities and o f whole
situations, in such a fashion that nobody with sense can conceive
that this is what is expected o f a court that is most fundamentally con
cerned with the welfare of human individuals and has the protection
o f society at stake.
It is riot a little difficult to get away from the idea that the offense
must be treated, even though we certainly wish to do the best for the
individual. It sometimes seems as if those who have committed a
delinquency o f a certain grade o f severity should be committed to an
institution and others not, for the opposite reason, when, as a matter
of fact, the real evidence o f bad tendencies, o f the need of removal
from home, or for reformatory training, may not be shown by the
conduct complained o f in court. Behavior tendencies known only
through study o f the case—meanness, cowardly lying, instability at
work, bad attitude toward parents, bad personal habits—may be much
more significant for treatment. On the other hand, an offense more
specifically punishable is not necessarily indicative o f any deep-set
trend toward criminality.
It stands out clearly from even a little study of the situation that
juvenile courts and probation without studies o f cases before treat
ment are not nearly living up to their responsibilities and possibilities.
We feel so sure o f this because our accumulated earlier studies, with
years o f follow up, show hundreds o f failures where causes and per
sonality needs were not met, as against many apparently more diffi
cult cases with remarkably favorable outcomes, sometimes throug
minimum effort, where there was an understanding o f what treatment
was fitted to offset causes and needs, particularly, I may say, as rep
resented in the individual’s mental life.
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It should be obvious that competent studies o f delinquency are
"aimed at effective treatment, and that they must include diagnostic
* understanding and knowledge o f causes. Unless he who deals with
the youthful delinquent knows the material he is working with, the
active forces it represents, as the engineer knows his varieties of
material and how they may be strengthened and how they may suffer
from stresses, how is he intelligently to decide to proceed on a line o f
action? And without studies of what the offender is in himself and
inside his mind, and without studies o f what there was outside him
that tended to make him what he is, a delinquent, knowledge that is
an absolute prerequisite for a good study o f results does not exist.
Moreover, these agencies, juvenile courts and probation, do not
even make any systematic attempt to know whether or not they are
accomplishing anything like their best. A most important need is
the comparison o f the effectiveness o f different methods of treat
ment—in the long run the existence of the juvenile court itself must
depend upon demonstration of its results— and this, too, implies the
analysis o f causes.
It is to the unraveling o f the twisted threads o f personality and
environment in cases of delinquency that the modern sciences must
’ome. With all the different types and variations o f personalities,
and the important conditions and content o f mental life, and the ex
ternal causes and background in delinquent tendencies, adequate
studies are no easy matter. But if we are going to handle these com
plex affairs at all we should rationally be in some position to answer
the question of what this individual can do or is likely to do in educa
tion, in work, in conduct, or what is apt to take place if he is sent to
this or that institution, or if he stays at home, or if he has special
chances given him, and these points should be known early in the
procedure with him for the sake o f economy of effort.
Work with children and youth can receive support that comes to
little else in public affairs. It has been the rallying point a number
o f times for cleaner political conditions, and with appreciation of
greater needs and o f the possibility o f better returns from better
efforts there should easily be general education concerning better
ment o f juvenile-court methods and results.
After these years of observation in courts and study o f conduct
disorders, I see nothing any clearer than the necessity for the fol
lowing: (1) Better training o f the personnel, beginning with the
judges. . (2) The placing of this whole work upon a professional
basis through such training and through the education o f the public.
What has already taken place during 10 or 15 years shows the great
possibilities in this direction, including the matter o f adequate finan
cial support. (3) The forming of an association of juvenile-court
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judges meeting as do other professional men, with closely knit
interests, gathering together, not for the purpose o f self-advertise
ment or presentation of superficial statements but with the ideaf
o f gaining much from the experiences o f others and from the inter
change o f scientifically worked up data concerning types of cases
and other special problems. (4) The focusing upon the fact that
the real results o f effort in our field are to be measured by the non
recurrence o f delinquency; in other words, therapy is the aim and
cure is the measure o f success.
I have recently reviewed a list of failures among cases we saw
long ago and for whom little that was fitting was done under the
ordinary procedures o f the juvenile court, probation, institutions, or
parole work, but instead o f being downcast I am to-day a firmer
believer than ever that the very largest share o f delinquency and
crime in young people is preventable. Comparison of these failures
with successes shows that, with anything like a reasonable effort in
a reasonably decent community, delinquent tendencies in most indi
viduals can be thwarted. The study o f causes shows them to be
ascertainable and generally alterable. I f a scientific procedure can
be built up, the possibilities o f the development o f these particular
safeguards to civilization, the juvenile court and the other agencitr
which deal with juvenile misconduct, are far beyond their present
achievement.
Even in these early stages o f its own development the science of
conduct comes, then, with a message of better achievement, with the
hope for advancement that science now has demonstrated in many
other fields.
I f there are fears that new ideas, scientific ideas, may usurp the
place o f the law, we can allay them. None of us desires anything
but a greater obedience to the law and respect for it. But inertness
under the law we must face with the fact that betterment o f method
and progress in achievement is the keynote o f our civilization.
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SECOND SESSION—JUNE 22— FORENOON.
R i c k s , Judge of the Juvenile and Do
mestic Relations Court of Richmond, Va.
Chairman: Hon. J ames H oge
Judge R i c k s . In opening the discussion this morning, it has oc
curred to me that it would be very helpful if we would read the find
ings o f the Washington and Regional Conferences on Child Welfare,
taking these as a sort of starting point, and allowing the speakers of
the morning to develop from that point forward just what should
be the field of the juvenile court, “ where the responsibility o f the
court begins,” and “ how far court procedure can be socialized with
out impairing individual rights.” These were the findings o f the con
ferences o f 1919 with reference to juvenile courts:1
Every locality should have available a court organization providing for
Separate hearings of children’s cases; a special method o f detention for chil
dren, entirely apart from adult offenders; adequate investigation for every
case; provision for supervision or probation by trained officers, such officers in
girls’ cases to be women; and a system for recording and filing social as well
as legal information.
In dealing with children the procedure should be under chancery jurisdic
tion, and juvenile records should not stand as criminal records against the
children.
Whenever possible such administrative duties as child placing and relief
should not be required of the juvenile court, but should be administered by
.agencies organized for that purpose.
Thorough case study should invariably be made. Provision for mental and
physical examinations should be available.
The juvenile victims of sex offenses are without adequate protection against
unnecessary publicity and further corruption in our courts. To safeguard them
the jurisdiction of the juvenile court should be extended to deal with adult
sex offenders against children, and all safeguards o f that court be accorded
to their victim s; or if these cases are dealt with in other courts, the facts
revealed in the juvenile court should be made available, and special precautions
should be taken for the protection o f the children, as here suggested.
The first speaker on the program this morning is Judge Edward
Schoen, o f the Juvenile Court o f Essex County, Newark, N. J. We
welcome him as the first speaker on the definition o f the field of the
iuvenile court.
1 Children’s Bureau: Minimum Standards for Child W elfare: adopted by the Washington
and Regional Conferences on Child Welfare, 1919. Bureau publication No. 62. . Conference
series No. 2. Washington, D. C., 1919, p. 13.
31
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JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
THE FIELD OF THE JUVENILE COURT.
Hon.
E
dw abd
S c h o e n , Judge of the Juvenile Court of E ssex County, Newark,
New Jersey.
]
€
Before a survey can be made, or the boundaries o f the field indi
cated or more accurately defined, it is first important that we under
stand what is meant by the name “ juvenile court.” A court may
be defined and its field or jurisdiction formally declared by the
organic act o f a State. Each State, through its constitution, grants
the powers, prescribes the duties, and limits the jurisdiction of its
courts. Courts and court procedure are arbitrarily defined, and juris
diction clearly specified.
The fact is that legislatures have been enacting laws to meet a
social demand, and we have all undertaken in our several States—by
conference, by comparison, by copying the acts o f other States, and
by original excursions into an uncharted field—to grope our way to
the establishment o f a special piece of State machinery that will in
some better way meet the social needs of our urban and rural com
munities. We, as States, have tried to add to existing court ma
chinery some new and extra part or accessory which, for lack of any
thing more explicit, we have up to the present time given the genera^
term o f “ juvenile courts.”
In my own State of New Jersey the first effort was the creation o f
a “ court for the trial of juvenile offenders,” and it was made one of
the functions of the county court. Subsequent legislative action
created separate courts, known as “ juvenile courts,” but only for firstclass counties, o f which there are but two in the State..
Other States have experimented, following their own lines of court
arrangement, but there is not to-day, after our years o f experiment
ing, a general standardized, nation-wide court system adequately
equipped to meet this social need o f our present-day community life.
The reason, perhaps, why the true function of the juvenile court is
not more generally understood by the laity, and why social reforms
found necessary by it are not more popularly supported, is because
the court began with a misnomer, and so continues. It is really not
a juvenile court at all. It is not a court dealing with minor and petty
offenses committed by the youth o f our communities. The popular
conception— a sort of psychological state of mind produced by this
misnomer and against which the person presiding over the juvenile
court labors—is that it is some sort o f simple tribunal, in that it
ts,
deals with offenses which would be crimes if committed by adults,
but which have been committed by those who are below or beneat
the jurisdiction of a police court or higher courts having to do witH
adult offenders.
M
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-
As a first step toward accomplishing the greater mission o f this
tribunal which we have been some years trying to evolve, this com
mon conception must be remolded through a designation which will
be clearer and better understood, and which will be more descriptive
o f the wider sphere o f the juvenile court.
Our original conception in striving to get away from treating an
offense committed by a minor in the same manner as if it were com
mitted by an adult was a most important one; but we have not gone
far enough in meeting this social need. Those who were appointed to
do the pioneer work o f developing methods and practice in these new
courts early found their labors handicapped in many ways, and so we
have gone on patching and tinkering in our efforts to make the new
machine work. Like the flying machines, which only developed rap
idly under the pressure of war necessity and even yet have not be
come fully standardized, our juvenile-court machine has -been im
proved and altered Rs new light has come, but it is still in a formative
state and is not yet fully recognized as the great social agency for
good in community life that all o f us had hoped it might become after
so many years o f earnest effort by so many people in so many quarters
all over the land.
We still speak o f burglary, arson, rape, and all the long list of
offenses, while the offense concept is the very thing we object to.
What then, after all, is this tribunal called a “ juvenile court ” ?
A recent supreme-court decision in New Jersey says: 2
The proceedings authorized by the juvenile-court act are not proceedings by
way of punishment, but by way of reformation, education, and parental care.
The act makes it clear that the proceedings are intended to save young persons
from the ordinary punishment for crime, from the consequences of criminal
conduct or of conduct which would justify immediate punishment or immediate
restraint. Children and minors are necessarily more restricted in their liberty
o f action than adults, and I see no reason why children under the age of 16
years should not in proper cases receive such restraint and care from the public
authorities as ordinarily they ought to receive from their parents. The act in
this view is an attempt to substitute public control for parental control. This
was permissible under English law long before the Revolution. * * * I f
the English court of chancery can act as parens patriae, surely the State of
New Jersey may act in the same capacity through a juvenile court created by
the legislature for the purpose. But I want to emphasize this ruling of our
high court: “ Proceedings under the juvenile-court act do not relate to offenses,
and the act is careful to remove any suggestion that there is an offense or con
viction in the ordinary sense of those words.”
Thus high court rulings are coming to our aid to assist us in firmly
establishing the underlying principle o f this tribunal, not as a court
with jurisdiction defined as to offenses, but for the consideration of
2 Newkosky v. State Home for Girls (N. J. Sup. C t, opinion by Swayze, J . ; filed July 7,
1920).
'
77504°— 22------3 .....................
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JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
certain members of the community, namely, the minor boy and girl.
The State is bound to step in*and give the child the same protective
care and training that normal parents give to normal children in f -A
normal homes in civilized, socialized, conventional communities.
Let me then suggest, in concluding this part of my subject, that
the term “ juvenile court,” because o f its popular misconception, may
well be discarded for some other and more clearly understood title
that will the better convey to the popular mind what its purpose
really is.
In determining and fixing the limits and boundaries o f the juris
diction o f the juvenile court the original framers o f the law circum
scribed the jurisdiction within a compass that is entirely too narrow
and restrictive. While admitting that there must be some boundary
marks somewhere, it may be conceded that for the present, at least,
we may .arbitrarily adopt the chronological age of 16 years as the
age limit o f minors properly to be brought before this special tribunal
for treatment and consideration; but there can be no age limit as
to those who are the contributing factors in the child’s misfortune,
and they should be triable before the socially minded judge of the
juvenile court, regardless o f their age.
To be consistent, if we really are fully convinced that psychology'
and psychiatry are important factors in the consideration of an
offender, then the mental age, and not the chronological age, o f the «
person to be brought before the court should determine whether he is
within or without the jurisdiction of the court. I take pride in the
fact that New Jersey promises hope for the future in the recognition
o f the theory that the mental age of a person is ascertainable and
should be considered in relation to his conduct. I quote from an
opinion by Justice Swayze, o f our highest court: 3 “ To me, the case
o f idiocy or mental incapacity is as much for the jury on the question
o f criminal intent as in the case o f insanity.”
This leads to another point on which we are not agreed when we
consider the limitations of the field o f the juvenile court. So much
in earnest were we to get away from the stigma attached to criminal
procedure when the offender is a minor that we did not want to speak
o f the offender as one who has committed a crime, and so we, most
unhappily, I think, brought into vogue the term “ juvenile delin
quent.” We have attempted to set up arbitrarily some vague line
o f demarkation between a class which we call “ dependents ” and
another class which we call “ juvenile delinquents.” This tribunal,
wherein minor children are to be given the protection and super
visory aid and training by the State acting in parental relationship,
should not handicap itself by stigmatizing a minor child by some
vague term, even though it may be a softer term than that known in
1
»State v. Schilling (112 Atl. Rep., 400).
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35
criminal procedure. The juvenile court should deal with the great
social problems which the court experience has already unfolded to
us. The word “ delinquent ” should be eliminated from juvenilecourt nomenclature, because the experience o f all judges has been
that a great majority of the cases before the juvenile court are cases
in which the juvenile is a victim o f circumstances, and not a willful,
malicious, and pernicious offender. The proportion o f cases in
which children show decidedly criminal instincts or willful determi
nation to become antisocial members of society is so small that it does
not give us warrant to designate juvenile offenders as “ juvenile de
linquents.” We endeavor to soften the harshness o f the words
“ crime ” and “ criminal,” but in substituting “ delinquency ” we do
not begin to accomplish that object. Since we consider the offense
merely as an incident to the main inquiry, which relates to the under
lying and antecedent social conditions o f the offender who comes
before the juvenile court through an act which has focused public
attention upon him, we should not fear to throw away utterly all
that even remotely carries with it in the slightest degree the stigma
o f wrongdoing.
In the field of the juvenile court I want to eliminate any classifica
tion which justifies an inference o f wrongdoing, and hence the term
“ juvenile delinquent” has no proper place in our legal phraseology
as related to the juvenile court. This is justified because o f the gen
eral theory on which the juvenile court rests. We act on the theory
that parental control is inefficient—in other words, that there is
“ parental delinquency ”—giving the State the right to act in place
of the parent. “ Parental delinquency ” and not “ juvenile delin
quency ” is more nearly descriptive o f our problem. Our procedure
is not punitive, but protective, correctional, and educational, by the
State in loco parentis. We must discard, to the minutest detail,
every semblance of similarity with the ideas and methods of a criminal
court, and we can not take over from the criminal court any of its'
procedure or even its theory of meting out a punishment conceived
to fit the crime.
My idea o f the field o f the juvenile court is that it is a social agency
set up by the State for the adjustment o f such social ills in the com
munity as are disclosed by an act or by repeated acts o f minors whose
conduct gives us the objective symptoms of unwholesome social con
ditions. The field is the maladjusted child, whom the State is in
duty bound to protect, correct, and develop; and the duty of this
tribunal is to follow up the case by ascertaining all the facts and
circumstances in the life of the child, to determine in what particu
lars that child has been deprived of essentials for a full moral and
physical development. And if, as is common experience, it is found
that certain essentials are lacking in the environment in which the
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JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
child is being reared, the State in loco parentis, acting through its
instrumentality, the juvenile court, must provide the essentials of
which the child has thus far been deprived. I f the State does not
provide those essentials there is no justification for the substitution
o f State control for parental control. The State then is as delin
quent as was the offending parent.
This tribunal may properly be denominated the X -ray o f the com
munity, set up by the State to locate and determine where disease is
lodged in the social system,' and none but the socially minded are
qualified to read the plate. Having made the discovery, this tribunal
should have a full equipment to administer the remedy. Its juris
diction should be broad enough and flexible enough to embrace every
offense and every offender against the welfare of the child, the domi
nating idea in the work o f the juvenile court being to adjust.
We should endeavor, therefore, to secure more legislation to enable
this tribunal to work effectively under legal authority for the social
welfare of the child who has, as a ward o f the State, come under
the State’s agency for protection, care, education, and social read
justment.
I have already referred to the fact that but few of the minors be
fore our juvenile courts show a real criminal instinct, but there is
no question that these few need custodial care in State institutions.
Many and varied factors contribute to the downfall of practically all
the minors that come before us. Therefore, i f the court is to be
enabled to solve these problems for the benefit of the community
and the minors, it must o f necessity have full control over all these
contributing factors.
The State is the parens patriae and natural guardian o f all these
children. The court of chancery was the court in England that
functioned to enforce their rights. Most o f the juvenile-court law**
provide a certain amount o f equity jurisdiction and practice, but
so far as I know none o f the laws go far enough to give the judge
the necessary freedom o f action to secure a complete solution of
the case and enable him to meet all of the problem that arises at
the hearing. An equity court can add any number of defendants
and change the issue as the case develops. It can make anv ord*»**
or decree that is necessary to secure the parties an equitable and
just remedy to remove the cause o f complaint.
Along the same lines, I feel that this court must have absolute
control not only over the family and home conditions o f the child
but also over any other person against whom in the testimonv i$p
would appear the court should make an order or decree.
So I conclude, that the misnomer “ juvenile court ” may have now
outlived its usefulness and that existing legislation should be sun-
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plemented by laws extending equity powers to the court; that its
provinces should be extended to every source which pollutes and
dwarfs the youth o f our great country, with full power to enforce
the duty o f the State, as parens patriae, as far as possible to guar
antee to the child its full rights and opportunity under a wise State
parental protection. And since it is a court which deals with social
problems, which are nation wide, affecting the quality of our future
citizens, the Federal Government, as part of its public-welfare pro
grams, should logically undertake the extension o f this important
work through Federal courts to be created, with Federal judges
having broad equity powers, appointed in the same manner as are
the present Federal judges who preside in the civil and criminal
courts under Federal authority.
The juvenile court, to perform fully its great mission, must be the
social eye of the community, sensing its dangers and its pitfalls, and
standing in the very prow of to-day it must point the way to salva
tion to the community which it serves.
G eneral D
is c u s s io n .
J udge E icks . It seems to me that Judge Schoen has given us
something to really talk about. The subject before us for discussion
is the definition of the field of the juvenile court.
Hon. E dward F. W aite , Judge of the Juvenile Court of Hennepin
County, Minneapolis, Minn. I find myself very much in sympathy
with the spirit o f Judge Schoen’s paper and almost in entire sym
pathy with the details o f what he presented, but I can not help
raising a question in respect to the entire elimination o f the word
“ delinquent ” and the thought that goes with it. Perhaps Judge
Schoen is more fortunate in Newark than we are in Minneapolis,
but in Minneapolis it is a sort o f pastime o f boys o f 16 or 17 in our
high schools—whose presence in the high school is generally an
indication that they come from good homes and have parents who
are at least on the job as much as parents are on the average—to
appropriate other people’s automobiles and go, as they say, “ joy
riding.” It may bring them joy, but when the automobile brings
up against a curbstone or tree and is smashed to pieces, as it often
is, or when the reckless spirit which leads the boy to do that sort of
thing leads him also to drive in a reckless way and somebody is
injured, then it is anything but joy to the other people concerned.
"Shall we in dealing with such offenders—and they are typical o f a
c]ass—take a great deal o f pains to make those youngsters under
stand that there isn’t anything in that situation which is in any way
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JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
analogous to the commission o f a criminal offense? And shall we,
in dealing with that particular sort of thing—and it is representative
of a great deal that comes into the juvenile court—when older boys
and girls come in, shall we completely remove the sense of personal
responsibility from them by doing away with that very mild and
gentle term “ delinquency ” ? I question it.
C harles P. W alker , Probation Officer, Municipal Court, Phila
delphia. I would like to ask Judge Schoen i f under the law in his
jurisdiction there are ex officio powers in the justice of the peace to
have proceedings instituted under the law against adult offenders in
the juvenile court.
,
Judge S choen . There are some powers, not ex officio powers, in
the justice of the peace, conferred under a general act known as
the child-welfare act, which is rather broad but indefinite—perhaps
too much so to be effective.
Mr. W alker . In your idea o f dealing with the adult offender, if
you do have authority to have the proceedings instituted under an
act o f the assembly in your State, would you proceed against that
adult by process of summary conviction, or proceed by action under
the criminal law through indictment by the grand jury, and also
directly by jury in your court; and if so, wouldn’t that very much
interfere with the general idea o f the juvenile court, having one
judge hold court?
Judge S choen . I think perhaps legislation could be so framed
that one charged with being a delinquent parent or in other ways
contributing to juvenile delinquency should be tried before a juve
nile court without indictment by grand jury and without trial by
jury, but I guess those are matters which would have to be consid
ered in connection with the various State constitutions. In our own
State there is a way in which a person may be charged with and
tried for some offenses—as a disorderly person—which does not
entitle him to indictment by grand jury or to trial by jury. Per
haps they might be designated as disorderly persons and in that
way come within the jurisdiction o f the court and be triable without
indictment. However, that is a matter o f detail, and if indictment
were necessary and trial by jury were necessary, if the popular mind
was sufficiently educated to the point of realizing the enormity of
the offenses that are committed against minors, it would be just as
easy to get indictments and convictions for acts which contribute to
juvenile delinquency as it is now against persons who steal a 5-cent
pack o f peanuts.
Judge R icks . Judge Schoen has said that every offense and every
offender touching the life o f the child should be within the jurisdic
tion o f the juvenile court, or under the court which he suggests as
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taking the place o f the juvenile court. Now, it occurs to me that we
might well consider whether or not men charged with felonies should
be so dealt with in the juvenile court. Because certainly in the juris
diction o f many o f the States men charged with felonies are given
only a preliminary hearing before the magistrates’ courts and are
then sent on to a court o f broader jurisdiction, indicted by the grand
jury, and— as Mr. Walker said— tried by jury. I would like to ask
Judge Schoen whether in his opinion offenses o f that character
should be tried in a juvenile court, with the necessary incidents o f a
grand jury indictment and trial by jury.
Judge S choen . I think so, Judge Ricks.
Hon. K athryn S ellers, Judge of the Juvenile Court of the Dis
trict of Columbia. The Juvenile Court o f the District o f Columbia is
a criminal court, and it was not a very great step to take the children
out o f the police court, but it was all that could be done. Now, in
order to bring all children violating the law into the juvenile court
it is often necessary to reduce the charge. For instance, when a boy
is arrested for stealing an automobile, as not infrequently happens,
the charge is reduced to violation o f the section o f the police regu
lations of the District which forbids operation o f an automobile with
out permit. We are permitted to do that by the upper courts and
by the police. The intention is not to punish the boy for taking the
machine, but to get hold o f him to keep him from taking another
machine. Likewise, the charge for stealing large sums o f money and
valuable property is reduced, to the charge o f “ taking the property
o f another.” For this offense the punishment for an adult would be
less than a year in the penitentiary, and thus a child is brought within
our jurisdiction. We have a jury trial on information filed, not by
indictment by the grand jury. Our court is practically a domestic
relations’ court, and we have jurisdiction over nonsupport cases and
determination o f bastardy cases and over cases in violation o f the
child labor law. In all these cases the defendant is entitled to a trial
by jury on information filed by the corporation counsel.
O rfa J ean S hontz , Attorney , Los Angeles. California is always
willing to try anything once, and we have since 1911 left the words
“ dependent” and “ delinquent” out o f our juvenile-court law. It
now reads that the juvenile-court law is an act concerning persons
under the age o f 21 years, and when they are declared they are simply
declared wards o f the court. O f course, it is pretty hard to legislate
the words “ delinquent ” and “ dependent ” out o f the public mind,
but they have no place in our courts there. The California juvenile
courts also have jurisdiction over contributory offenders—that is,
they are heard before the juvenile court, without a jury, sitting as a
superior court. I f they demand a jury the case is transferred to one
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o f the other courts, but they very seldom do demand a jury; and to
try the contributory offender in the same court as the juvenile
offender has proved very satisfactory.
Judge R i c k s . D o your contributory delinquency laws punish for
offenses against persons under 21 rather than for offenses, as in many
States, against persons under 18 ?
Miss S hontz . Under 21. I think the* law is that they are con
sidered misdemeanors instead o f felonies, and the punishment is
either two years in the county jail, a fine o f $1,000, or probation, or
both a fine and the county jail.
Judge R icks . Does your court have jurisdiction o f felonies against
the minor ?
Miss S hontz . Not rape or seduction.
Judge S ellers. The term “ delinquent ” in our jurisdiction is
defined by an act o f Congress which says that the delinquent child
is a child that has been hned before the court which operates in this
fashion, and persons contributing to the delinquency o f the child
may be punished in several ways. But a child must be three times
in our court before you can punish a person contributing to his
deliquency. Our term “ delinquent ” is so defined, and I have with
in the last month had an amendment introduced in Congress mak
ing the term “ delinquent” mean a child who has been convicted
once. So having convicted a child—we have to speak o f conviction,
because our court is a criminal court—we can turn around and pun
ish the person contributing.
Rev. A. J. D. H aupt , Social Service Church Federation, St.
Paul. Do they in California commit to State institutions, such as
boys’ and girls’ reformatories ? I f so, how long is that commitment ?
In Minnesota, our age limit is up to 18 for both boys and girls, be
cause we have felt that they ought to have a little while in our re
formatory institutions, if necessary; and the age limit there is 21.
I wonder how it has worked out in California.
Miss S hontz . Twenty-one is the age for both boys and girls.
Judge R icks . Supposing a boy o f 20 years and 6 months is sent
to the industrial school, then at the age o f 21 he has to be released?
Miss S hontz . Yes.
Miss M ary B artelme, Assistant to the Judge, Juvenile Court of
Cook County, /Jhicago, III. I would like to ask Judge Schoen i f he
would give us a little in detail about the suggestion that the work
be placed with the Federal court. That seemed to me a very valua
ble suggestion, and I should like to know some o f his reasons for
making it.
Judge S choen. I feel that the problems behind the minor offender
who comes to the juvenile court are so far-reaching in importance—
that is, the proper reconstructive work that is required to be done
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to readjust the child, readjust his living conditions, is work o f such
magnitude—that the Federal Government, with its vast resources
and prestige, would perhaps be the most effective agency or instru
mentality with which to do that work. Further, it would probably
lead more quickly to a standardization o f all the work; and by
that I do not mean that I am not particularly keen or concerned
about the standardization o f the method o f procedure in the juvenile
court, but I am very much interested and concerned about the stand
ardization o f reconstructive work that should be done, and the way
in which it should be done, and to get the necessary financial aid to do
it, and do it right. A ll these things, I think, can better be done
through the instrumentality of the Federal court. There would be
more uniformity o f method throughout the entire Nation, if it were
a Federal agency. Then, again, there would be a nation-wide appli
cation o f this whole principle of juvenile-court work and procedure,
which we have not yet got, although the juvenile court is some
twenty years old, as I understand. In my own State, as I have said,
the juvenile courts have only been created in the two largest coun
ties in the State; and very many people still have the idea that
juvenile-court work is only necessary in large metropolitan com
munities. A great part o f our country is without the application of
juvenile-court principles in its treatment o f children, because the
rural communities have not the means for employing the proper
staff and getting the proper equipment to do the work in a proper
way—that is, getting the psychologic and psychiatric and medical
work that is necessary to be done. Now, if this whole thing were a
Federal proposition, and judges were appointed in the same manner
as our Federal judges are now appointed, who try the civil and
criminal cases involving the Government, the whole territory of the
United States would automatically be covered, because judges would
be appointed for districts, and those districts would take in rural as
well as urban communities, and our whole country would automati
cally be covered, and very quickly. That does not constitute all
the details, but it gives you some o f the high spots o f my thought
on that subject.
Miss B artelme. Y ou no doubt took into very strong consideration
the fact that the judge would hold office during good behavior, and
therefore would not be subject to political antagonism to the same
extent as otherwise.
Judge S choen. I am glad you brought that out. That is another
point, and a very important one, because it would enable the man
^dio undertakes work as judge o f the juvenile court to do his work
with a consciousness that it is his life work, and that he need not be
distracted from it and from doing it well and thoroughly and de
voting all his time and energy to it, by the political considerations
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or the other considerations which naturally interfere to some extent
with the work under existing conditions. I had not thought o f that
particular point, but I think that it is perhaps a very important one.
Hon. S olon P errin, Judge of the Juvenile Court, Superior, Wis.
I see we are drifting into this Federal proposition again this morn
ing. I give notice that I want to be heard oil that at length, if we
get to the point where the Federal Government is going to be called
in as a wet nurse. This idea that we are going to turn the whole
proposition over to the Federal Government, really, ladies and gen
tlemen, is abhorrent to me. I don’t believe in i t ; I don’t think that
is what the Federal Government is for. And if the truth were
known, and Judge Sellers would be willing to tell just exactly what
she feels, I believe she would say that she would rather take her
code under almost any State government than to have to deal with
the Federal officials at Washington to get every 5-cent piece she has
to have and every little thing that goes to make up the administra
tion o f a good court. I am going to protest against anything of
this sort. I would like to inquire o f the distinguished jurist who is
projecting this proposition whether he proposes to hang his legisla
tion on the commerce clause o f the Constitution, now enormously
overworked, or whether he thinks that the reference to domestic
tranquillity under the Constitution has any application to the cases
und.er consideration.
Judge S ellers. I do feel I ought to risa in defense of Congress,
as it were. We do have some difficulty in getting all that we want in
the District o f Columbia, but I do not entirely absolve the people
o f the District o f Columbia from blame in that respect. I have been
three years at the juvenile court. I f we are agreed on what we want,
I believe we will be treated more generously by Congress; but in the
past there has been a great deal of difference o f opinion among the
people who are concerned in District affairs, and I think if we figure
our needs out before we go to Congress we may be treated more
generously.
Judge R icks . Judge Waite, of Minneapolis, has something to say
on this subject?
Judge W aite . I simply was going to ask a question as to the con
stitutionality of the legislation that is implied in what Judge Perrin
says. I wonder if Judge Schoen has considered whether, in order to
get this Federal jurisdiction, no matter how desirable it may be, we
would first have to get a constitutional amendment.
Judge S choen . I doubt it. The Federal Government, having as
sumed jurisdiction over the naturalization of future citizens who
come from foreign shores, it seems to me that there could not be any
legal impediment to the Federal Government’s taking jurisdiction of
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its own future citizens, who are still useful and in a formative stage,
and creating such legislation as will be for their benefit and will fit
/them better for the future duties of citizenship.
Judge R icks. I must say that I think, with Judge Perrin, that if
this move were taken we might just as well.close up our State govern
ments. I think the discussion has brought up the point effectively.
There is one other point not fully covered, it seems to me, in this dis
cussion, and that is relating to custody o f children who may be
termed dependent—whether the court should undertake to deal with
the custody o f children who are dependent.
J oseph L. Moss, Chief Probation Officer, Juvenile Court of Cook
County, Chicago, III. I f the juvenile court represents the State, I
think it is very proper that the question of custody of dependent
children lacking normal guardianship should rest in the court. Pro
vision for the support and care o f children about whose custody
there is no contention is hardly a debatable question. In my opinion,
it is a question whether they should remain in the juvenile court,
because there might be some other State bodies quite capable of
taking care o f those children—children, for instance, of a father,
where the mother is dead, who is unable to provide for the care of the
-ffamily. It seems to me some other State body beside the juvenile
court might provide in such an emergency. But certainly in all cases
where the question of the child’s neglect or of the child’s dependency
arises it should be decided by a court.
Judge R icks . I will ask Mr. Parsons to give us his view on this
subject. I think he can clarify a point.
H erbert C. P arsons, President National Probation Association.
I was just speaking with Judge Ricks on the question o f continuing
control or custody o f the dependent child beyond the finding of
dependency. It seems to me that it has been well demonstrated in
one State, and after much discussion it is firmly settled in the opinion
o f the people o f that State who have to do with these things, that
the juvenile court does not exist for the continuing custody of
dependent or even of delinquent children. In order to keep the
juvenile court free from all the burdens o f the community and the
regulation o f the conduct o f the whole population for eternity, it
seems to me to be necessary to put some o f the possible duties that
might be imposed upon it into other branches o f the government.
I f there is anything that is separable, clearly so, it is the continuing
custody o f the child who has to be cared for beyond the time of the
hiding by the court, if it is the juvenile court or any other court.
There exists in every State, I take it, the administrative power to
control that child,'Ind the turning over by the juvenile court to the
administrative side—the executive side of the State government—of
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the care and custody o f the child during minority is not only working
well in at least one State that I know, but it seems to have the great
merit o f relieving the juvenile court o f a mere administrative duty
and o f making possible the discharge o f its other duties with greater
efficiency.
I want also to call attention to one of the things that Judge Sellers
mentioned, and that those who are having to do with the drafting
o f juvenile laws ought to keep in mind—the horrible example she
has told o f the District o f Columbia’s requirements that the child
should be found three times delinquent before it can even be argued
that the parent is responsible for the delinquency. I don’t see any
virtue in “ three times.” I don’t even see virtue in finding the child
actually delinquent once. This was discussed very thoroughly in
revising the juvenile law in Massachusetts in 1915, when the com
mission made up o f judges and lawyers were studying this thing,
and they said: “ I f it appears in the proceedings that the parents
are responsible, or anybody else is responsible, for the delinquency
of the child, why should there be any finding as to the child? I f
the culprit is the parent or guardian, or somebody else has con
tributed to the delinquency, then the proceedings against the child
ought to be dropped at once.” And we took that into the Massachu^
setts law, so that i f in the development o f a case the juvenile court
finds that the real fact is not the delinquency o f the child but the
contribution o f a parent or guardian or somebody else, to the wrong
conduct, the child’s case is simply dropped and the court proceeds
against the parent or other contributor. I think that is an essential
feature o f the law.
Judge K i c k s . Mr. Parsons’s discussion brings to a close the dis
cussion o f that subject. We must now pass on to the second question
for consideration this morning: “ Where does the responsibility of
the court begin ? ”
WHERE DOES THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE COURT BEGIN?
Hon.
H
enry
S.
H
Judge of the Juvenile Division of the Probate Court
of W ayne County, Detroit, Michigan.
ulbert,
I have been asked to speak to you on the question o f where the
responsibility of the court begins. That heading has been divided
into four rather pertinent points, and I will try to adhere just as
closely to the topic as I may.
The points placed in issue are whether jurisdiction should begi:
immediately upon the arrest o f the child, or at the stage where th
child is brought into the detention home, or at the point where the
court would naturally take jurisdiction because of the filing o f an
official complaint with the court. These three questions naturally
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bring up the relationship o f the court to the police department of
its jurisdiction, the relationship o f the court to the detention home,
and the relationship o f the court to the handling of complaints, with
a view o f saving as much as possible the bringing o f children into
the actual court.
I will make a little bit o f background for what I have to say. T
rather think I am a bit old-fashioned in some of my viewpoints.
Long experience in the probate court before I took up the work
o f the juvenile court—which in our State is a branch o f the probate
court—gives me a very distinct respect for judicial procedure, and I
am not one who feels that we can gloss it over in favor o f a more
social method. I believe that every step which is taken in the
handling o f children’s cases should be done in its proper method and
in due order, and that our records should be just as complete and
just as full and just as regular as those o f any other court; but I do
not believe, and it is not my practice, that that procedure should be
upon the surface or be placed in any way in evidence. It can be
kept in the background; it'is there only because o f the fact that we
have centuries o f the old idea o f court procedure, which we can not
live down in a few years.
It is pretty generally the opinion that the juvenile court really
is nothing more than a very enlarged parent, and when I use the
word “ court,” I am using it in its very single sense o f “ justice.”
The juvenile court is perhaps neither more nor less than an institu
tion whose job it is to take up the life o f the child at the point where
the child has failed. It is perhaps safe to say that the average
child— and, o f course, I can deal in the short time at my disposal
only in generalities— comes into court only because the parent has
completely failed to inculcate by training a distinct respect for the
observance o f law and discipline and authority and the existing social
order. Father and mother must be a tmit in the government o f the
child; and if through the child’s early life the grandfather and
grandmother, and maybe a big brother and big sister, are all to take
their part from entirely different viewpoints in the government of
that child, we will in the end get a youngster who has no respect for
anybody or for any constituted authority, and we are sure, of course
to have that child in conflict with the law.
I f the court or i f the judge is simply an enlarged parent—I firmly
believe that the judge is nothing more than the official head, so to
speak, o f a rather large family—he must live and work and stand
Mulder to shoulder with his organization, with the police, with the
hools, with his probation officers, and with his detention home—
with all o f the elements, in fact, that go to make up his official fam
ily, so to speak. Only so far as he does that, only so far as he
assumes the full responsibility and brings to his official family en
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JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
thusiasm, puts over his spirit and a distinct understanding o f his
policies and methods, and in return gets from them not only an
enthusiastic but a very loyal concept o f his method of work and
procedure—so that the entire family, so to speak, is a unit in the
handling o f a child—will he really attain the results we are after.
Now, that being so, the points that are here at issue are not difficult
to decide.
I firmly believe that the police department of any jurisdiction
should turn over to the juvenile court a sufficient number o f its
officers to work under the authority o f the judge and in his immediate
care and under his responsibility. I f that is not so, the policemen
who are working with children have the ordinary police viewpoint
as to offenses against the law. Their idea will be that o f credit for
conviction; and that, o f course, is the last idea that we have in the
juvenile court. I f they are a part o f the court and court procedure,
they as a member o f that family will receive the inspiration and be
imbued with the spirit of the judge who is acting, and their idea
of the credit which is to accrue to them will not be for conviction
but it will be for accomplishment in their particular district. I
might use the same illustration that we use in matters o f health. A
city board o f health would divide its city into districts and plac
nurses or health officers in charge o f those districts; and surely th
credit which they get for their accomplishment is not for the number
of cases treated but rather for the resultant picture o f the good
health o f that particular community. And it is just so with your
policeman. I f he really assumes his job as part and parcel of the
court, with the spirit of the juvenile court, his idea o f the credit
which will come to him will be that o f the clearing up o f his dis
trict. Not only that, but he will very readily learn to distinguish
between the matter o f the offense and the matter o f the individual
or a neighborhood situation. And if he is at all a good scholar
he will readily know and will readily be able to clear up a good
many situations which may be rather serious, so far. as the paper
offense is concerned, and obtain complete satisfaction in his work,
not only from the point o f view o f the injured individuals but also
o f those who may be called offenders. On the other hand, he would
in all probability be able to bring into court a good many seem
ingly trivial affairs which upon paper would have no right to be
there at all, because they have developed a neighborhood situation
in which" proper handling before the judge will result in a much
better condition in that particular locality. I think that hours c?
frequently be well Spent by any judge in clearing up a neighborhoo
problem, which may be— as is often the case in a family—brought
about by very trivial things, indeed, but which in the large aspect
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becomes very serious when we consider the discipline o f an entire
neighborhood.
Again, the relationship o f the judge to the detention home is
equally important, and I am also firmly of the belief that he must
take over the entire responsibility for the operation, the spirit, and
the understanding of that detention home. But I just as truly be
lieve that the detention home which bears the same relation to the
children of its district that the ordinary police station or jail bears
to the adult is absolutely without any reason for existence and that
it is a waste to spend money in its operation. I f that detention home,
through its contact with the judge and the inspiration which it gets
from being directly responsible to him, is able to put into the life
and training and character of the child while he is there a respect
and understanding of constituted law and authority and obedience,
the judge has a very much better chance afterward with thé child.
The detention home is really the first place where a child who has
grown up without respect for others, without understanding of
obedience or authority, can get them; and it is the first place where
the judge can with any degree of certainty obtain an understanding
o f the material, the real personal character, with which he has to
deal. I f the detention home is purely a place of custody for the pur
pose of holding the child until the trial, it can offer no contribution
to the future of that child’s life. I f it is a place where that child can
be allowed to develop and show his true character and disclose the
material of which it is made, the judge can take up that case with a
fair knowledge of what hé can accomplish with the material that is
before him..
The same thing is equally true, o f course, of the probation force of
the court, and perhaps in no department should the contact of the
judge himself be closer than among his probation officers. He can
not retire to some holy of holies and make just decisions o f the cases
brought before him. He must work with his officers. They must
feel his spirit and his understanding, and they have to carry out his
purposes with his inspiration. Their work is desperately hard.
They are giving every bit of enthusiasm and personal magnetism
that they have; and unless there is a source of supply from above,
they may not last long in their work and give good results.
The judge should also come into close relationship with the various
community interests, such as the schools. The judge and the superin
tendent o f schools should be just as closely allied as it is possible for
two men to be, and the whole school system should work with and be
a part, so to speak, of the court procedure. Frankly, I appreciate
that this program might be considered just as an ideal— for instance,
as we find a socialistic program to be a very ideal theory and not
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*8
practical, perhaps. And yet it is vastly more practical than we may
at first think; and it can be carried through, and it does make the
1
court a real power in its community.
That leaves just one definite question: A t what point in the pro
cedure should the actual hold of the court over the child begin? I f
we take my view of the police department or the detention home, it
does not need to begin in either of these two points, and I think it
should not, because if their optimism and vision is true and in accord
ance with the judge, they will be able to eliminate a very great
number of cases without any record whatever. It should begin,
therefore, when it becomes necessary to file a definite complaint in
the court and the child is made a part of the court record.
Hon.
K
athryn
S e l l e r s , Judge o f the Juvenile Court o f the D istrict o f Columbia.
The question proposed really is, Where and when should the
jurisdiction o f the juvenile court begin?
As a matter o f fact local law controls this matter.
In the District o f Columbia, for instance, where the juvenile court
is a criminal court, the court has no jurisdiction until an informa
tion has been sworn to by a complainant.
When a child is arrested the policeman takes the child to the sta
tion house, where the police captain, if the offense is not serious, may
release the child to his parents to be brought to court when sum
moned, or he may require collateral to be deposited for the child, or
he may send the child to the house o f detention for women and chil
dren, which is under the control o f the woman’s bureau of the police
department. Every morning a list o f all children in the house is
sent to the chief probation officer o f the court. This list contains
names o f children held as fugitives, held for investigation, held on
specific charges, and held for the court. It is only with the last two
classes that the court is concerned. The court has no authority to
take any action until the policeman making the arrest files the in
formation; so that, if the policeman does not keep up his interest
in the case a child may remain, and in known cases has remained,,
indefinitely in the house o f detention.
In other words, the entire proceeding in the case is a “ prosecu
tion ” and lies with the complainant and the police department. It
may and does result in certain cases in children being arrested and
detained indefinitely in the house o f detention without being charged
regularly with any crime, but with the word “ investigation ” markeT
against their names. The report o f the chief of police for 1920
(p. 45) shows that 206 children under 17 years o f age were that
year held for investigation and released without a charge being filed
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against them. The figures for such cases o f detention during the
last three years—1918, 1919, and 1920— are more or less startling.
During that time 602 children under 17 years o f age, 1,734 who were
17 to 20 years of age, inclusive, and 4,73£ who were 21 years o f age
and over were held without being charged with an offense for pe
riods ranging from a few hours to three weeks (the last being the
period o f detention in one case o f which I have particular knowl
edge), and they were released without ever having come under the
jurisdiction o f a court.
Girls “ suspected” by the woman’s bureau o f being lawbreakers
may be required to go on “ voluntary probation” to the police de
partment and to report regularly to the woman’s bureau at the house ’
of detention, so long as that bureau may believe it necessary, under
pain o f having charges lodged against them which will bring their
cases before the juvenile court. These methods are practiced with
the best motives and intentions and, we believe, with only the interest
o f the girls at heart. But there is no manner o f doubt that this is
a clear invasion o f the private rights o f the child.
It should be noted that perhaps five times as many boys as girls
come to court. Suppose the policeman, instead o f arresting the boys,
^placed them on probation and required them to report each Sunday
at the station house of their precinct. Would this be tolerated?
Carry this plan on in its logical course, and the policeman instead
o f arresting men and. women for lawbreaking, would require them
to go on probation and report to the station house regularly, without
the formality o f court proceedings. You can see at once that such a
situation would not be tolerated. No community would permit its
boys to be so treated. Then why discriminate against the girls ?
The whole scheme is wrong. Either a charge should be regularly
made against all girls and boys arrested and their cases heard as
soon as possible or the children should not be detained. And cer
tainly no child should ever be put on probation except by a court.
Here we have a telling example o f the working o f an unsatisfactory
and improper law designed for the welfare o f juvenile offenders.
This law, enacted in 1906, was the best law that could be had at thé
time. The most that could be done then was to separate the children
from the adults and to form a police court where their cases would
be heard apart from the adults.
The fault lies mainly in the basic idea o f “ prosecution” by the
State through the police department as complainants, instead o f the
institution o f an orderly inquiry concerning the facts o f the complaint
and an investigation o f the circumstances surrounding the child at
the time, followed by the issuance o f whatever orders the court may
deem proper for the correction and protection o f the child.
77504°—22----- 4
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I am firmly of the opinion that the interests of the child woulcl^
best be served by giving the juvenile court such chancery jurisdiction
as would make every child a potential ward of the court, so that i f 1
complaint is made against him or if he is taken into custody by the
police officer as a fugitive, as homeless, or as a lawbreaker, the child
becomes immediately an actual ward of the court to be cared for and
protected.
G eneral D
is c u s s io n .
Judge R i c k s . We have now heard two interesting points o f view.
We have 20 minutes for discussion.
Mr. Moss. The police must be taken into consideration in dealing
with the lawbreaker, with persons who commit offenses. At the risk
o f being accused o f trying to boost Chicago, I want to say something
o f our system, because X believe it has worked with entire satisfaction.
In the early days of the court there was no provision for the ap
pointment o f probation officers. Some officers were supplied through
the contributions o f friends of the court. 'In addition, a number of
police officers were assigned to the judge o f the court, in the way that
Judge Hulbert suggests, for assignment as the judge saw fit. Later,
with the provision for the appointment of county probation officers,
the duties o f these police officers who assisted were changed. They
remained, however, and now we have a specialization o f work in a
very interesting and satisfactory way. In each station o f the city
there are normally 100 men. One man of that number is assigned to
look after the children’s cases that come to the attention o f the police
o f that precinct. He is known as the juvenile officer. He is commis
sioned a probation officer o f the juvenile court. The police probation
officer has his office at the juvenile court, and he reports to the chief
probation officer. We have drawn the line very carefully between the
police officers and the regular probation officers of the court, being
careful to give no directions or assignment o f duties to police officers
which would not ordinarily fall within the province of a police officer.
In doing that we have been able to keep the police officer. In a large
city you will find the feeling on the part o f the council, when expenses
must be cut down, that all private appointments—appointments to
institutions and associations and private details, etc.— should be
eliminated, and the man should be put on active police work. The
judge gives no direct orders to the police probation officer except
through the-officer in charge.
Now, in detail, this is the way it works: I f a boy is arrested on
the street corner with a stolen automobile or for burglarizing a place
a uniformed officer—the officer on that post—takes him to the station
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and turns him over to the juvenile officer. In the absence of the
juvenile officer at that minute the boy is sent by the commanding
officer to the juvenile detention home or to his parents, as may seem
proper under the circumstances. The juvenile officer is responsible
from that minute for the b oy ; the arresting officer drops out of the
case, except as he reports his information to this juvenile officer.
The juvenile officer decides whether or not the child is to be kept in
custody. I f he is to be kept in custody he arranges for him to go
to the juvenile detention home; then his responsibility for the de
tention o f that child ceases. From that time on the parents must
make application to the juvenile court for the release o f that child.
The arrest o f the child, the detention o f the child, is reported to the
officer in charge, and we have on file at all times in the juvenile court
a complete list o f all children who are in detention, and why they are
held. The juvenile officer, whether the child is in custody or not,
tries to adjust the matter, if possible, without court hearing; but if
it is necessary to have a court hearing he brings the matter into
court by filing a petition, with the approval o f the officer in charge,
serving the summons and presenting the matter to the court. There
are two exceptions to that. A ll dependent cases (and a great many
dependent cases do come to the attention of the police), abandoned
children, children neglected, children whose parents are arrested for
some reason or other—these cases are immediately turned over with
written report to the investigation division o f the court proper.
In delinquent girls’ cases, the criminal part o f the cases—that is, the
statement o f the specific offense—is presented to the court by the
police probation officer, petition is filed, but the police probation
officer turns over to the juvenile-court investigational division the
investigation o f the case. So that on all girls’ cases there are two
officers— a woman officer, who is responsible for the person o f the
child and the social history, including the home and schooling, and
the police probation officer, who is responsible for saying under what
circumstances the child was brought to the attention of the court.
There is a decided advantage in having police probation officers, or
police officers, tied up to the court. There is an absolute absence of
that feeling that the police lock up the children and the juvenile
court turns them away, because the police department states its case
to the court. On the other hand, there is a decided socializing in
fluence on the individual police probation officer; he almost immedi
ately gets the point o f view o f the court and takes it back to the police
Station. I commend the system to other cities that are having diffi
culty with their police officers. The matter can not be worked, of
course, except with the complete cooperation o f the police department.
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Judge R i c k s . May we have several other short addresses on that
subject? Mrs. Murdoch, of the Alabama State Board of Child W el-'N
>
fare, might give us her point o f view.
Mrs. W. L. M u r d o c h , of Birmingham, Ala. I think that is a very
unfair advantage for a southerner to take of a southerner. I just
wanted to ask a question. I would very much rather my question
should be answered, and that I should take but a moment o f your
time, because I am here to learn. I would like to ask the last speaker
what can be done about police where the courts, as they are all
through the South, are county-wide courts. And I find in coming to
the national conference that most o f you are talking about great big
cities o f half a million population, and so large a percentage o f us
come from small places where our problems are not answered on
the floor o f this conference. Now, our courts are county wide, and
I presume others are, too; and we could not have city policemen
detailed to our juvenile courts, because the financial situation would
prevent. I would like to ask, Do you -mean by what you said that
policemen should be detailed to a part o f the court, or do you mean
merely that kindly cooperation between the police staff and the
juvenile court would bring about the best results for the proba
tion officer in the discharge of his duties?
Judge H u l b e r t . I might answer that by saying that my own
court in Detroit is a county-wide court and not a city court. I am
a probate judge, and my jurisdiction extends throughout the county
o f Wayne and not simply over the city of Detroit. In any large
jurisdiction where there is a large city, of course the great bulk o f
the work is in the city, and I spoke o f the police viewpoint because
o f that fact. It is true that I say that the police should be attached
to the court; but it is equally true that the same cooperation and
spirit can be as easily carried outside the jurisdiction o f the city
to the ordinary police officers o f the county, and you will get the
same response from them as you will from the individual policeman.
It is hardly a matter for the court judge to interest himself in the
organization. I perhaps did not make myself clear. I may have
very much befuddled the vision I wanted to put before you. I don’t
want to charge the judge with a tremendous amount of detail at
all, but I do feel the judge must be head of his system. The inspira
tion must come from the judge, the head of the system, and he must
use the system and permit the filtration of his ideas, if you please,
down to the child in the community which he serves. He can not do
it otherwise. The individual contact o f the judge in any large juris
diction with the individual child is very brief, and therefore he
must get his spirit to the child through his official organization.
Judge R i c k s . I s Mr. A. A. Antles, secretary o f the State depart
ment o f public welfare o f Nebraska, here? We would be interested
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in hearing from him as to how they handle this situation in
Nebraska?
Mr. A n t l e s . Mr. Chairman, I have been sitting here all yesterday
afternoon and this forenoon while you have been discussing the
juvenile courts, and I have heard you discuss the juvenile judges and
probation officers; but I have not heard anybody mention the person
who, in my judgment, in our State at least, has as much to do with
the juvenile court as any o f these, and perhaps all of them, and that
is our county attorney. In the larger cities you do not have county
attorneys to take care o f your juvenile work, but in our State we
have only twelve counties which have juvenile officers. You may
think it is peculiar, and it is. We are trying to get a better system
than that, but we must discuss the situation as we have it there. Our
State is 410 miles long and 210 miles wide, and the one juvenile officer
or director o f our child-welfare bureau, in my department, must look
after the whole situation in our State, except in those 12 counties.
Each county judge is a judge o f the juvenile court, and the director
has counseled with thirty o f those judges during the past year and
also with thirty county attorneys. And they have handled from
1 to 174 children in each one o f those courts. Now, the county at
torney in our State, when an offense is committed, must give his sanc
tion to the prosecution o f the person; therefore we must take him
into our confidence and teach him that he has a big job. Sometimes
when a boy steals an automobile and he has .a good chance to get a
conviction, we have to teach the county attorney that the juvenile
court should handle that child. And to get our county attorneys to
realize that the children should come into our juvenile court is a big
job, because they are looking for conviction, so that when they come
up for reelection four years hence they can show what good county
attorneys they are. The children are not to be thrown into jail, not
to be sworn when they come before the juvenile judge; but they are
to sit down before the long table and discuss with the judge the things
they have committed and the home conditions. Then the judge is
the one to decide what shall be done with that boy or girl. The
county attorney is inclined to think that he must issue a warrant for
that boy that must be served by the sheriff or the police department,
and that he can not get a conviction unless the boy is in jail. That
is a pretty hard thing to get out o f his head, so we need in Nebraska
some help along that line.
We find that there are less than a dozen counties in our State—
probably half a dozen—where the county attorneys know what sort
o f blank to use in juvenile-court work; and our department is start
ing to furnish the county attorneys with them and to get their co
operation in bringing these cases before the juvenile court. We find
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that when the cases are brought into the juvenile court the cooper
ation we get from those judges and courts is very satisfactory to
us— although it is a hard job to get it, and we have a big work before
us. I am sorry our director o f child welfare could not be here, be
cause I am getting a great deal o f instruction from this discussion
and from this work.
Judge R i c k s . The subject o f the discussion is the relation between
the court and the police department, and the further question of
where the control for the detention home should be—whether in the
court, in the police department, or in some other department o f the
city or county. I know in Erie County, New York, we have one of the
best developed and most efficient probation systems in the United
States, and I think Mr. Murphy, of Buffalo, is qualified to give us a
very valuable contribution on this subject.
J o s e p h P . M u r p h y , Chief Probation Officer, Erie County, N. Y.
On that question, as to where the control ought to be, it seems to me
there is no doubt that it should be in the juvenile court. That is
where we have it, and we would not consider it .in any other place.
Judge R i c k s . What is the relationship between your court and
the police department? Are there any police officers under the con
trol o f the court or assigned to the court for duty ?
Mr. M u r p h y . There is only one, and that is in the adult part—a
police officer who is assigned to supervise the serving o f summonses
and to supervise some o f the persons convicted o f adult contributory
delinquency. There is a dual control between the judge and the
police department.
Mr. H a u p t . In regard to Judge Hulbert’s point about the influence
o f the juvenile court on communities, some time ago the judge called
me to the bench, in regard to a very serious sex trouble of some girls
under 15, and he said: “ Haupt, go out there and clear up that mess;
it is the worst thing I have run up against in the 15 years o f my
being on the bench.” And it was a fearful condition, and I believe
it has been cleared up by a community meeting, in which the parents
were gotten together in the school building by the county superintend
ent o f schools to discuss that whole matter from a pure and uplifting
standpoint. I believe it accomplished a great deal of good, and that
the judge can have a great influence in such ways. That is only one
illustration out o f very many.
Judge R i c k s . The time for discussion is now up, and we will
pass to the next topic: How far can court procedure be socialized
without impairing individual rights? I know of no one we would
rather hear on this subject than Judge Edward F. Waite, of the
juvenile court o f Minneapolis.
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HOW FAR CAN COURT PROCEDURE BE SOCIALIZED WITHOUT
IMPAIRING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS?
Hon. E d w a r d F . W
a it e ,
Judge o f the Ju ven ile Court o f H ennepin C ounty,
M inneapolis, M inn.
What do we mean by “ socializing ” court procedure ? Measuring
time by standards appropriate to the development of human insti
tutions, it may be said that until very recently the courts were con
cerned almost wholly with the adjustment o f conflicting claims of
individuals and groups against each other, and procedure was
meticulously guarded to prevent unjust advantage for precisely the
same reasons that dictated the details o f the code duello. The
modern tendency toward what is termed the socialization of the
courts has produced new tribunals and evolved new functions of
older ones, in which the aim is not so much the adjudication of
private rights as the performance of what are conceived to be com
munity obligations. This tendency chiefly interests the lawyer as
it has enlarged the use o f the police power to secure the general
welfare. It interests the social worker chiefly as if brings directly
and conveniently to his aid the judicial machinery through which
alone, according to the tradition o f free peoples, the State may
exercise its ultimate authority in time o f peace.
The working out o f this tendency toward broader functions and
a more human emphasis and aim has involved a more liberal pro
cedure or method of transacting the business o f the courts— or at
least o f certain courts in which the socializing process has made
substantial headway. When a court is acting, not as an arbiter o f
private strife but as the medium of the State’s performance o f its
sovereign duties as parens patriae and promoter of the general
welfare, it is natural that some of the safeguards o f judicial con
tests should be laid aside. This corollary to the main tendency to
which we have referred may be fitly styled the socialization of court
procedure.
I assume that by “ individual rights” in our subject is meant those
personal rights recognized by the common law as adopted in the
United States and established by constitutions, National and State.
On the basis o f these definitions, let us consider the nine subdivi
sions o f the genera!subject proposed by those who have prepared the
program: (1) Exclusion o f public, (2) representation by attorneys,
(3) swearing o f witnesses, (4) methods o f taking testimony and con
formity with rules of evidence, (5) weight of evidence, (6) jury
trials, (7) investigation into circumstances o f offense, (8) testimony
o f probation officers, and (9) use of referee in girls’ cases.
The discussion will relate solely to so-called juvenile courts, and
my contribution, in order to conform to the necessary time limit,
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must be untechnical, summary, and suggestive. So far as I state
legal principles I shall undertake to be correct according to inter
pretations that prevail in my own State—Minnesota. Even were
my learning sufficient I could not differentiate here between the
several States on points where they do not agree.
I have said “ so-called juvenile courts ” advisedly. I do not reflect
upon those communities where the legislature has not made the radi
cal change from the criminal to the noncriminal type of court in
dealing with delinquent children. But has not the time come to re
form our terminology in the interest o f clear thinking? The court
which must direct its procedure, even apparently, to doing something
to a child because of what he has done is parted from the court which
is avowedly concerned only with doing something for a child because
of what he is and needs by a gulf too wide to be bridged by any hu
manity which the judge may introduce into his hearings, or by the
habitual use of corrective rather than punitive methods after convic
tion. I suspect that the theory o f the juvenile court which stresses
the moving forward o f the common-law age o f criminal responsi
bility involves some bad psychology and is responsible for some bad
law. Has not the time arrived when no tribunal should claim the
title o f juvenile court, implying in its origin and major application a
jurisdiction and procedure founded wholly on the parental idea, with
out distinction in aim and essential method between delinquent, de
pendent, and neglected wards o f the state, unless this is its real char
acter ? Let other courts be styled what they are—police or criminal
courts for children.
But I should not be warranted in excluding courts of the latter
sort from this discussion. Therefore, having thus filed my protest, I
shall adopt the current nomenclature and refer to all children’s courts
as juvenile courts.
Another comment, to clear the ground: One often sees departure
from those traditional safeguards o f the individual which are familiar
in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence explained and justified by the parental
attitude o f the juvenile court. Some looseness prevails in this regard,
even in the opinions of appellate courts. It should not be forgotten
that the performance o f judicial functions always involves two proc
esses: The first, to determine whether jurisdiction assumed for the
purpose o f an inquiry should be retained for the application of a
remedy; the second, application o f the remedy. The first seeks the
facts; the second applies the law to the facts as ascertained. Is it
not obvious that the rights of the individual who holds the state at*
arm’s length and says, “ The matters charged are false; government
has no call to interfere with me,” should be more strictly regarded
during the first process than the second, when his status as a person
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with whom public interference is warranted has been established?
Otherwise all that is necessary to justify a despotism is to make sure
it intends to be benevolent.
. Taking up now the suggested subtopics :
(1) Exclusion of 'public.— One who is accused o f crime has a con
stitutional right to a public trial. As to what a public trial is, the
courts have differed. I f a juvenile court is organized as a criminal
court for children, any child who comes before it charged with an
offense is entitled to a public trial. I f the court that deals with him
is exercising chancery jurisdiction, no such constitutional right ex
ists ; and for the purposes o f this discussion noncriminal courts with
purely statutory jurisdiction over children will be classed, though
not with technical exactness, as courts o f chancery jurisdiction. To
a mind “ not warped,” as somebody has said, “ by study and practice
o f the law ” it may seem absurd that the hearing in the case of Johnny
Jones must be public if he is charged in a criminal court with steal
ing and need not be so if he is charged in a noncriminal court with
being delinquent because he stole. I shall not now defend this seeming
inconsistency. I f it is constitutional law, it is binding on the courts
and legislatures, and it can be changed only by constitutional amend
ments.
There is no constitutional right to a public hearing when depend
ency or neglect is the issue ; and the court has no right to deny it in
cases o f “ contributing,” since here it acts always as a criminal court,
whether or not it has also chancery jurisdiction.
Even when the right to a public trial exists, much discretion is
allowed the judge in the matter of excluding idle onlookers in the
interest of public decency or the good order of the court proceedings.
Probably no reasonable exercise of this discretion would ever be
questioned by or oh behalf o f a juvenile delinquent, for the protection
of whose sensibilities and reputation it is commonly exercised. In
deed, all doubtful questions that have arisen in my own experience
have had reference to inclusion rather than exclusion. I have some
times found it puzzling to know how far it was just to children and
their parents to permit their troubles to be heard even by qualified
social observers who wished to use the clinical opportunities afforded
by court sessions. The smaller the court room, by the way, the simpler
the problem both ways.
(2) Representation by attorneys.—Here also the nature o f the
proceeding is the proper basis for distinctions. In prosecutions for
crime, even o f children, representation by counsel is a constitutional
fight. In noncriminal proceedings, however, courts of conciliation
and small claims have made us familiar with the idea that legal
rights are not necessarily violated by the elimination o f attorneys.
But is it not a moot question? Is not the experience of other judges
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like my own—that in most cases it is easily possible to make the law
yer who comes into the juvenile court an ally o f the court and interest"
him in securing the real welfare of those for whom he appears? <
The absence o f antagonistic claims of personal rights makes this the
more feasible. I refer, o f course, to cases immediately involving
children. In “ contributing” cases appearance of counsel must be
permitted, and in my judgment should be encouraged.
(3 )
Swearing of witnesses.—I fancy most judges exercise wide dis
cretion in this regard and are not conscious of any danger to personal
rights. I can hardly conceive that i f desired by the parties con
cerned all witnesses would not be sworn. Sometimes essential facts
are within the knowledge o f a child so young that to put him on
oath would seem unreasonable. An obvious corollary to this situation
would be the conclusion that his testimony would be unreliable.
This would be true in general; and yet skillful questioning by an im
partial judge might elicit important and well-accredited truth. The
discretion to determine the competency o f a child to testify has al
ways lain with the court., Would it be any violation of rights for
the judge to determine also whether or not to administer the oath?
I think not. The greater discretion includes the less.
(4) Methods of taking testimony and conformity with rules of ,
evidence.— There can be no question of impairing rights in deter
mining whether to receive testimony from the witness stand or the
floor in front o f the judge’s table; or whether and to what extent the
judge himself shall interrogate witnesses. These and others of like
sort are questions o f taste and convenience, and the preference of
any person fit to act as judge ought to be a safe reliance. As be
tween criminal and noncriminal proceedings interrogation by the
court is much more limited in the former, according to usage in the
United States.
More serious questions arise in respect to conformity with the
rules of evidence. Speaking generally, rules of evidence throughout
the United States are the rules of the English common law, variously
modified by local statutes, and uniform in their application to all
courts deriving authority from the same source—the State or the
Nation. I do not happen to know of any legislative rule o f evidence
peculiar to juvenile courts, except a Minnesota statute permitting
findings upon the written reports o f official investigators with like
effect as upon testimony received in open court, in “ county allow
ance ” or “ mothers’ pension ” cases. Rules o f ancient origin, ap
proved or at least tolerated by the community for generations, eiicountered by the citizen whenever he resorts to other legal forums t
assert or defend his rights, should not be lightly set aside in juvenile
courts. The only safe practice is to observe them. I f hearsay, for
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example, has not been found justly admissible in civil disputes and
criminal trials, it is no better in juvenile-court proceedings. Ex
ceptions should be made when appropriate, and informal short cuts
will often be found agreeable to all concerned; but the exception
should always be recognized as an exception. No judge on any
bench has need to be more thoroughly grounded in the principles of
evidence and more constantly mindful of them than the judge o f a
juvenile court. The- boy against whom it is proposed to make an
official record of misconduct, involving possible curtailment o f his
freedom at the behest o f strangers, has a right to be found delinquent
only according to law. The father, however, unworthy, who faces a
judicial proceeding, the event o f which may be to say to him, “ This
child of your loins is henceforth not your child; the State takes him
from you as finally as though by the hand o f death ’’—that father
may rightfully demand that the tie o f blood shall be cut'only by the
sword o f constitutional justice. Surely, those substantial rules of
evidence which would protect the boy if the ‘State called its inter
ference “ punishment ” instead of “ protection,” and would safeguard
the father in the possession o f his dog, should apply to issues which
may involve the right of the boy to liberty within the family rela
tionship and the right o f the father to his child. The greater the
conceded discretion o f the judge, the freer he is from the vigilance of
lawyers, the less likely he is to have his mistakes corrected on appeal,
so much the more careful should he be to base every judicial con
clusion on evidence proper to be received in any court o f justice.
Otherwise the State’s parental power which he embodies is prosti
tuted; the interpreter of the law degenerates into the oriental kadi,
and the juvenile court falls into suspicion and disrepute.
(5)
Weight of evidence.— Shall the standard be preponderance of
evidence or proof beyond a reasonable doubt? *The latter, surely,
whenever the proceeding is a criminal one; the former—technically,
at least— in dependency and neglect cases. I say “ technically,” for
while a jury would be so instructed, it is certain that the average
juror, regardless o f instructions, will require something more than a
mere tipping o f the balance before he will agree to a verdict that
may separate protesting parents from their child. And when, as in
most cases, the duty to pass upon disputed facts falls to the fallible
intelligence of a single person, any judge who realizes his respon
sibility will insist upon clear proof.
When delinquency cases are heard in noncriminal courts I suppose
jthe true rule to be preponderance o f evidence. But here I, at least,
must plead guilty to judicial legislation, and I suspect I am not alone
in this. When we have minimized the stigma o f an adjudication of
delinquency in every way that kindly ingenuity may devise, it re-
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mains true that in the mind o f the child, his family, and his ac
quaintances who know about it, it is practically equivalent to con
viction of a criminal offense. In the face o f this fact legal theory
should give way, and no less evidence should be required than if the
hearing were a criminal trial. In the rare instances when I have
juries in the juvenile court I instruct them to this effect, and I apply
the same test to my own mind in reaching judicial conclusions.
(6) Jury trials.—It appears to be well settled that in none of the
cases heard in noncriminal juvenile courts is there a constitutional
right to trial by jury. In Minnesota, when juvenile-court functions
are exercised by the district court, which is the court of general
jurisdiction, a jury trial may be demanded. This, however, is a
privilege granted, rather than a right confirmed, by the legislature;
and the privilege is rarely claimed. Doubtless this situation is
typical. When, however, the court is so organized that a child is
prosecuted for a criminal violation o f a State law, I think it is
generally understood'that a jury must be called unless specifically
waived. The same is true in “ contributing ” cases, especially when,
as in Minnesota, the act or omission is made a misdemeanor.
(T) Investigation into circumstances of offense.—I f there is a ques
tion here it must be as to the use to be made of information obtained
rather than as to the propriety o f a preliminary investigation
through agents of the court. The value of such an investigation in
suggesting inquiry at the hearing is obvious. But when there are
issues o f fact to be tried it seems to me equally plain that statements
made to an investigator out o f court should have no standing as
evidence when they are disputed by parties in interest, who by the
implication o f their denial demand the same right to be confronted
with the witnesses against them that is freely recognized in other
judicial proceedings. Without attempting a discussion o f “ due
process of law,” considerations o f public policy seem conclusive. The
undisciplined minds o f the juveniles and most of the parents who
come before the court can not make clear distinctions between pro
ceedings that are really friendly and paternal and those that are
hostile, when the results may be alike in depriving them of liberty of
action, which they had before they came into court and are un
willing to surrender. Public opinion, too, looks askance upon any
abandonment of traditional barriers against governmental inter
ference with the citizen. However wise the judge and kind his
purpose, he must have regard for both the individual and the com
munity sense o f justice; and Americans have an ingrained conviction
that nothing, however well meant, ought to be forced upon them on
the basis o f information obtained behind their backs.
Let it be observed that I am now discussing policy rather than
constitutional rights. As respects noncriminal proceedings, I am
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not prepared to set limits to the power of the legislature to enlarge
and adapt to modern condition the ancient methods o f official inqui
sition. Prof. Wigmore speaks o f an increasing need “ for the more
liberal recognition of an authority such as would make admissible
various sorts o f reports dealing with matters seldom disputable and
only provable otherwise at disproportionate inconvenience and cost.”
“ This policy,” he says, “ when judiciously employed, greatly
facilitates the production o f evidence without introducing loose
methods.” 4
It is probable that as socialization o f the courts proceeds the
tendency toward the use o f this form o f evidence will grow stronger;
but popular prejudices must be reckoned with, and procedural con
venience will be dearly bought if the cost be impairment o f the
general confidence in the administration o f justice.
When, however, the adjudication is made the situation changes.
It has been lawfully determined that the facts warrant the inter
ference o f the court. The nature and extent o f that interference is
discretionary with the judge within the limits set by the law. In
exercising his discretion he may rely upon anything that brings con
viction to his mind, and the parties concerned have no legal right to
question the sources o f his information. Here official investigation
is a proper and valuable aid, whether made before or after the ad
judication.
(8) Testimony of 'probation officers.— No legal right seems to be
involved; the question is rather one o f expediency. In my judg
ment the probation officer should not appear as a hostile factor in
court proceedings. The friendly relations with child and family
that are essential to his corrective and constructive work would thus
be jeopardized in advance. Should adverse information after proba
tion is ordered be disclosed to the court ? By all means, if it is im
portant. No confidences should be received on condition of conceal
ment. The probation officer is the eyes and ears o f the court. What
he sees and hears is a part o f the court’s knowledge o f the case, and
ought to be so regarded by all concerned.
(9) TJse of referee in girls' cases.— Once more a distinction must
be made between criminal and noncriminal proceedings. Probably
no one would suggest the reference o f a criminal case against an
adult. Then why o f a criminal case against a juvenile? But in noncriminal matters, masters in chancery and statutory referees have
familiarized us with the idea o f delegation by the court o f some
-&rt o f its judicial authority. I think there is no constitutional
reason why a court exercising chancery powers as a juvenile court
may not be authorized to appoint a referee, not only to examine
and recommend but to hear and determine. Masters o f discipline
‘ Wigmore on Evidence, Vol. I ll, sec. 1672.
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in Colorado, juvenile commissioners in North Dakota, and referees
in California and New Mexico are instances where statutes have
expressly authorized such procedure. Other examples are referees
in girls’ cases. I have never heard a suggestion that rights were
thus violated. On the contrary, girls and their parents are likely to
deem it an advantage to have both inquiry and action* in a woman’s
hands. Doubtless it is the experience of every man who acts as
judge in cases o f sex delinquency on the part o f girls, that even if
he has not the assistance of an official referee, a woman probation
officer relieves him of embarassing investigation and virtually de
termines the appropriate action.
I f our discussion has any value, we may state three general conclu
sions :
1. In criminal proceedings the child has before conviction all the
legal rights of the adult. Here the field of socialization is
practically limited to treatment o f the child after conviction.
2. In noncriminal proceedings there may be either with or without
express legislative authorization, according to the nature o f
the court, the broad latitude customarily exercised by courts
o f chancery jurisdiction, this being appropriate and necessary
to the full use o f parental functions. Here no constitutional
provisions relating to criminal prosecutions apply, and sociali
zation of procedure may have wide scope. There are limits,
however, of which the judge should never be unmindful.
3. In adopting this broader practice, courts should have regard to
the popular sense o f justice, even when it is not supported by
established principles o f constitutional law.
Do not these conclusions point toward wider powers, freer action,
better and more thoroughly socialized judges for the true juvenile
court, and speedy evolution o f the criminal court for children into
the broader type ? This process spells, I think, the liberal develop
ment of the family court idea.
Furthermore, while they seem to me in no wise at variance with the
growing tendency toward transfer to the public schools of adminis
trative details after adjudication, do they not negative conclusively
the assumption by any other agency than a court of justice o f the
task o f adjudicating disputed facts?
Hon.
Sam uel
D.
L e v y , Justice o f th e Children’s C ou rt o f the C ity o f N ew Y o r k .*
The subject assigned to me is one o f intense interest, and I make^
bold to say o f vital interest to the citizens o f the land. It has been
my viewpoint in my daily task as justice of one o f the most important
* Read by title.
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children’s courts in this country to assume that the children brought
into court because of improper guardianship or delinquency were the
wards o f the court as well as o f the State. I have acted on the prin
ciple that neither they nor their parents or guardians, nor the pro
cedure of the court, nor the judgments to be rendered, nor the de
cisions to be made are to be treated from the standpoint of legal tech
nicality or strictissimi juris, but from a broad social standpoint,
which leads the court to take into sympathetic consideration the un
social conditions, the bad environment or bad associations, and the
congenital or inherited handicaps o f poor mentality or physical de
fects. The causative factors which were the urge to bring the child
into court are primarily to be considered, and not the immediate act
alleged in the complaint or information; and upon careful and
thorough analysis, such proximate or primary cause being ascer
tained, it is for the court so to decide the matter that social conditions
will be bettered and improved by its judgment or decision.
Indeed, legal procedure is not to be considered, except so far as it
is a mere guide or help in the administration o f justice, but by no
means as a controlling factor. The commitment o f a child to a pro
tectory or reformatory or other similar institution is not to be thought
-of—even though the delinquency complained of is an act that if com
mitted by an adult would be characterized as larceny, burglary, pick
pocketing, assault, or other felony—if by placing the child in a
proper social position he would be uplifted, improved, rehabilitated,
reformed, and redeemed, and made an asset to the community. For
it must be obvious to any one having any large experience with atypi
cal children, that the children o f poverty conditions, o f tender years,
with immatured mentality, can not knowingly commit these delin
quencies (or crimes) ; that because o f their immaturity these children
can not have the “ intent” which the statute contemplates when it
proscribes crimes, and that comparatively few children are ingrained
criminals, although some appear to be. But both experience and
observation have taught me that what appears to be a hardened child,
a child with criminalistic traits, is very often found to be an “ un
graded ” child and one who was always mentally defective. Hence
the extreme care necessarily required to place the child, after analyti
cal diagnosis, in its proper niche and to deal with it not as a criminal
but as a child in need o f the care and protection o f the state— and
that ofttimes means in need o f the sympathetic interest and wise
counsel of the judge o f the juvenile court. The more the court and
ts procedure is socialized, the more will substantial justice be meted
out and the child be helped as probably he was never helped before.
With such a judicial attitude toward the child and his guardians a
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successful prognosis may be hoped for in nine cases out of ten, and
individual rights are not only not impaired, but are greatly strength
ened by such procedure.
Judge R i c k s . In the absence o f Dr. Miriam Van Waters, referee
o f the Juvenile Court o f Los Angeles County, we are going to have
Miss Shontz, who was the first referee of that court, read the paper
prepared by Dr. Van Waters.
Mtrtam V a n W atees , P h . D .,
R e fe r e e o f th e Ju venile C ourt o f L o s A ngeles
C ounty, Calif.
The Socialization of Ju/oende-Gourt Procedure.
The juvenile court o f California, first established by legislative
enactment in 1903, now operates under statutes amended in 1915
substantially as follows: 6A judge o f the superior court is chosen
by his fellow judges to sit as a juvenile-court judge. Jurisdiction
extends to persons under 21 years o f age. (Under certain conditions,
persons between the ages o f 18 and 21 charged with felony are dealt
with by the crminal courts.) The law formulates no definition o f de
linquency or dependency, but enumerates 14 specific conditions under
which a child may be brought before the court. These conditions em
brace the range o f offenses, behavior difficulties, and physical, mental,
and social handicaps which cause or tend to cause a child to need the
protection and guardianship o f -the State. The juvenile court has
jurisdiction over adults criminally liable for contributing to certain
o f the above conditions.
Proceedings are begun by petition filed with th e . clerk of the
superior court by any reputable person, who on information and be
lief alleges that a child comes within the provisions o f the law. The
attendance of the child and his parents is Secured by citation; a war
rant may be issued if citation seems likely to be ineffectual. Attend
ance o f witnesses is secured by subpoena.
The law states: “ In no case shall an order adjudging a person to
be a ward o f the juvenile court be deemed to be a conviction of
crime.” 7 Any order made by the court may be changed, modified, or
set aside as to the judge may seem meet and proper. Provision for
an appeal from judgment is made. The keynote to the act is found
in section 24, entitled “ Construction ” : “ This act shall be liberally
construed, to the end that its purposes may be carried out, to wit, that
the care, custody, and discipline o f a ward of the juvenile court, as
defined in this act, shall approximate as nearly as may be that which
should be given by his parents.”
•Calif.. 1915, c. 631.
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California—in counties o f the first class, that is to say, Los
'Angeles—and New Mexico are the only States that specifically pro
vide by law for the appointment o f a woman referee to hear cases o f
girls and young boys brought before the court. The referee has the
usual power o f referees in chancery cases, hears the testimony o f
witnesses, and certifies to the judge o f the juvenile court findings
upon the case, together with recommendation as to the judgment or
order to be made.
Such, in brief, is the legal background o f the juvenile court in Los
Angeles. Since the enactment o f 1915 all cases o f girls under 21 and
o f boys under 13 have been privately heard in the detention home by
a woman referee. Socialization o f procedure has been the rule, and
if the number o f cases appealed is a test, the plan has been successful;
for during the four and a half years when Orfa Jean Shontz, the first
woman referee to be appointed, heard these cases, over 6,000 matters
were before the court, and but one appeal was taken from her findings
and recommendations— and in that case her finding was upheld.
Socialization—what do we mean by this term as applied to
juvenile-court procedure? I take it to mean the process by which
the purpose and goal o f the juvenile court is best attained; that
method which best frees the spirit o f the juvenile court and permits
it to serve the social ideal it was created to express.
Briefly, then, we must call to mind its origin. The juvenile court
sprang into being in response to the demand o f a civic conscience
freshly awake to the horror o f treating children as criminals. In
theory this court is parental, a court o f guardianship—not a crimi
nal or quasi-criminal court, but a court where the paramount issue
is the welfare o f the child. Rooted in the ancient Anglo-Saxon con
cept o f the king as the “ ultimate guardian o f all his subjects, who
by reason o f helplessness o f any sort could not adequately care for
themselves,” the juvenile court is the modern outgrowth o f the power
o f parens patriae administered in England through the courts o f
chancery— as students o f the juvenile-court movement, notably Judge
Edward F. Waite, have so ably pointed out.8
That simple folk looked to the courts o f equity for remedy against
the rigors o f the common law is expressed as early as 1321: Aubyn
de Clyton, complaining o f a gross and outrageous trespass, petitions
the court o f equity on the ground that “ the said Johan and Phillip
hold their heads so high and are so threatening that the said Aubyn
does not dare contest with them at the common law.” 9 Desire for
socialization here mingles with a touching confidence in its attain
ability.
8 Waite, Edward F . : The Origin and Development o f the Minnesota Juvenile Court, p. 3.
•Henderson’ s Chancery Practice, p. 121.
77504°—22----- 5
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While the legal basis o f the juvenile court is rooted in equity, two
fundamental modern ideas concerning the child—one biological, the.
other social—have united in the formation o f the juvenile court.
Biology teaches us that the child is a being quite different from ’
an adult. His way o f feeling and his response are governed by nat
ural laws; his behavior is an adjustment to life, ruled by cause and
effect. The whole being of the child is sacred to growth. And
throughout the period o f growth, during the whole course o f his
immaturity, he is held to be plastic, capable o f infinite modification.
Unless this modern concept o f the child is mastered we can not un
derstand the principle o f the juvenile court.
The second fundamental idea is that of the child as an asset to
the State. The child is an asset, greater than all his faults. It is
the duty o f the State in the interests o f its own self-preservation to
take care o f the child when parents have failed him. The juvenilecourt law formulated by the Legislature o f Illinois in 1899 10 was
an expression o f these principles, and the machinery created to ex
press and to enforce these principles harked back to the ancient
usage o f Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. It is well to stress this point
for the benefit o f certain lawyers who think, or appear to think, the
juvenile court a kind o f modern, benevolent mushroom foisted on
the body o f the law by social uplifters.
In our discussion o f rights in the juvenile court the main right to'
be considered is the right o f the child—his primary right to shelter,
protection, and proper guardianship. The first requirement in so
cialization is a method for getting the whole truth about the child.
Analogy here brings the court close to the spirit o f the clinic.
The physician searches for every detail that bears on the condition of
the patient. The physician demands all the facts, because he believes
it is only good that can follow to his patient. The patient is privi
leged to expect good , but only on condition that he reveal all the
facts and submit himself utterly. He is freed from fear because the
aim o f thè examination is his own welfare.
Quite contrary is the spirit of legal action. The defendant is
hemmed about with elaborate safeguards against improper questions.
The right o f a witness not to incriminate himself, his right to the
secrecy o f certain inviolate privileged relations and communications,
all the rules o f evidence that exclude certain kinds of truth from the
ear o f the court as improper, have grown up with a view to protect
the individual from the power o f the State to inflict penalty upon
him. Fear o f injustice, dread of punishment—these are the human
emotions expressed vividly in the dry phrasing o f the rules of evidence^
just as in the folk saying: “ Only the rich can afford justice; only the1
poor can not escape it.”
» 113. Laws, 1899, p. 131.
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The juvenile court, on the other hand, can demand the whole truth
because it has the power to save, to protect, and to remedy. Its orders
or judgments are not penal, but parental. Its object in determining
truth is not incrimination, but the gaining o f that understanding
which must precede constructive discipline. In a socialized procedure
no useful evidence should be excluded from the court. Each relevant
fact should be admissible, but we should adhere closely to that body
o f the rules o f evidence that applies a test to truth. Hearsay, in
competent evidence, opinion, gossip, bias, prejudice, trends of hostile
neighborhood feeling—all these sources o f error should be ruled out
o f the juvenile court as rigidly as from any other court. I f sociali
zation o f court procedure means letting down the bars, so that social
workers can dispense with good case work or can substitute their fears
and prejudices for the presentation o f real evidence, heaven forbid
any increase in socialization! N o ; the test o f truth in the juvenile
court should be definite, scientific, carefully scrutinized.
The second principle in socialization is cooperation. In order to
secure the welfare o f a human being it is necessary that he assent.
Compulsory uplift is difficult, i f not socially impossible. To the
clinic the patient comes because he feels sick, to the court the young
person comes because he must. It is the business o f the social worker
to make him “ feel sick ” ; that is to say, he should be impressed with
the social seriousness o f the situation. The child should be made to
feel penitent, but charging him with guilt is not the best way to
accomplish this result. Such a course places him on the defensive;
it is a challenge, and his mind leaps to the encounter.
“ W hat are you charged with, Jim?” asked the matron in a detention home
of a small boy. “ Soda water. See? I am charged with soda water. I stole a
case of it.” H is flippancy disappeared in court, however, under the following
procedure: “ Who earns the living in your home?” “ Mother.” “ H ow ?” “ She
scrubs floors, but she is in the hospital now.” “ W ho cooks?” “ My little
sister.”
“ W hat do you do to help?”
“ Nothing.”
“ Do you cause them
trouble?” “ Y e s ; I steal— some.” There were tears.
Your response depends on where you place your emphasis.
How change o f emphasis from procedure designed to incriminate
and to convict to procedure socialized and aiming at welfare—how
this change o f emphasis leads to change in the attitude o f the child
is seen nowhere more clearly than in the treatment o f young girl
sex offenders. Los Angeles is the honey-pot o f movie-dreaming
youth.
One girl of eighteen was recently before me on a police complaint of soliciting.
She lived in Detroit and had lodged in half a dozen jails en route. Arraigned
in the police court of Los Angeles, she was transferred to the juvenile court.
She was plainly bored. W ell she knew she could not be convicted of anything
more serious than vagrancy. This quiet room, this woman sitting as judge,
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these women who sat as clerk, reporter, and bailiff— why, it was all child’s
play!
“ W h y are you here?” she was asked. “ W ell, they can’t p rove anything on
me. No one ever saw me take a cent, and I had my clothes on.” “ You are
not accused o f anything here, save that you are a person under the age 6 f 21
with no parental control and in danger of leading ap immoral life, and should
the court find it necessary for your protection you can be held until you are 21.”
It was a bewildered young person. Gone were the old words to lean on—
“ bail,” “ guilty or not guilty,” “ fine,” “ 30 days,” etc .; gone were the smiling
policeman, the friendly detectives. She was just a girl, stranded; a prodigal
daughter, not a defendant. Yet this court impressed her with the power it had
to compel obedience. She told her story. She submitted to discipline. W hat
prosecution could not do, cooperation secured in half an hour.
Sp, too, in matters pertaining to the custody o f children. Parents
accustomed to regard the child as private property are perplexed
at a view which places the welfare o f the child first. A girl o f 11
had been neglected at home. Parents—two sets o f step-parents—
flanked by the in-laws, flung mutual charges ranging from blas
phemy to incest. “ This is not a domestic arena,” they were told,
“ only one issue is here to-day—what can you suggest for the welfare
o f this child?” When it was made clear to them that the child her
self had the paramount right, that parental selfishness must give
way, their attitude changed gradually and instead o f demanding a
property right they agreed that none o f them were fit to have her.
A third principle in socialization is the dynamic idea back o f the
juvenile court. In legal action the sentence, or judgment, is final.
The game is lost or won; the finality o f doomsday is not more ir
revocable. But the juvenile court’s decisions are like youth itself,
capable o f being modified, meeting each to-morrow afresh, adjusting
perpetually to life. The courts have held unfitness temporary.
What does that mean ? It means eternal chance for the erring parent;
it means reconstructed lives.
Jennie, a girl of 23, formerly a ward of the juvenile court, was married to a
soldier and was the mother of a 3-year-old boy. The husband had sought unsuc
cessfully in the divorce court and in the criminal court to deprive her of the
custody of the child on the ground of her unfitness. Nothing could be proved
against this mother, and yet one look at the child— thin and pale, with sad
eyes— supported the belief that he needed care. The matter came into the
juvenile court. Jennie resisted any attempt to incriminate her. “ Y ou r child—
has he had a chance? ”— not the question, had she been guilty of misconduct,
but, “ Your little boy, is he all right? ” Brushing aside her attorney, “ No, n o ;
I have neglected him.” Then followed her statement of her unfitness, with a
plea for a chance to prove fitness. In six months she had won back her baby,
whom she had given up voluntarily. She had cooperated in a plan of con
structive child welfare.
A fatal blow to socialization, however, is the attempt to use evidence
secured in the juvenile court as the basis o f other legal action. Jen
nie’s husband, after her rehabilitation, tried to use her statements
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made in the juvenile court as evidence against her in the divorce
~court. He was unsuccessful. Twenty-seven ijStates11 have safe
guarding provisions against using evidence gained in the juvenile
court against the child in other proceedings. But this protection
should be extended to parents who in good faith, for the purposes of
child welfare, give evidence against themselves.
Is the concept o f socialization antagonistic to legal principles ?
What is law ? In a discussion o f this matter reviewed in the Reports
o f the American Bar Association12 the definition o f Blackstone and
Austin o f the law as a “ command ” or “ body o f commands ” pro
ceeding from the supreme power o f a State is criticized. “ The law
is something more than the mere formal rules which have been de
clared in constitutions and statutes and applied in precedents.
* * * The real social force is made up o f the principles o f the
social organism; the expressed laws are but rules o f operation.”
Lord Coke, certainly no sympathizer with looseness, said: “ The
principles o f natural rights are perfect and immutable, but the con
dition o f human law is ever changing and there is nothing in it
which can stand forever. Human laws are born, live, and die.” One
o f Wendell Phillips’s epigrams was this: “ Ideas strangle statutes.”
From an anthropological view— that is to say, from a human
view—the law is a culture product o f the human race. Its majesty
is derived only from the human spirit, and it is subject to change and
growth just as any other organism. This highly complex, apparently
adamantine, structure is indeed changing, and if we read aright the
spirit o f the times it is changing quite in the spirit o f the modern
American fam ily; it is following the lead o f its youngest offspring,
the juvenile-court movement.
To sum up: Socialization o f the juvenile-court procedure depends
on the clear, firm grasp o f the principles o f equity. The court is
one o f guardianship, not a penal court. Nothing that the child says
can incriminate him in this court, because the object o f the court is
his welfare. Socialization involves getting at the whole truth;
nothing that is true and relevant should be excluded. Socialization
involves cooperation, constructive discipline, and the dynamic con
cept as expressed in the principle that an order in this court may be
modified as life conditions are modified.
The chief obstacles to socialization o f juvenile-court procedure are
lingering shreds o f penal terminology and criminal-law usage. Obso
lete thinking and unclear thinking are obstacles. Socialization im
plies that judges and court officials are to be experts—experts in
cientific training and in the art of human relations.
11 Children’s Bureau: A Summary of Juvenile Court Legislation in the United States, by
Sophonisba P. Breckenridge and Helen R. Jeter. Bureau publication No. 70, Legal series
No. 5. Washington, D. C., 1921, p. 41.
» 1902, vol. 25, p. 445.
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G eneral D
is c u s s io n .
Judge R i c k s . We now have 15 minutes for this topic. I am going
to ask Judge Hoffman, o f Cincinnati, to lead off in the discussion.
Judge H o f f m a n . I assure you that I agree with all that has been
said concerning this phase o f the juvenile-court problem. I don’t
want it understood that I hold in any way that we ought not in every
way to protect the rights o f the citizen. As it is generally stated,
the dearest and tenderest rights o f parents are involved, and can
not be ignored. The parents have a.right to be heard in a court
before it is determined whether or not their child shall be taken from
them. As Judge Waite said, the guardianship may pass from the
parent to the State. It was decided in the State of Ohio in two
cases that the State has power to stretch forth its arms and have that
child under its guardianship and to care for the child. I f the child
were injured in the street, if a child were in distress with any ail
ment other than that o f delinquency, there would be very little said
o f a duty o f an adjudicating court to receive evidence as to whether
or not we should aid and assist that particular child. There is, how
ever, a slight distinction in reference to delinquency. It is then that
we deprive the parents o f the right to look after their child. There
fore in all those cases they should be heard.
The Supreme Court of the State of Iowa says that if a child be
taken— and this was before the juvenile-court act was passed—no one
can interfere with the State, so far as the child is concerned; but
that the parents would have the right o f a writ o f habeas corpus in
order to adjudicate their rights. In that case the court would deter
mine what is best for the welfare o f the child. The juvenile-court
law came along and said that thereafter it would not be necessary to
institute a suit in habeas corpus, but that the rights of the parents
would be adjudicated in the juvenile court. And therefore, so far as
this law is concerned, I think it proper and right. I state again
that you will find the solution, at last, probably resting in the admin
istration and in the personnel o f those who administered the law—
the socially minded judge will have no difficulty with the law in any
way. I am interested more particularly in caring for that great body
o f boys and girls in reference to whom there is no question whatever
on the part o f the parents or on the part o f the child or upon the
part o f the State. We want to care for those children, not send them
to institutions—penal institutions—when it is not necessary to do so.
Permit me to say a word in reference to just one other point—the
statutes relating to contributing to delinquency. I agree with Judge
Waite and the others that, so far as those cases are concerned, the
defendants are entitled to all the safeguards o f the Constitution and
the laws, providing that they may have a trial according to the ordi
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nary procedure which prevails in the criminal courts. Our statute
provides for cases of contributing to delinquency. And I will say
to the judges who have any scruples upon that point that we have
never felt that it was an infraction upon the work o f the juvenile
court to repose the power of trying those cases in the juvenile court.
They are tried separate and apart from all other cases, and we have
no difficulty whatever in disposing of them. We have no indictment
by the grand jury; an affidavit is filed, and the case is tried upon
affidavit and by jury. Felony cases are tried by jury, unless the jury
is waived and the case is tried according to the ordinary procedure.
Judge R i c k s . I should like to hear a few words from Miss Bartelme, referee o f the juvenile court o f Chicago, on the topic now un
der discussion.
Miss B a r t e l m e . I don’t know that I have anything to say; I have
just been listening this morning and learning a great deal and feel
very happy in the thought that our juvenile courts are handled from
the standpoint indicated by the judges as they have spoken.
So far as the referee is concerned, I do feel that the work is a very
individual one, and must necessarily be so. I believe we should all
work toward the feeling on the part o f the public that the delinquent
girl is just as hopeful a case as the delinquent boy, and that we
should not constantly be hearing from the mother and from the
officers who are handling the cases: “ O f course, it is such a hope
less thing to work with the girl.” It is not at all hopeless if you
work aright.
Mr. W a l k e r . That was a very splendid paper that we heard from
Judge Waite, dealing with procedure, practice, and the other things;
but we also have to take into consideration public sentiment. I will
say that our real outpost in Philadelphia is the work o f our referees.
We hear a great deal said about probation of girls’ cases. Fortu
nately, there has been legislation upon the subject in various dis
tricts. I wrote to the different jurisdictions where they have a law
under which they may use referees, to determine the kind o f practice
they may use. You may not realize that in the Philadelphia court
78 per cent— and that is quite a high percentage—of the cases that
come under the juvenile court are settled or determined by proba
tion officers and referees. Now, if that is so, we must have public
sentiment back o f the practice. We have been having the referees in
those girls’ and boys’ cases since 1915, and public sentiment seems
very much in favor o f it. When we get a lawyer, he comes from the
tate courts or police court and wonders what we are doing. We
explain the practice, and he asks, “ What are your legal grounds for
th is?” “ Oh,” we say, “ we just have a little clause which reads
something like this: ‘ It shall not be necessary to detain a child at
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the house o f detention i f in the judgment o f the probation officer,
now or hereafter to be appointed under the law, it may be disposed
o f otherwise.’ Therefore, we have assumed a very broad judicial
determination.’* I don’t know how far it would go if they carried it
to the appellate court. However, we have had it for five years. Foi
instance, an officer to-day brings in a boy for breaking a window.
He is taken before the referee in boys’ cases; the owner of-the place
whose window was broken is there. The parents are willing to pay
this man for the broken window. It is done right there. The de
cision is sent in to the judge, and he approves the action o f the
referee. In girls’ cases the practice is quite similar. The referee
is practically the outpost in our socialization; and we have public
sentiment with us.
Judge R i c k s . I want to ask Mrs. Baldwin if she will give us a
few minutes’ discussion on this.
Mrs. E. F. B a l d w i n , Chairman of the Probation Comrrvittee of
the Juvenile Court, San Francisco. I came to listen and to learn.
I have been very much pleased to know and to hear what I have
heard to-day. There are one or two thoughts that I may be able to
give you from the procedure in San Francisco. In regard to the
prosecution o f contributing to delinquency o f minors, this informa
tion is placed in the hands o f our district attorney, and over a
period o f seven years we have secured the cooperation o f the dis
trict attorney’s office to such a degree that one o f his deputies is
assigned to juvenile-court work exclusively. Also we have a woman
deputy from his office located with us, and she has an office in our
detention home. She works with the girls and obtains the informa
tion necessary. Thus we have the closest cooperation; but coopera
tion is not secured by simply asking for it. You have to work for it,
and proceed along educational lines, and get the cooperation of your
public—get them into the spirit o f the work, so that they under
stand what you are trying to do and what your needs are. Another
point in cooperation is that with our police department. We have
no police assigned to our department, but special meetings are called,
and our chief probation officer tells them the problems o f the court.
We have helped the police department to prepare blanks to hand
to the parents o f boys who may be on the way to the juvenile court—
the police are not yet ready to take them up, but the parents are
given notice that the boy should be kept at home. I can not say
that in all our districts the police cooperate in the spirit o f the
juvenile court to the extent o f keeping the boys out o f court by just
such neighborhood supervision, but they do so in many of them.
We have secured that cooperation by long effort and by educational"
methods.
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Judge R i c k s . I s Judge Bradford, o f Salt Lake City, here? We
will be glad to have a few words from you, Judge Bradford.
Hon. C. R. B r a d fo r d , Judge of the Juvenile Court of the Third
Judicial District, Salt Lake City, Utah. I am greatly pleased, ladies
and gentlemen, to be with you. This is the first opportunity I have
had, since becoming judge or becoming connected with the juvenilecourt work in Salt Lake City, to attend any o f your conventions.
I have been very much interested, since arriving here, in all o f
the papers. I think from what has been said that Utah has a very
good juvenile-court law. Utah is divided into eight judicial dis
tricts. Each judicial district has a judge and a chief probation
officer, and such other probation officers and assistants as are needed.
In Salt Lake City we have the chief probation officer, who covers
three counties; then Salt Lake City furnishes ar woman probation
officer, and Salt Lake County furnishes a man. We have a clerical
force in addition to these. Otherwise we work through the police
department, sheriff’s forces, town marshals, and all other agencies
engaged in matters o f juvenile-court concern, and through school
superintendents and school officers. The churches have rendered a
very valuable assistance. Some o f them have furnished paid proba
tion officers. We have been able to accomplish a great deal through
the church officers. One o f the churches o f the State has inaugu
rated a policy which has assisted us very materially in dealing with
matters o f delinquency and dependency. They have what they call
a parents’ class that meets every Sunday morning in the various
ward divisions o f the church, and into these classes are invited
doctors, lawyers, and experts in all lines. Juvenile-court officers are
invited in and rotate through the various wards— o f which in Salt
Lake City there are over fifty—to discuss problems that apply not
only to delinquency but to welfare, dependency, etc., o f children.
A woman who is engaged in civic welfare explains the particular
value o f foods, the doctors cover medical matters, and the lawyers
the law; and we find that these classes have been very effective in
accomplishing a great deal o f good.
Mr. P a r s o n s . The conference has been asked to name a committee
or to suggest to Miss Lathrop a committee of twelve persons, to be
appointed by the Federal Children’s Bureau as a committee on
standardization o f juvenile courts. It was decided last night that
,jthese twelve persons should be chosen by the committee on children’s
courts, a standing committee o f the National Probation Association.
I am going to ask that the members o f the committee on children’s
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courts who are here meet immediately at the close o f this session in
the anteroom near the registration desk. The members o f that com
mittee are Judge Frederick P. Cabot, Charles L. Chute, Bernard J.
Fagan, Dr. H. H. Hart, Joseph L. Moss, Rev. John O’Grady, Herbert
C. Parsons, Judge James Hoge Ricks, Judge Kathryn Sellers, and
Arthur W . Towne.
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THIRD SESSION—JUNE
AFTERNOON.
H e r b e r t C. P a r s o n s , President of the National
Probation Association, Boston, Mass.
Chairman: Hon.
Mr. P a r s o n s . The program for the session this afternoon includes,
first, the question, How Can a Program for Physical and Mental
Examinations be Applied in Small Cities or Rural Communities?
Then there are two other subjects, Adjusting Treatment to Individual
Needs and The Scope o f Work o f a Committee on Juvenile-Court
Standards—the consummation o f the entire discussion which we
have had in the sessions jointly held by the National Probation
Association and the Children’s Bureau. Opportunity will be given
for general discussion at the close o f the reading o f each paper.
For the discussion o f “ How Can a Program for Physical and M e »
tal Examinations be Applied in Small Cities or Rural Communities? ”
I have the pleasure o f presenting to you the director of the division
o f child welfare, State board o f charities and public welfare of
North Carolina, Mrs. Clarence A. Johnson.
THE ORGANIZATION OF COUNTY JUVENILE COURTS IN A RURAL
STATE.
Mrs. C l a r e n c e A . J o h n s o n ,1 D irec to r o f th e D ivisio n o f Child W e lfa r e o f
th e N orth Carolina S ta te B oa rd o f C harities and P ublic W e lfa r e.
North Carolina has gone seriously and thoughtfully into the prob
lem o f caring for her dependent, neglected, and delinquent children
through the promotion o f a State-wide program o f child welfare,
planned for the protection and care o f this class o f her population.
This program is the result o f the establishment o f certain adminis
trative agencies and the provision for adequate legal authority con
sequent on social legislation enacted in 1917 and supplemented in
1919. The general assemblies o f these years reorganized the old board
o f charities, serving in an advisory capacity, into the present board
of charities and public welfare, with executive authority, and pro
vided for county boards o f public welfare, county superintendents
o f public welfare, and county juvenile courts.
The county juvenile court, with the superintendent o f public wel
fare acting as chief probation officer, provides a necessary part of
1Now
commissioner of public welfare.
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the machinery for the promotion o f the child-welfare program. In
this article I have been asked to discuss the organization o f these
county courts, particularly from a rural viewpoint, and to emphasize
what may reasonably be expected in the way of providing physical
and mental examinations o f children who come under the supervision
o f the court.
I f it is advisable to consider the necessity for juvenile courts in
rural Communities and to test their efficiency from a more or less rural
point o f view, North Carolina presents a situation that should be in
teresting and illuminating. It is distinctly a rural State, for the
largest city has a population o f 48,000, and there are only seven
towns that could be considered small cities—that is, with popula
tions o f between 25,000 and 50,000. Sixty o f the one hundred counties
have no town with as many as 500 people. Seventy-nine out o f every
hundred people in North Carolina live in the open country, and peo
ple engaged in farming outnumber 2 to 1 those engaged in all other
occupations. Three counties have no railroads, and only a small part
o f seven other counties have railroad service. Offsetting these ap
parent handicaps to any plan calling for a State-wide organization
are two most helpful conditions in the governmental and racial situ
ation. The county is the unit o f work in any State-wide plan; the
county officials are the powers that be. And there is a stable, allAmerican population with less than half o f 1 per cent o f the people
foreign born.
This information is necessary in order to make clear the back
ground for juvenile-court work in North Carolina as it is being or
ganized at the present time, and a brief review o f the methods of
handling juvenile delinquents and dependents prior to 1917. We find
that delinquent children were tried under the criminal code, fre
quently held in jails, sentenced to chain gangs, and occasionally to the
penitentiary. There was but one institution for juvenile delinquents,
a reformatory for white boys to which children were sent by court
commitment. Dependent children were charges o f the county clerks
o f the courts. One child-placing society and nineteen orphanages,
which received children largely through surrender, were available
for caring for the dependent child.
These same clerks o f the courts—o f which there are 100, one in
each county of North Carolina—are now by virtue o f their office re
quired by the juvenile-court act o f 1917 to act as judges o f the juvenile
court, which has jurisdiction over dependent, neglected, and de
linquent children under 16 years of age. There is no choice in the
matter, so far as the clerk himself is concerned; if he is clerk o f the
superior court in his county he is judge o f the juvenile court and must
accept the obligations this fact entails. Compensation for his services
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as judge is determined by the board o f county commissioners. Towns
o f 10,000 inhabitants or more must maintain a juvenile court separate
from the county, with a judge appointed by the goveriiing bodies of
' such cities, unless arrangements are made with the county com
missioners whereby the city and county maintain a juvenile court
at joint expense. Towns o f more than 5,000 may, if advisable, set
up and maintain a separate juvenile court.2
Taking into consideration the fact that clerks o f the court in North
Carolina have always had certain responsibilities in regard to de
pendent children, the present law seems the natural result o f a process
o f social development; nevertheless, the legislature o f 1917 gave these
clerks of the courts a big order to fill when they imposed upon them
their present responsibility, with little previous experience to help
them and no equipment other than an office in the county courthouse.
The county superintendent o f public welfare, whose appointment
was provided for by the same legislature, acts as chief probation offi
cer for the county and chief school-attendance officer, and is responsible
for the enforcement o f the child-labor law. While it would seem that
any one o f these three enumerated duties would provide sufficient
responsibility for one executive officer, combining them under one
head has proved advantageous to the children in many ways, as it
has brought under the supervision o f the superintendent o f public
'welfare and the county juvenile courts many children whom these
agencies would not otherwise have reached. As a result o f the past
two years’ experience, it is evident that juvenile-court work, schoolattendance work, and child labor are closely related, and we are
almost ready to say that it. would be unwise to separate the adminis
trative agency responsible for the three. Bear in mind that the
majority o f children handled are neglected and dependent rather than
delinquent.
To those accustomed to dealing with well-organized courts, with
their various ramifications and correlative social agencies, North
Carolina methods will seem crude and elementary. On the other
hand, the encouraging thing is the fact that the problems o f the
juvenile delinquent and dependent are receiving more and more
thoughtful consideration, the public is being educated; and as the
juvenile court becomes a popular county institution, court officials
can hope to improve gradually the quality and thoroughness o f the
work and to acquire equipment in the way o f detention homes, more
trained probation officers, and clinical facilities.
Flexner and Baldwin, in Juvenile Courts and Probation,3 suggest
le requirements o f a court organized on sound principles. These
*N. C. Laws 1919, ch. 97.
* See Flexner, Bernard, and Baldwin, Roger N. : Juvenile Court» and Probation.
Century Co., New York, 1914, p. ix.
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principles I will discuss in relation to the county juvenile courts in
North Carolina, as the best means o f showing what is being done.
(1) The proceedings must not be criminal, as under the criminal
law, but civil, as found in the chancery or equity practice. The law
establishing juvenile courts in North Carolina answers this require
ment.
(2) The court must be presided over by a judge with a sufficiently
long tenure of office to become thoroughly familiar with the work.
The judges o f the North Carolina juvenile courts have been discussed
to some extent in this paper, and the statement has been made that
few, if any, o f them had any experience in this line before taking up
the work in 1917. They have probably done as well as, or better than,
any unit o f 100 men holding public office who could have been
selected. It must also be considered that they are elected clerks of
the courts with no emphasis on the fact that they must serve as
judges o f the juvenile courts and no requirement that qualifications
for this office shall be considered in their selection. Quite a number
could be mentioned who, on account o f their personality, sincerity o f
purpose, and intelligent way o f dealing with the children, are doing
fine constructive work. The pity o f it is that the clerk o f the court
is one o f the busiest o f county officials, and even though he has the
interest o f the juvenile-court work at heart, the time he can give toit is necessarily limited.
(3) When children are detained it must not be in a jail, but in an
entirely separate place of detention. The court system at every point
must protect and educate the children w ith’whom the court deals.
In carrying out this requirement the juvenile-court work has been
seriously handicapped; there are practically no detention homes
available in the State, and as substitutes county homes, jails, and any
usable quarters have been taken advantage o f when temporary care
o f the child away from his home is necessary or when he has no home.
In one town where the juvenile court is getting under way splendidly,
regardless o f handicaps, several rooms in the city administration
building have been set apart as detention rooms for white boys.
Said the superintendent o f public welfare, when the writer visited
his office recently : “ This is too lonesome a place for kids to stay in
by themselves, so when I have to keep them here I sleep on this cot
in the hall outside the door o f the detention rooms.” Detention
under these circumstances can not be for observational or educational
purposes and is justifiable only as a recourse in cases o f necessity.
The need for detention homes would seem to be so obvious that the
indispensable financial support for their establishment would db
forthcoming. In our two years’ experience that has not been thè
case, partly as a result o f the depressed financial condition and the
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inclination o f governing bodies to retrench whenever possible. Con
sequently there is a very decided feeling on the part o f the juvenilecourt officials that with the establishment o f county courts detention
homes should be made mandatory.
(4) There must be a sufficient number of 'probation officers, paid
out of the public treasury, appointed on merit and because of pecu
liar qualifications for the work. A limited number of volunteer
probation officers may be utilized, assuming as a matter of course
that their work is supervised by paid officers and that they are held
to a strict accountability for their probationers. Needless to say, the
probation work is insufficient and limited in its scope. In many
counties the superintendent o f public welfare has no assistant. He
or she, as the case may be, is responsible for the entire field o f work
and has not the time to develop personal relationships with the pro
bationers or to supervise them as carefully as is requisite for con
structive educational probation work. The volunteer probation o f
ficers have the opportunity o f doing really more intensive work than
the paid superintendents, for they usually take one probationer and
devote all their efforts to him.
(5) The probation office must be conducted in a systematic and
businesslike manner, so as to insure efficient treatment of each indi
vidual case. This system and efficiency depends upon the training
and ability o f the superintendent or the officer in charge. In addi
tion, there must be certain facilities for giving the child proper physi
cal and mental care; for regardless o f how thoroughly the court is
convinced o f the necessity for such care, unless the proper agencies
are available knowledge is practically useless. In those counties
having health departments organized under the direction of, or
working under a cooperative agreement with, the State board of
health, physical examination and follow-up treatment o f the child
is always to be had. The health officer has his office in the county
courthouse, where the juvenile court is conducted; and if there is
a county clinic it is usually in or near the courthouse, so that physical
care o f the child is immediately available.
Citation o f an illustrative case, recently handled by a juvenile court
in a county whose largest town numbers less than four thousand, may
be interesting :
A man with his four children was summoned before the juvenile court, charged
with violating the school-attendance law and with neglect. An examination
of the children by the health officer disclosed the fact that two o f them had
goiter, one an infected limb, and all were undernourished. Further investiga
tion proved the father morally and mentally unfit to care for the children. A
foster home was found for them and the father ordered to pay a small amount
from his limited wages for their support. In the meantime, all the children
were under treatment by the health officer, and the boy with the infected limb
had an operation in the county hospital.
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This county hospital, incidentally, was established partly as a
result o f the work o f the county superintendent o f public welfare,as he was able to prove the need for such an institution by the deplor
able physical conditions found in both his adult and his juvenile
cases. In this same county, through the cooperation o f the State
board o f health, the county health officer, and the superintendent of
public welfare, 125 children had tonsils and adenoids removed. At
the time this was done there were no hospital or clinical facilities
in the county, and since many of the children came from remote
mountain homes where there were no sanitary conveniences, it was
necessary to outfit an emergency hospital. The room selected for
it was in the courthouse— a room where dust and trash had accumu
lated since the Civil War, but which was cleaned and scrubbed and
fumigated by a committee from the woman’s club cooperating with
the board o f public welfare. Here the children were first examined
for defects and later operated on.
An excerpt from the report of the superintendent o f public wel
fare o f the largest town in the State says:
W e have access to the city venereal clinic, where examinations are made and
daily treatments are given. W e have access to the city tuberculosis clinic and
the office of the county physician. In addition to the public health officers and
clinics of the city and county, the offices of practically all our specialists are
open to our court without charge, examinations are made, operations ¿re per
formed, and treatment given in numerous cases.
In counties having no whole-time health officer, superintendents of
public welfare may act in lieu o f the health officer, in arranging for
both dental and tonsil and adenoid clinics, and the State board of
health will supply the entire personnel for these clinics, including
nurses, operators, anesthetists, etc., and furnish equipment for em
ergency hospitals.
In several counties, the superintendents o f public welfare, acting
as probation officers and as school attendance officers, have been
brought to see the need o f such clinics, and have taken the initiative
in arranging for them. In many instances they have first to persuade
the parents to allow the children to come to the clinics.
Facilities for giving children mental examinations or for studying
the exceptional or problematical child are lacking, greatly to thè
restriction of the usefulness o f the juvenile-court work. The State
Training School for Mental Defectives and the Central Hospital for
the Insane have had out-patient clinics for the benefit o f the juvenile
courts ; but since both o f these institutions are overcrowded, it has not
been possible to leave children at either place for observation for any
length o f time—which limits the usefulness o f the work. The State
board o f welfare is conscious of the great need for really adequate
means o f giving mental examinations and psychiatric treatment to
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^numbers o f children, and in cooperation with the two institutions
mentioned is working out a plan to develop and enlarge the scope o f
their out-patient clinics. This plan will entail a program o f institu
tional extension service, thereby carrying clinical facilities for mental
examination to the courts instead of having patients brought for that
purpose to the institutions.
G eneral D
is c u s s io n
.
Mr. P a r s o n s . Mrs. Johnson’s story o f the development o f the work
m North Carolina gives us a good basis for discussion—perhaps there
must be a confession o f comparative failure in other States which are
without any corresponding development o f facilities for the study of
cases mentally and physically in connection with the juvenile-court
work. It moves us all to great admiration that North Carolina is
able to tell a story of such accomplishment within a relatively short
peno4 o f time. Now, the purpose o f the discussion is, as you will
see, to lead to suggestions as to how a program o f mental and physical
examination can be put across in relatively rural communities.
j R^lph S- Barrow, State Superintendent, Alabama Children's Aid
ociety. What we have done in Alabama is only a very modest beinning in applying health and mental standards to the rural coun
ties of the State. I can hardly say that we have even made a be
ginning.
We have in Alabama a problem similar to the problem that has
just been presented to you from North Carolina, because our State
I think, is in a way a replica of North Carolina. We have only a
few large towns. Ours is, as a whole, a rural State, mostly agricul
tural, and we have in Alabama the same difficulty in applying any
sort o f mental and physical standards to our children in the rural
communities.
The plan o f Alabama is in one or two ways dissimilar to that of
North Carolina. We have machinery something like their ma
chinery— a machine with a State department over it, and then with
the county unit; but the county unit is not a piece o f mandatory
machinery. It is a machine that is ready to be brought into motion
on the responsibility and urging o f the county itself. To-day I be
lieve that only seven o f our counties have been organized to meet the
responsibility that has been given to them and the opportunity that
has been given to them by this piece of State machinery.
An each one o f our counties we have given the job o f the juvenile
iurt over to our probate judge rather than to the clerk, who was
mentioned as the one who has the responsibility in North Carolina;
and then we have centered our board o f public welfare—correspond77504°—22-----6
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ing somewhat to the one that has been described— around this juveA
nile court, and we have called it a juvenile-court advisory board for
that county. This juvenile advisory board is brought into being in
any one o f the counties, as I have said, when the county feels that it
is ready to carry forward the program on an earnest basis, and it is
the job o f the State department of child welfare to spread the educa
tion, to create the sentiment, and to strike into being these county
units. When I have said that only seven counties are organized, you
may know just how little o f the way we have proceeded—not only
with the particular topic that is up for discussion now, but with all
the provisions for child welfare that are contemplated in the ma
chinery that we have there lying dormant.
I don’t know that I can give anything showing that we have gone
any distance at all along the road, except in these seven counties.
Alabama’s machine was only created two years ago, and you people
know better than I do that it takes two years at least to get under
way. It took almost a year to get our State department, which is
represented by Mrs. Bush, really organized, and with a staff that she
could depend on. And that staff is not yet complete. We haven’t
yet in Alabama the man that we feel can get to the heart o f the prob
lem and organize these juvenile courts so that they will do the work
and really begin to plow up the field. W e haven’t the man that w
feel can fill that place, and we are still looking for him. I think I
should say that for the child-welfare department o f the State.
The work in which I am serving is the work o f the private chil
dren’s aid society, which is doing the child-care job. As the juvenile
courts in the. counties develop their work and reveal the children
who should be cared for, outside of their own home, they are given
to the care of the Alabama Children’s A id Society, as the Statewide
child-caring agency, and the Alabama Children’s A id Society is
pioneering in the field o f home-finding and child-placing in Alabama.
Heretofore all o f the permanent custodial care in Alabama was
done by our orphanages, but we are getting away from that old-time
and rather rigid form o f care into the newer and more adjustable,
and__as you all agree—more forward-looking form o f care in family
homes.
Mr. A n t l e s . I have been listening with very much interest to the
discussion o f the papers, and to the papers themselves, but they seem
more than anything else to take in congested districts. I come from
a district that is very widely scattered, and .it is necessary for us to
use very crude means in order to gather the information needed i
our juvenile court and in our child-welfare work.
Under a recent law passed by our legislature it is necessary for
all children o f school age in our State o f Nebraska to be given a
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physical examination each year. The law, peculiarly enough, says
the school-teacher must make the physical examination—you may
laugh about that if you want to—that is what it is. I am not here to
praise our State for the things she has done, but I am here to get
ideas to take back home and see i f we can not do better. I have an
idea that some o f you folks are laughing at Nebraska for requiring
that, when you have no physical examination whatever o f the many
thousands o f your children in your own home State. Cooperation
in our State is the only watchword that we have for doing the little
work that we are able to do along these lines, and in order to get that
done we must cooperate with the health bureau, with the child-welfare
bureau, with the division o f child hygiene, and with the State super
intendent o f education. We must all work together or we can not
get anywhere. We started out last year.
We must have the physical examination o f these children. We
must know for propaganda purposes the exact situation of the chil
dren in the State so far as their physical and mental conditions are
concerned, and also their playground conditions. W e therefore co
operated with the State superintendent o f education in order to get
him to send out a circular letter to each teacher in the State so that we
might get back the necessary information. The letter from the State
superintendent went to a great number o f teachers, and we were able
to get back about 40 per cent o f answers to the questionnaire. Thus
we have the necessary propaganda material to place before the next
legislature in order to get more funds to carry on our work.
We found out the number o f mentally defective school children
among those examined by the teachers. O f course, the teachers can
not tell much abodt it, that is true, but they can tell something. I f
a child has adenoids so that he can scarcely talk, or has throat
trouble so that he can not swallow, or if he can not hear or see they
know there is something wrong, and they send that information.
Therefore we are trying to cooperate to get physical and mental ex
aminations started. The propaganda was pretty good, for the last
legislature gave us quite a boost in the line o f supplying us with
things we really need. We were able to secure a considerable increase
in our budget for the child-welfare work o f the State; we were able
to get a considerable increase in our budget for the health of chil
dren in the State; we were able to secure a director o f child hygiene,
which we never had before. So I think cooperation spells success.
Cooperation is the watchword that will spell success if you will
work in your community and inform your community, especially in
"Widely scattered territory; you have to cooperate where a great ter
ritory must be covered—cooperate with the health bureau, the childwelfare bureau, the vital-statistics bureau, the hygiene bureau, and
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everything else that you have in the State. Get them all to sing the
praises o f child-welfare work and probation work, and you will g et.
along a good deal better.
G. C r o f t W i l l i a m s , Secretary State Board of Public Welfare,
South Carolina. It was very interesting to hear Mrs. Johnson tell
about the work in North Carolina, a sister State of ours. I am going
to take the liberty o f breaking this discussion just long enough to
tell a little story, and I am sure that you will appreciate it.
Many years ago, when it was undecided .where the boundary line
was between North and South Carolina, the governors had appointed
a commission to survey that line. Before the line was run there was
an old lady who was very' fond o f her North Carolina home. She
had paid taxes all of her life to North Carolina and considered her
self a North Carolinian, but when the survey was made the line was
run north o f her home and she was placed in South Carolina, and
she said: “ Oh, Lawd, I can not live down there, it is too unhealthy.”
In South Carolina our probate judges are our juvenile judges.
I think if you are going to use any judge as a juvenile judge other
than a judge that does juvenile work alone the best judge would be
the probate judge. He does, not come fresh from a criminal court.
He does not have the idea o f the recorder to get as many as possible
into the toils o f the law. He comes there with an idea o f protecting
women and children, as the probate court was organized to do.
In South Carolina all our probate courts are juvenile courts. The
consequence is we have gotten very good results, so far as the courts
are concerned. I know that a great many o f our juvenile judges
hold that the judge is nine-tenths o f the court and that the social
worker is one-tenth. It is natural for the juvenile judge to feel
that way, but it seems to me that in a good juvenile court the judge
is one-tenth o f the court and the social workers nine-tenths, because
we are looking at treatment and not at administration. So now in
our State the great trouble is not that the judges do pretty much as
they desire to do, but it is to get adequate social help. In the city
o f Charleston we have a juvenile commission supported by the city.
This commission has done remarkable work in looking after the
children and when necessary in carrying them through the juvenile
court.
We found out that these probate judges stay year ,after year in
their offices. They are elected, and they are willing to take advice,
because the juvenile work carries them into a field that they are not
familiar with. You take the ordinary judge, he is never conscious
of being fallible—he is an infallible creature—you can never advise
him. That is the ordinary judge. Now, the probate judge is open
to advice. When it comes to the handling of children—he was not
elected to do that—he does not feel especially qualified to do it and
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is usually open to all kinds o f training. And we have gotten very
good results from our probate judges—much better results than we
expected to get.
When it comes to the physical and mental handling o f the chil
dren we have to do that largely from the center. I mean that when
it comes to the handling o f the psychological examination and things
like that they have to be carried on by our central office. W e do all
the child-placing in the State, and we also control all o f the State
juvenile institutions, besides having the supervision o f all delin
quent, dependent, and defective children in the State. We also have
to license annually all child-caring institutions and all charitable
institutions in the State.
By that means we in South Carolina are able, without any very
strong local organization—we need strong local organization—to
carry on some kind o f a program for the betterment o f children,
and thus far we have done quite a bit for children. I am sure that
we have helped child life on a great deal. We have had a great
deal to contend with, a great deal of inertia, a good deal o f igno
rance, but with all that the steps that we have taken have proved of
great assistance.
Our State is largely a rural State; 72 per cent o f our population is
rural. We have only two cities o f over 25,000 inhabitants and only
about four cities o f over 20,000 inhabitants. So we have got along
as best we could, and our probate-judge system has proved so useful
that recently, when we wanted to set up, i f possible, a more effective
system, we decided that we would put work on the probation office
and on social workers, rather than make changes in the system o f
probate-court judges.
E l m e r S c o t t , Executive Secretary, Civic Federation, of Dallas,
Tex. I am going to refer you to the United States census and to a
map o f the United States for our size, population, and statistics. I
am going to speak specifically for a moment on the subject o f juvenile
courts, not as a judge nor as a probation officer, but simply as a layman
and citizen, and if I use any language that is untechnical, please over
look it, because I don’t know the language.
The question is : How can the program for physical and mental
examination be applied in small cities and rural communities? Now
I am assuming when you speak o f a rural community that it includes
the county as a unit, because if there is no city o f any magnitude in
a district where there is a juvenile court, if there is such a situation,
then the rural community would be the county as a whole.
In Dallas we sought two years ago to develop a psychopathic clinic
m conjunction with the juvenile court, and we did it, not as a definite
proposition, but as an experiment. An organization that had some
little vision persuaded the judge and the commissioners that it might
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be established for three months for the purpose o f experimenting.
Experimentation was carried on in this w ay: We had, fortunately, in
Texas a very excellent psychologist at the Girls’ Industrial Training
School, who came down to Dallas once a week. We also had two or
three men who were competent in mental diseases and who gave
their services once a week. Clinics were carried on two or three
months, to the intense satisfaction o f the juvenile court and the pro
bation officers, who without exception looked forward to having the
thing financed so it would be permanent. And then came a thunder
storm between the county judge and the county commissioner, and
there wasn’t any possibility o f getting anything across with the county
commissioners and police department. But we did not give/up. Just
because we were blown up, we came down and lit on our feet.
Now, what was the result? After the storm came an earthquake.
The earthquake was the decease o f the county judge who was in favor
o f this clinic, and then came the election o f the same county commis
sioners. They did not care whether the clinic was put in or not. But
I want to telj you something that will interest you. I think that one
fault o f social workers is to think that social vision does not exist
when it is really only quiescent; in other words, there is social vision,
but not social understanding, and the thing is to arouse that social
vision into a social understanding; and out o f the social understand
ing comes a belief in social method. It is simply a sequence or process
in the nonsocial mind—not antisocial mind; and I think we call
political officers frequently antisocial when they are nonsocial.
The fine thing after all is that to-day the very person who did the
psychological work in connection with that experimental clinic two
years ago is the head o f the record division in the juvenile court, in
the probation office. And we believe this—that if we want to get any
program that carries with it the need o f a new social method, the
basis o f that program is an accurate record o f things, as best you
can get them. And therefore we are laying the foundation in the
juvenile court—I simply as a layman on the outside, a sort of, father
adviser—and we are making records in the juvenile court to the end
that there will be a social vision and social awakening as to the nature
o f these things.
I want to tell you this, that within four months from to-day the
record system that is being put in skillfully and scientifically, and
with the initiative o f this apparently nonsocial county judge, is going
to prove the necessity o f the very thing that we experimented with
two years ago and feel we fell down on. That is what I mean.^~T
believe it is an educational process; I believe it is a process o f goin
about the matter sincerely, patiently, and actively and not superim
posing some new, high-brow stuff on a lot o f people who have no more
conception o f what psychopathy is than I have, perhaps. In other
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words, you can go down to your cook and you can say to her that you
want the culinary department to be taken care of—and she will look
at you in blank amazement. But if you tell her you want the cooking
well done, she understands you perfectly well. So we have to do it
that way in connection with psychopathy.
Mr. P a r s o n s . It is perfectly evident that you can call upon this
gathering o f people at random and get something worth while. I
wish we could go on with the discussion in this matter. I don’t like
to leave you with the idea that down South is the only outdoors coun
try. There are rural sections o f some other States besides North and
South Carolina and Texas and the States lying between them, but we
haven’t time to discuss the topic any further.
We are now to turn to the general topic o f adjusting treatment
to individual needs. I personally had the satisfaction and education
a few weeks ago to deliberately, and I think quite thoroughly, ex
amine the work that was done in the Philadelphia municipal court,
under Dr. Robinson’s direction. From that experience and observa
tion I am ready to say I don’t believe there is anybody better fitted
at this moment to speak from the standpoint o f his own experience
in an administrative capacity in organization than is Dr. Robinson
on this matter o f the individual application of treatment, the treat
ment o f the individual need.
A D J U S T IN G T R E A T M E N T T O I N D I V I D U A L N E E D S .
Louis N . R
o b in s o n ,
P
h
. D m C h ief P roba tion Officer o f the M unicipal C ourt o f
Philadelphia, Pa.
With its usual understanding of the perplexities as well as the
peculiarities o f speakers, the Federal Children’s Bureau outlined my
address quite thoroughly, leaving to me merely the filling in o f
details. Summarizing the advice of the bureau, I find that I am
called upon to speak on three topics: ( a) The organization o f a pro
bation staff, ( b ) the handling o f cases by the probation staff, and (<?)
institutional facilities which are needed by a juvenile court to sup
plement the work o f its probation staff.
It should be recognized at the outset that, with reference to each
o f these three topics, “ circumstances alter cases.” Among some of
the conditioning “ circumstances ” are the number o f cases that come
before the court, the extent to which the court allows the probation
staff to assist in the handling o f cases, whether the juvenile court is
part of a larger court handling other family problems (as does the
^Municipal Court o f Philadelphia), the development o f private phil/ anthropic child agencies, and the general atmosphere o f the court
itself—whether, for example, it is striving earnestly to develop its
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technique and to make old laws work in new ways, or whether it is
content merely to do what under the law it is compelled to do. As
just one example o f many that might be adduced, illustrating in this
instance the effect of the size o f the court on the organization o f the
probation staff, let us consider for a moment the position o f the chief
probation officer.
The various kinds o f work that may fall on a probation staff may
be roughly grouped as follow s:
A. I n s id e
w ork—
(1 ) ta k in g o f complaints in delinquency and neglected child cases and of
requests for relief in dependency cases.
(2) Planning for the disposal o f the cases.
(3 ) Sifting out o f cases fo r the court.
(4) Presenting o f cases to the court.
(5 ) Supervision of the work o f probation officers, including the reading of
records.
(6 ) Maintaining relations with outside agencies and institutions.
(7 ) The preparation of a report.
(8 ) Planning forms and records for use o f staff.
B. F
ie l d
w obk.
(1 ) Investigation o f cases, including medical and psychological work.
(2 ) Adjusting complaints in the field.
(3 ) Supervision of cases on probation.
In a small court the chief probation officer, aside from his title and
pay may have no different function to perform than that o f the ordinary probation officer, most or at least a large part of the tasks men
tioned under the heading “ inside work ” being carried on by the
judge himself. On the other hand, in a larger court the judge may
find his time fully taken up in hearing cases and in rendering deci
sions thereon, leaving to the probation officer all the inside duties.
In the latter case we must distinguish between that form of organi
zation in which the chief probation officer is the only office official,
aside from stenographers and clerks, carrying all the tasks that I
have designated as inside jobs, and that other form o f organization
where a staff o f office assistants, supervisors, complaint clerks, ref
erees, court representatives, statisticians, etc., has been built up to
relieve the chief probation officer o f much o f the detail o f adminis
tration. In a court having jurisdiction over many kinds of cases—
such as domestic relations, streetwalkers, misdemeanants, and cer
tain classes of felonies—as does the municipal court o f Philadelphia,
the chief probation officer of the entire court must o f necessity
assume a part o f the duties which in a separate juvenile court would
be borne by the chief probation officer o f the juvenile court aloner
Manifestly, one can see from a discussion o f the varying position of
the chief probation officer alone that it would be impossible in a paper
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o f this length to discuss in any detail the topics which I have been
, asked to take up. I shall therefore limit my paper to a discussion of
a few o f the problems o f organization, work, and institutional needs.
' The organization of a probation staff.—In organizing a probation
staff, it has seemed to me that the charity organization societies have
many features which might well be copied in toto. I believe that the
principle o f one worker carrying the case from the beginning is a
good one, and therefore I disapprove o f dividing the staff into investi
gating and supervising groups. Even in cases o f neglect, where this
separation is especially urged, there seems to be no good reason for
it, as the probation officer is usually looked upon as an impartial
third person who will listen to both sides. However, unless the court
sits each day, and it is possible to develop each probation officer
to the point where he can present a case clearly and concisely to the
court, it is doubtful i f this principle can be entirely adhered to when
it comes to bringing the cases before the court. It may well be that
some one person, either the chief probation officer or some probation
officer especially well equipped for the work should take upon his
shoulders the task o f preparing a summary o f the case, and of han
dling the case in the courtroom'. As a matter o f fact, I believe that
private agencies would have better results with their court cases if
they would develop an especially equipped representative to present
their cases to the court. In our juvenile court all the large placingout agencies for children have representatives present at the court
hearings, and those same representatives also make all the contacts
with probation officers on individual cases.
The principle o f charity organization societies o f careful supervi
sion o f the work o f each individual case worker is also a sine qua non
o f good probation work, but I doubt whether it is advisable to organ
ize local offices. General administrative reasons, contact of super
visors with each other arid with the court, and the strictly legal
machinery o f the court will probably operate against the setting up
o f local offices. But the need for supervisors is not affected by the
centralizing o f the offices. The city o f Philadelphia has been divided
into five districts, with a supervisor for each district. Each super
visor has 10 or 11 probation workers under her. It would probably
make for better work if there were more districts and fewer proba
tion officers to each supervisor, as our supervisors take the complaints
and do much routine administrative work, as well as reading the
records. We have taken another leaf out o f the charity organization
society’s book and given to each supervisor a stenographer to assist
er in keeping track o f the daily work, to take and to answer calls
*that come in over the telephone, and to transcribe under the direction
o f the supervisor summaries o f cases committed to agencies or insti-
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tutions. This secretary is in addition to the stenographers who take
dictation from probation officers.
.
The work of a probation staff.—While it is customary to speak of
the work o f a probation staff as consisting o f the investigating and
the supervising o f cases, attention should be called to two other tasks
o f genuine importance, namely (a) the taking o f complaints or peti
tions in dependency and (&) the working out and recommending of
plans to the court for the disposal o f cases.
With us the complaints or petitions in dependency now go direct
to the five supervisors o f districts. They listen to the stories and
decide whether to try to persuade the individual to drop the matter
or to refer to another agency, public or private, or to file a petition
immediately, or to send a probation officer out to investigate the
situation. A ll sorts o f petty complaints come in to the supervisors,
many o f which can be settled either by the supervisor in the office
or by the probation officer in the field. The case may be one where
the parents are responsible people willing to settle for the damage
that their child has caused, and capable o f giving to him better over sight now that they know what he is doing. Or the case may be one
o f neighborhood quarrels between children, where little blame can
be attached to any one child. Sometimes it means referring the case
to the bureau o f compulsory education. In dependency cases family
relief agencies must be called in to help, since the only remedy that’
the court can offer will mean the placing o f the child or children in
a foster home or in an institution. Often purely civil cases come in,
and these are promptly referred to the “ small claims division” o f
the court. Sometimes it is advisable to bring the case before the
referees—four probation officers, two men and two women—who sift
out cases daily, sitting at the juvenile house o f detention. Altogether,
there is a large amount of work o f this kind, which takes up time and
requires a full knowledge o f the social resources of the city, as well
as patience and tact.
In working out plans to lay before the court for the disposal o f
cases, a probation staff may perform a very valuable and time-saving
service for a court. Particularly is this true in a court with juris
diction over dependency as well as delinquency and neglect cases.
For example, the probation officer has time to get in touch with
placing-out agencies or with child-caring institutions, and on the
basis o f her findings suggests to the court a plan for the placing o f
the child which allows for all the contingencies in the case. Or take
an example from the delinquent side. In Philadelphia there is a
private agency which makes a specialty o f placing difficult childrei
Its resources are such that it can handle but few. However, it i
decidedly worth while to find out if this agency can find a place for
some particular child that is about to come before the court. I f
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informed in time an agent o f this society comes to the probation office
and the supervisor, probation officer, and agent o f the society go
over the case together to determine whether or not the agency can
take the child. Or let us take yet another example of a delinquent
case. As already indicated, four o f our probation officers, two o f
whom are the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of the
juvenile house of detention, act as referees, hearing all- arrest cases
and disposing o f the minor ones not subject to commitment. Their
decisions for discharge or probation are approved automatically by
the court. Many other examples might be given o f this kind o f work
which can be done by a well-organized probation staff. It may be
interesting to note in passing that over seven in every ten cases
brought to the attention o f the juvenile division o f the municipal
court o f Philadelphia were settled by the probation department with
out bringing the cases into court.
In 1920 the arrest and complaint cases in juvenile delinquency,
neglect, and dependency brought to the attention o f the juvenile
division, and which were within the jurisdiction o f the juvenile
division and were disposed o f before the close o f the year, numbered
8,757. O f this number, 6,273, or 71.6 per cent, were adjusted before
the close o f the year by the probation department.
Going back to the problem o f investigation, let us consider first,
the problem o f physical and mental examinations. It seems to me
that in the case o f delinquent children, we should keep firmly in mind
that our main problem is one o f conduct, and that however impor
tant it is that the child’s physical well-being be looked after, we
must yet remember that the real task which we have to accomplish
is to bring about a better adjustment o f the child’s relations to the
people about him. Speaking generally, it seems to me that the task
is one for the psychiatrist and the psychologist, with incidental help
from the regular physician—not the reverse, as sometimes happens.
Should all children coming into the court be examined? I would
say that all those placed on probation, or likely to be sent to institu
tions or to child-placing agencies, should be examined. In our
Philadelphia court, all who go to institutions or to agencies are ex
amined, and a medical report accompanies each child to the institu
tion or the agency.' I believe that there is entirely too much “ doctor
in g ” o f children by probation officers on the basis of inadequate
diagnosis. In supervising a child on probation, the probation officer
is dealing with the most complex thing in existence—a child’s per
sonality— and I frankly do not believe that most probation officers
are adequately equipped to do this supervising wisely or well.
Ideally, there should be, first, a social investigation; second, a mental
examination, with the examiner conversant with all the facts learned
by the probation officer, rather than sitting along with the judge and
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having his first look at the child in court; third, a physical examina
tion ; and, fourth, a conference o f all concerned, with the supervisor
and chief probation officer sitting in. Only then should the proba
tion officer begin his or her task. To rush into a home and tell the
mother that Johnny must now behave because he is on probation,
and to run in again in a week or in a month to see i f Johnny is still
holding his-own, is a procedure about as capable o f accomplishing
wished-for results as setting a pick and shovel man to repair a Swiss
watch. I realize that we must be patient and grow into good work;
that psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, and good probation
officers are not to be had for the asking, and that the public is not
yet educated to an understanding o f the task which it has begun.
And i f it were not for the fact that the human animal has already
stood the shock o f all kind o f experimenting during the centuries o f
life on this planet, I would, I fear, lie awake nights trembling over
the young lives that might be ruined by well-meant efforts of proba
tion officers. I f we are to do good work, the instruction and educa
tion o f probation officers must never cease. In Philadelphia we are
doing something along this line. We have regular monthly lectures
by noted men to all the probation officers, and each district has held
several meetings with the physicians and psychiatrists in charge o f
the medical work o f the court.
In supervising cases placed on probation, I think it is essential to
realize how slight after all is, and must be, the contact between pro
bationer and probation officer. A visit a week is perhaps as much
as we can ordinarily expect. Supposing that to last twenty minutes
or even an hour, what is 1 hour in 24, or rather in 168, when other in
fluences are beating in on the child constantly all the remaining
hours o f the week. A friend o f mine to whom I made this remark
replied. Yes, that is so; but the influences that can be set in mo
tion by the probation officer during the one brief visit a week may
be far-reaching and produce an effect throughout the week, not for
the one hour only. What about clubs which may be opened to the
boy? Schools that can be told how to assist? Parents who may
be advised how to.deal with the child? And all the other agencies
that can be called upon for aid in the cause o f better boyhood and
girlh ood?” I admit the possibilities; but I insist that this is a
much more delicate and subtle task than it has usually been admitted
to be, and should be undertaken only after the most careful diagno
sis o f the child and his surroundings. I f this work could be accom
plished in a routine fashion by routine people, if there were always
agencies capable o f helping a child, i f good influences in general
were so easily marshaled, then we ought to be thoroughly ashamed
o f ourselves for having a juvenile court and all its paraphernalia
at all.
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Except in plain cases o f feeble-mindedness and insanity and where
home conditions are impossible o f improvement, I feel that it is right
to give every child a chance on probation, although, o f course, if
there were institutions made to fit the various types o f children, I
would probably wish to modify this statement. For example, if,
when summer time came and the schools closed Boy Scout camps
could be opened for the boys who get into trouble, it might be best
not to place the boy on probation at all but to send him to the camp.
I f camp life is good for the rich boy, I can see no reason why we
should not approve o f it for the poor— for it is usually the poorer
classes o f children who come before the courts. In Philadelphia
practically all children, with the exception o f those noted, are given
an opportunity to make good on probation before being sent to an
institution or turned over to a child-placing agency. One other ques
tion in regard to supervision o f children on probation: Who is to do
the medical work which is necessary? In my opinion, it should be
part o f the task o f the probation officer to carry out the instructions
o f the examining physician. An additional worker usually makes
trouble, often giving contrary advice to that which the probation
officer gives, and making arrangements for the child which conflict
with those o f the regular probation officer having the case under
■supervision. Parodying the English slogan o f some years ago, “ One
man, one vote,” it would be well to put on our banner the watch
word, “ One child, one case worker.” W ith the exception o f prenatal
work and that with tuberculosis and venereal diseases, for which we
have special facilities, the medical work in our court is attended to
by the regular probation officers, who report, however, to the medical
department what they have accomplished.
Institutional needs.—A probation staff, even though large and
well organized, does not do away with the necessity o f institutions
to round out the work o f a juvenile court.
What should be the institutional facilities at the disposal o f a
juvenile court? I would say, first, a detention house. We are all
agreed that children who come before a juvenile court ought never
to be held in jail. The Boston court over which Judge Cabot pre
sides is admirably served by the Children’s A id Society, but Suffolk
County as a whole still suffers from the lack o f adequate detention
facilities for children. Considering the development o f private
philanthropic agencies, or rather the lack o f them throughout the
country, it seems to me that it would be well to work for detention
houses in nearly every place where a juvenile court has been estab
lished. It must not be forgotten, however, that it is not necessary
ho hold a very large percentage o f children at all, as they can in the
great proportion o f cases be safely allowed to return to the custody
o f their parents. Dr. Healy finds no difficulty in examining the
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children, although he has no detention house in which to observe
them.
I believe, too, that industrial schools for certain types o f boys and /
girls will continue to remain a necessity. True, the more we de
velop an adequate placing-out service, either by public or private
agencies, the less will be the need for such schools. One may en
vision hundreds o f foster homes where all the elements of child
training have been so carefully cultivated that troublesome boys and
girls may be placed in them directly without ever having had any
preliminary training in an institution. W e shall probably have to
go through the institutional stage. When it becomes an easy matter
to find good homes to which paroled children may be sent from in
stitutions, it will be time enough to talk about eliminating entirely
the institutional step.
Mention has already been made o f summer camps for boys, on
the theory that what is good for the sons o f the rich might prove
good for the sons o f the poor. It would add too much to the length
o f this paper to go into any details concerning such a.camp, but it
might be well to read in William George’s book on the Junior
Republic 4 how the George Junior Republic grew out o f such a camp
and why it was advisable to get away from the theory o f a place
where everything should be given to the boy without any effort on*
his part. There is, of course, no reason why this idea of a summer
camp should not be aplicable to girls also.
We in Philadelphia have felt the need o f supervised boarding
homes for both boys and girls o f working age. We have one such
home for boys in the Elliott House. The boys all hold positions
and pay a reasonable price for their board and lodging. It is a real
home for the boys, something which many o f them never had.
There should, in our opinion, be a similar one for girls.
There should be, as there very often is not, a sufficient number
o f institutions for defective children needing custodial care. In
Pennsylvania, .for example, we are laboring under the handicap of
lack of institutional facilities for feeble-minded children. There is
continuously a large number o f children on the waiting list, and we
have been compelled to work out a makeshift arrangement with the
city departments o f public health and welfare to care for these.
Typical, perhaps, o f the situation elsewhere is the movement in
Philadelphia, fostered largely by schoolmen, for the establishment
o f a boarding parental school. Not long ago I heard a well-known
worker in the children’s field say that the parental-school idea
was entirely out o f accord with modern ideas for the care o f chi
dren. Perhaps he is right, but some concession should probably b&
* George, William R .: The Junior Republic; its history and ideals.
1909.
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made to those who on account o f the present state o f public intelli
gence see no way o f solving their troublesome problems for the
present, at least, except through the parental school. Without much
hope o f further intensive work with children in school classes, with
a totally inadequate staff in the bureau o f compulsory education,
with a full realization that probation can solve the problem only
in part—nagged and annoyed by the number o f truants—it is no
wonder that schoolmen have taken the stand that a boarding school
controlled by educational authorities would be far better than send
ing a child to the ordinary industrial school or reformatory or let
ting these uncontrollable children run the streets. Personally, I hope
that special day schools and special work in the school and in the
home, plus good probation work, will solve the problem o f the
truant; but I am not at all certain but that there will be a remnant
for whom detention in a parental school might not be decidedly
advantageous. There will always be a conflict in aims between those
who are looking ahead, deciding what should be the goal, and those
who are burdened with the task o f doing the work of the present.
We must not create obstacles for future progress, but we must not
be blind to the very real problem o f those who carry the burden of
the day.
I have not touched upon the institutional needs o f a court handling
dependent children, or whether there is any need for such institu
tions. That subject brings up so many questions that there would
not be time to present them even in brief.
In closing my remarks, I feel that it may not be out of place to
call attention to the fact that each juvenile court rests in a political
and social bed, not o f roses but usually o f thorns; and the direction
o f progress that one court may find it advisable to take may not be
the direction in which another court has moved.- There are many
currents o f thought— religious, political, and social—that must be
taken into account in planning how to attain the goal. What is pos
sible in one city or county may not be possible in some other city
or county. I f we keep our mind on the one question—the good of
the child— and do not turn down the means that God has placed in
our hands to accomplish it, we shall progress.
J e s s e P. S m
it h
, C h ief P roba tion Officer o f th e Ju ven ile C ourt o f St. L ou is, M o.
The first juvenile court o f St. Louis convened in the old Four
Courts Building on May 4, 1903, the result o f a law passed by the
State legislature, which went into effect March 23 o f the same year.
The movement was first inaugurated by a committee o f women from
the Humanity Club, and the court was established as a protest
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against existing judicial methods o f dealing with children. Chil
dren had been kept in police cells and jails in company with the
worst offenders. The natural result was that they were educated in (
crime, and when discharged were well fitted to become the expert
criminals and outlaws who have crowded our jails and penitentiaries.
The State had thus educated innocent children in crime, and the
harvest was great.
The principle o f our law is that no child under 17 years o f age
shall be considered or treated as a criminal; that a child under this
age shall not be convicted, imprisoned, or punished as a criminal.
It recognizes, o f course, the fact that such children may do acts which
in older persons would be crimes properly punishable by the State,
but it provides that a child under the age mentioned shall not be
handled so as to leave a stain of criminality, or be brought even
temporarily into the companionship o f men and women whose lives
are vicious and criminal.
The juvenile court is a division o f the circuit court and is presided
over by a judge o f that court, appointed in general term. We have
20 probation officers—9 men' and 11 women—whose appointment is
made on a basis o f merit after a public competitive examination. The
chief probation officer is in charge of the w ork; 14 officers supervise
the children; 2 make investigations; 3 serve as office assistants.
Investigations—An investigation o f the home, family conditions,
environment, habits, associates, and school and employment records is
made for each child before the hearing. This work has been spe
cialized and is in the hands o f a man probation officer for the boys
and a woman probation officer for the delinquent girls and neglected
children. The information which is obtained from the child, par
ents, relatives, and any school or agency to which the child may be
known, is typewritten on blanks for that purpose and placed before
the judge.
Supervision.— The probation officers accomplish the supervision of
delinquent boys, both by written reports o f parents and teachers
brought to the office by the boys themselves and by visits to the homes.
The boys employed make their reports in the evening, the office being
open on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings until 9 o’clock.
Children out o f town report by letter. The frequency o f reports
and visits depends largely on the cooperation between the officers and
parents, also on the child’s progress in school. The delinquent girls
are supervised by women and are usually visited in their homes. The
girls may be required to call on the officer at her home, but never a t
the probation office. A ll neglected children are supervised by visits
to their homes. Two colored probation officers, a man, and a woman,
have charge o f the colored children.
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When a delinquent child who is a ward o f the court has failed to
improve, and the officer in charge believes that a change o f environ
ment or institutional training is needed, he makes out a special report
showing what he has done for the child since the last hearing, the
cause o f the present trouble, and the recommendations for treat
ment. This report, along with a petition charging violation of pro
bation or parole, is presented to the chief probation officer for
consideration. I f he approves, he files the petition with the clerk;
and the child, with the parents or guardians, is summoned into
court. The report is handed to the judge, together with the daily
record cards showing the child’s progress from week to week after
each report or visit. This, in a measure, is an indication o f the
efficiency o f a probation system. The policy o f the court has been
to keep children in their homes, so far as possible, and out of
institutions.
I f the home of a neglected child can not be improved, the officer
in charge files a change o f custody application, recommending the
name o f the person or the institution willing to receive him. The
child and his parents or guardian, together with the person recom
mended to assume the child’s custody, are summoned into court for
the hearing.
On the recommendation o f a probation officer, the supervision o f
a ward may be terminated by an order o f court. The child, if not
at school or work, is brought into court and is formally discharged
by the judge. I f the child can not appear, notice o f his discharge
is given by the probation officer who has had him under supervision.
The average length o f the period of supervision is from 10 to 12
months, though some children are kept on probation for years as a
protection to them.
Volunteers.— The volunteer probation officer, receiving children
from the judge and responsible to him for their progress, is seldom
resorted to in St. Louis. The whole responsibility for the child’s
welfare is placed in the hands o f a paid probation officer, who in some
instances may avail himself o f the services o f a volunteer, although
ultimately he is responsible for the child.
While the court has not favored the use of volunteer probation
officers, yet it has realized that much assistance could be afforded the
regular probation force by men and women who would take an in
terest in unfortunate families and devote some o f their time to the
work of assisting and improving the conditions o f the children com
ing before the juvenile court. It has, therefore, welcomed and enouraged the formation of the Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and other
associations. These organizations not only render valuable and effi
cient services in helping families and children, so as to make the in775040—22----- 7
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tervention o f the court unnecessary, but they are in a position to
render further valuable services in the cases o f boys paroled fromthe Missouri Reformatory and of girls paroled from the State In
dustrial Home for Girls, or from other institutions. Furthermore,1
the members o f these organizations aid in solving some o f the home
problems by evincing not only a friendly interest in the child but
in the grown members of the family as well. A representative of
the Catholic Church and a representative o f the Federation o f
Protestant Churches attend all sessions o f the juvenile court.
Departnient of hygiene.—The hygiene clinic in connection with
the juvenile court was established at the Children’s Building in 1918,
through the aid o f Dr. James Stewart, director of hygiene for the
St. Louis board o f education. Before this time the juvenile court
had to depend upon the volunteer aid of several public-spirited phy
sicians. A physician from the staff o f inspectors o f hygiene in the
public schools was placed in charge o f the clinic, and was assisted
by one o f the school nurses. The physician is at the Children’s
Building every afternoon, Wednesday mornings, and sometimes for
an hour on one or two other mornings. The duties of the physician
in charge o f the clinic is to take nose and throat cultures of every
child upon entering the Children’s Building, to make a complete
physical examination o f every new case, to treat all children who,
become ill while in detention and to examine all girls suspected of
immorality, disease, or pregnancy. Cultures are again taken of
every child committed to any institution, and they are examined for
any skin or other disease in order to give the institution a “ clearance
card,” which guarantees the child to be free of any contagious, in
fectious, or venereal disease. The physician also pays special atten
tion to the examination for any physical or mental defect which may
be the cause o f the child’s delinquency, and if any such defect is
found he makes his recommendation to the court for the special
treatment to remedy the defect. Cases that demand unusual atten
tion for mentality are sent to specialists who are qualified to pass on
them.
G eneral D
is c u s s io n .
Mr. P a r s o n s . We shall probably have to limit to 10 or 12 minutes
at the most the discussion o f these two interesting papers, introduc
ing many topics for discussion, because we want some time to deyote
to the matter which is the culmination o f the whole o f these sessions
that we have been having in cooperation with the Children’s Bureau*
Now, in the few minutes that we have, let us make any short con
tributions o f any ideas that may be presented here in regard to
methods o f supervision, with emphasis especially on the conditions
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in rural communities. Judge Sellers, couldn’t you tell us a little bit
-about case supervision in your court as a standard ?
Judge S e l l e r s . I have a very strong feeling that many o f the
people here have thought that our discussion has run too much to
the larger problems, problems of the larger courts, and that we
really ought to have some discussion that would be helpful to the
people who are working in small communities.
In Washington we have about 400,000 population, and we have, I
think, about 1,000 children and adults on probation.
I am a strong believer in case supervision. I think two heads are
always better than one, and i f you have three and four heads you get
that much out o f it.
About two years ago we appointed the assistant chief probation
officer as case supervisor. We have about 10 probation officers. Miss
Duckwall is a person admirably fitted for this work, and she super
vises the work o f the probation officers. That means she knows about
all o f the cases and that she picks up, when it is called to her atten
tion, the discussion o f any particular case.
I think that this supervision is a good thing for the probation
officer, a good thing for the court. When about two years ago I fi^st
mentioned having this supervision I was visiting a court, and the
chief probation officer said, “ We have the utmost confidence in our
probation officers, and we would not want to think for a moment that
every probation officer would not handle his case in the proper way.”
I said, “ That is not the question; that is beside the mark; these cases
are difficult, and we want to do the right thing and help the probation
officer.” And I personally want to know about every child that
comes before me, whom I have got to commit or deal with at a ll; I
want to know about that case. I don’t want that case passed before
me by somebody else’s saying, “ This is all right,” and O. K. it. I
should not like the responsibility of a position o f that kind. I don’t
want a boy brought before me until I have had a chance to talk with
the person who is handling that boy. I have the utmost confidence
in the probation officers and believe what they say. And I am will
ing to take an hour every morning to discuss these cases with the pro
bation officers, in view of the one case in which I may be able to sug
gest something that may help.
Miss M a t E. D e a n e , Probation Officer, Juvenile Court of Kalama
zoo , Mich. We have a rural community, a county with one city, and
we have the assistance o f every able-bodied person. We have a very
able corps o f psychologists and psychiatrists and physicians from the
Tate hospital, who are paid by the State and are working with us.
I They are doing some clinic work in other rural counties. And I
want to say for them that no boys or girls are committed for anv
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offense until this corps o f officers has examined them carefully, men
tally and physically, and sometimes more than once; and the family
history is studied, and we see not only what-the child has done but
why he has done it. We depend upon these psychologists to show us
this.
Miss C a m p b e l l , of Kalamazoo, Mich. It will take a very few min
utes to tell what we do. We have our headquarters at the hospital
at Kalamazoo, and we conduct four monthly clinics. There is need
for more work, but we lack time and help to do that. We have
many patients who are brought in from small country towns and
from rural school districts; they are brought in by school boards or
by physicians, and many of them are sent in by the poor officers.
We are very careful that we never condemn a child as a fit subject
for an institution until we are sure that it is the last resort for that
child, and each child is given very careful physical examination.
We do not depend on any one examination as final, and a child fre
quently reports to the clinic month after month, for possibly a year,
in the hope that advice to the child himself or to parents may help
him solve his problem.
Mr. P a r s o n s . I f we were going to take time for discussion of
supervision o f cases in the comparatively rural courts we would want
someone to tell us about the organization o f the community to help
in that supervision.
My observation in the work in Massachusetts in the smaller courts
is that the successful probation officer succeeds in organizing his
community to a very great assistance in the supervision o f his cases.
Something has been said here about the probation committee coop
erating with the court, and I wonder if Mrs. Baldwin, of San Fran
cisco, will tell us about the value o f the probation committee in its
cooperation with the court in the supervision of cases. We want to
know what the probation committee is for and what it does.
Mrs. B a l d w i n . I was going to say that I felt myself greatly in the
minority, Mr. Parsons, as representing a probation committee. I
know a great many people do wonder about what a probation com
mittee is and what it is for. When we wanted the law in California
way back in 1901 we were closely following Chicago and we formed
a committee representative of the various charitable and child-caring
agencies that would be interested in having such a law. That commit
tee was composed of 21 persons, and in the drawing o f the law we
provided for this probation committtee to take charge o f the deten
tion home and to employ the probation officer. But, o f course, when
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For two years these women furnished the salary o f our first proba
tion officer. Two years later we got the salary from the legislature
and got another provision in the law providing for a committee o f
seven—which, o f course, was a more workable committee. It was
originally representative of the various interests concerned in child
caring institutions and representative, as you may say, o f the public.
When there is a vacancy upon that committee the appointment is
made by the superior judge, upon recommendation o f the committee—
so in a measure we are like library boards, self-perpetuating. We
have charge o f the detention home. We seem to be a medium through
which the judge and the work o f the court may reach the public, and
through which the public interest in the care o f the child is expressed
to the board.
Perhaps we do not fulfill our obligation quite as well as we might,
but still we do try to keep in touch. We have a committee on relation
ships and a committee on legislation. When we decide that salaries
need to be increased we are the ones who go before the supervisors
or go up to the State Legislature to arrange about that. We are rep
resentative o f the larger community interest. We are just about the
same committee that started out; we have the same judge. In some
places in California we do not agree that that is the best way. How
ever, we have found that our work is going on, and we try to keep up
with the rest o f the community and with the rest o f the country.
Mr. P a r s o n s . I s the probation committee common in California,
and is it the ordinary form o f organization ?
Mrs. B a l d w i n . It is the ordinary form o f organization. I would
not say that other probation committees are quite as active as our
committee^ You must have a secretary—the probation officer. Both
the detention home and the probation work should be in his hands,
and he is the man who keeps this committee going. You can not
have a committee unless you have a good secretary— a good proba
tion officer— and keep him busy and let him know the needs o f the
work.
Miss L u n d b e r g . The San Francisco probation committee has not
only done a fine piece o f work, with Mrs. Baldwin as its chairman for
a number o f years, but it has been demonstrating the possibilities o f a
referee for girls’ cases. Mrs. Baldwin has given her Services as
referee for the past two years.
Mr. Moss. Is the committee recognized in the law?
Mrs. B a l d w i n . Yes, it is; the committee has to make recommenda
tions ; the committee selects the officers, holding specific examinations,
and recommending appointments.
Mr. P a r s o n s . This naturally leads us, if we were going to take up
one other phase of this organization to the probation commission__
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an institution which exists, I think, in only two States, New York
and Massachusetts. To get either Mr. Chute or myself talking on
that subject would absorb the rest o f the afternoon and the rest o f
the evening.
C h a r l e s L. C h u t e , Secretary of the National Probation Associa
tion. I understand that in the State o f California there is a great
deal o f interest in establishing State supervision. In addition to
their committees there seems to be need o f State supervision and co
ordination o f the work, and I have had considerable correspondence
from people in San Francisco and Los Angeles who are interested in
getting a State supervised system similar to ours of New York. A
great many other States feel the need of more than local organization
and development, and I believe that one thing is coming; and our
association wants to make that one of its principal lines o f attack—
the development o f State commissions or bureaus or departments to
promote socialized courts and also o f State associations of probation
workers.
COMMITTEE ON JUVENILE COURT STANDARDS.
General D
is c u s s io n .
Mr. P a r s o n s . A s the final feature of the program of these con
ferences, held by joint action o f the Federal Children’s Bureau and
the National Probation Association, we come to a brief discussion
o f a committee on juvenile court standards.
I doubt if I need say to this group that for a long time there has
been developing in the Children’s Bureau the idea o f standardized
work in juvenile courts. You are familiar with the surveys that have
been made, with the publications that have been issued, and there
will be a good deal to say in addition to what you already know, I
am sure, in regard to the interest that the Children’s Bureau has taken
in connection with the courts, developing standards which might
have wide application in juvenile-court work. Now, the whole scheme
o f this conference of the past day and a half has been along the line
o f what the Children’s Bureau has undertaken, and we are really
here to express on the part of the National Probation Association a
purpose to go on with the Children’s Bureau.
Let us make as effective as possible all our resources in the work
that it has undertaken.
I am going to ask Miss Lenroot, o f the Children’s Bureau, to make
a brief statement in regard to this, and I shall then ask you to con
tribute to the discussion; the committee will then be announced which
has been recommended by your committee to serve the Children’s
Bureau in carrying on the work of standardization o f juvenile-court
methods.
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K a t h a r i n e F. L e n r o o t , of the Children's Bureau. The Children’s
Bureau and the committee which will be appointed on recommenda
tion o f this conference will look for suggestions from you as to
the scope o f the committee’s work.
The papers and discussions o f the last day and a half have out
lined quite completely most o f the phases o f work which the commit
tee will have to consider, but for the purpose o f opening this discus
sion I wish to summarize very briefly some o f the points that seem
to us o f importance in this connection. A ll these questions will
be considered, we hope, just as much from the point of view o f the
rural community and small town as from that o f the larger city.
The committee will probably consist o f twelve members. The
work is so comprehensive that it will be necessary for the committee
to divide into several subcommittees for the detailed consideration
o f the subjects before it; after these subcommittees have reported,
the entire committee should go over the field. Probably four sub
committees would form a good working group.
The first subcommittee might deal with the jurisdiction and pro
cedure o f the juvenile court, including the ages o f the children over
which the court should have jurisdiction, the classes of cases, and the
extent o f jurisdiction—whether the juvenile court should have com
plete jurisdiction over all offenses, no matter how serious, or whether
it should be limited, as it is now in some States. The questions of
dependency jurisdiction and jurisdiction over contributing cases,
nonsupport and desertion, children whose custody is in controversy,
the adoption o f children, and adults offending against children
would probably come within the scope o f this subcommittee. With
regard to the court system, there is the question o f whether an inde
pendent court is the best or whether some existing court system is
preferable. Probably no one rule can be laid down, because practice
must vary in different localities. The first subcommittee might also
consider the method o f election of the judge, his qualifications, the
method o f hearings, the formality or informality of court procedure,
the use o f referees, the evidence, and all those things so splendidly
outlined in the papers given here to-day. The disposition o f cases
would come within the field of this subcommittee. What facilities
must the court have at its disposal and how far should the jurisdic
tion of the court' continue beyond the first adjudication in different
classes o f cases ?
A second subcommittee might deal with the entire question o f the
process before hearing, the point at which the court should take
jurisdiction, what should be done with the children who are arrested,
what types of detention facilities are needed, and under what man
agement the detention home should be.
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A third subcommittee might consider the whole question of social
investigation and physical and mental examinations.
The fourth subcommittee would have the whole field of probation,
including the organization of the probation staff, from the point of
view both o f preliminary work and of investigation and supervision ;
the question o f assignment o f cases and case supervision; the con
structive plan which should be formed at the beginning of each case
placed on probation; the methods of keeping in touch with the
children, their reporting, and home visits ; the cooperation with the
schools and with recreational and other social agencies ; the length
o f probation ; the records and reports which would show the results
accomplished.
Mr. P a r s o n s . The opportunity is given us to make suggestions as
to the work that may be done by the Children’s Bureau in its carry
ing on o f this work o f standardizing the juvenile courts. I f any
member o f this group can offer any addition to the list o f topics
that Miss Lenroot has suggested, now is the opportunity. For
myself it seems to be inclusive, but I dare say there are some here
who can see omissions in that list ; and if so, I will be glad to hear
from them. There may be something some one wishes to say here
in encouragement of the work which the Children’s Bureau has
undertaken and thè possibility o f standardization. Is there a possi
bility o f standardization so far as rural courts are concerned? Do
we feel that the Children’s Bureau is engaged in a hopeful or quite a
hopeless task?
Mrs. B a l d w i n . I have often said in California that the great value
o f the work in our State was its variety. We gain from each other’s
experience in all o f this work. From what we have been doing in
our own locality for these years it seems to me that the time has now
come when we can put the things that are o f value to us into this
scheme of unifying and building up the work, giving our own ex
periences to other localities, and also developing a real system. The
period o f probation has about expired, and we are ready to go on
with a definite program.
Mr. P a r s o n s . That is a very encouraging word. Unless there is
some further discussion on the work I want to read the names o f the
persons who have been suggested by the committee for appointment
by the Children’s Bureau to the committee on juvenile-court stand
ards if Miss Lathrop sees fit to appoint them as the committee o f
the bureau to carry on this work o f standardization o f juvenilecourt methods.
Judge Charles W. Hoffman, Hamilton County Court o f Domestic
Relations, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Judge Kathryn Sellers, Juvenile Court o f the District of Columbia.
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Judge Henry S. Hulbert, Juvenile Division o f the Probate Court of
Wayne County, Detroit, Mich.
Dr. Miriam Van Waters, referee o f the Juvenile Court o f Los Angeles
County, Calif.
Bernard Fagan, chief probation officer o f the Children’s Court o f
New York City.
Joseph L. Moss, chief probation officer of the Juvenile Court, Cook
County, Chicago, 111.
Herbert C. Parsons, secretary o f the Massachusetts Probation Com
mission.
Charles L. Chute, secretary o f the National Probation Association.
Dr. William Healy, director o f the Judge Baker Foundation, Boston.
Dr. Y. V. Anderson, associate medical director o f the National Com
mittee for Mental Hygiene.
Henry W . Thurston, o f the New York School for Social Work, New
York City.
Ralph S. Barrow, State superintendent o f the Alabama Children’s
Aid Society.
This list of 12 names, if there is no objection, will be given to the
Children’s Bureau as a suggestion for this committee.
There is one thing that has marked a very great step in the progress
o f the National Probation Association during the past year. We
seem to have come out o f a state o f indefiniteness into an effective
working organization. We are realizing the ambition and the hope
o f the years among those who have been vitally interested in proba
tion work as represented in the National Probation Association, by
at least having a secretary who from now on is going to devote his
entire time to its interests. We want to make this work a very real
and vital means, beyond anything yet attained, for carrying over the
entire United States the gospel o f individual dealing with people who
go through our courts.
Great achievements have come in the way o f laws that have been
written, but a survey in the most hopeful mood o f what has been
actually attained in this way is still a bit discouraging and discon
certing. The officers o f the association, acting with prudence and care
to carry out what they believe is your wish, have undertaken to
organize the work much more definitely, and they have started out to
get all the means that are necessary in order to carry the purpose o f
this organization far beyond anything that has been attained in the
past. I think it has a very bright prospect, and that we have gotten
ur feet on the ground and are there with the purpose o f making a
record run o f achievements in the immediate future.
I want, for the officers of the association, to express the immense
satisfaction that has come to us in the very large attendance, the
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
106
JUVENILE-COURT STANDARDS.
largest we have ever had at a conference, and in the sustained interest
which under conditions not altogether delightful has shown itself in
attendance at the meetings all the way along, and in the perfectly
splendid interest that has been shown in what I am bound to say was
the most remarkable succession of uplifting, practical, and helpful
addresses that we ever had at any o f our meetings.
[Adjournment.]
X
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Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
INDEX
Page.
Adjusting treatment to Individual
needs: Louis N. Robin
son ; Jesse P. Smith—
papers read_____________ 87—98
discussion____________________ 98-102
Adult offenders, method of trying31,
34, 38-40, 54, 57, 64, 70-71, 72
segregation of children from__15,16,
17, 31, 49
Age limit of minors brought before
juvenile court- 34, 39, 40, 64, 76
Agencies, cooperation of court w ith10,
21, 90-91
Alabama_______________________
81—82
Anderson, Dr. V. Y_____________
105
Antles, A. A________________ 53-54, 82-84
Appeal-------------------------------------------- 64, 65
Arrest of child, procedure in—
Chicago____________________ 50-51
48
District of Columbia______
Attorney, county, cooperation of,
with juvenile court-------- 53—54
representation by___________ 55, 57-58
Baker, Herbert M .: “ Court and the
delinquent child, The ”—
citation _________________
17
Baldwin, Mrs. E. F ______ 72, 100-101,104
Barrow, Ralph S______________ 81-82,105
Bartelme, Mary________________ 40, 41, 71
Behavior problems, study of_______
11,
23-24, 26, 28, 91
Boarding homes for boys and girls of
working age (Philadel
phia) ----------------------------94
Bradford, Judge C. R______________
73
California_____________ 39, 64, 65, 100-101
Camps for juvenile probationers__93, 94
Carstens, C. C______ :___________
9-13
Case supervision____________88-90, 99-100
Cases cited :
Commonwealth v. Fisher (213
Penn. Reports, 62 At
16
lantic, 198)____________
Januszewski (196 F e d e r a l ,
123) ___________________
16
Newkosky v. State Home for
Girls (N. J. Sup. Ct.,
opinion by Swayze, J . ;
filed July 7, 1920)____
33
State v. Schilling (112 Atl.
Rep., 400)____
34
Cases, disposition o f________ :______
90
presenting to court___________
89
Causes o f delinquency-___________
8,
11, 23-25, 27-30, 35-36
Chain gang, commitment of chil15
dren to_!______________
Chairmen :
First session (Judge Michael S.
7
Sheridan)______________
Second session (Judge James
Hoge Ricks)___________
31
Third session (Hon. Herbert/ C.
Parsons)_______________
75
Chancery procedure_____ ___________ 10-11,
18, 31, 36,50, 57, 61, 65, 78
Charge, reducing o f______________
39
Chicago, 111__________ _____________ 50, 51
Child-welfare bureau, State, coop
eration with county judge
(Nebraska)_______ ______
54
Child-welfare movement, contribu
tion of juvenile courtto_ 9-13
Children in need of special care,
responsibility of State
toward______________ 16, 18,19
Children’s Bureau, U. S. publications
cited:
Courts in the United States
hearing children’s cases;
results of a questionnaire
study covering the year
1 1918— ------------------------- 15,17
Minimum standards for child
w elfare; adopted by the
Washington and Region
al Conferences on Child
Welfare, 1919__________
31
Summary of juvenile-court leg
islation in the United
States, A_______________
69
Churches, cooperation with court
(U ta h )________________
73
Chute, Charles L _______ _________102,105
Circuit-court judge as judge of ju
venile court____________
96
Civil procedure. See Chancery pro
cedure
Clerks of the court, appointment of,
as juvenile-court judges
. (North Carolina)____ 76-77,78
Clinics, establishment of, in con
nection
with
juvenile
courts-------- 8 , 11,17, 22, 31, 79,
80, 81, 85-86, 98,100
Commissions, State, for promoting
socialized courts, need of_
102
Commitment of children to institution s-------------- ----1 4 ,15 ,1 6 ,1 7 ,
40, 63, 76, 78
Committee on juvenile-court stand
ards ------------- ---- 5, 73,103-105
107
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108
INDEX,
Page.
Commonwealth
v.
Fisher. See
Cases cited.
Community, place of court in- 9,12,
19-23, 33, 47, 54, 55
49
Complaint, inquiry concerning---------- *
adjustment o f_____
90
Continuing custody____________ 43-44
Contributing to delinquency of mi
nors__________ 31, 34, 38-40, 54,
57, 64, 70-71, 72
jury trial for___________ 38, 55, 60, 71
Contribution o f the juvenile court to
the child-welfare move
ment, T h e : C. C. Carstens— paper read__ .___ 9—13
Cooley, Edwin J., principles of pro
bation stated by_________22—23
Cooperation :
73
Churches with court_____
County attorney with juvenile
co u rt____________________ 53-54
Police department with court__
45,
46, 48, 51, 52, 54, 72
Schools with court__.______ 47, 73, 83
Social agencies with court_____
10,
12,19, 21
State child-welfare bureau with
court (Nebraska)_________53—54
County:
As unit in State-wide plans------ 76, 81
Attorney, cooperation of, with
juvenile
court
(Ne
braska) ________________ 53—54
Clerk of superior court, acting
as judge o f juvenile court
(North Carolina)-------- 76-77, 78
Superintendent o f public wel
fare, duties of (North
C arolin a)________ ._____
77
County-wide juvenile courts------------52,
76-80, 81-82
Court procedure, socialization of___55-74
Courts of equity------------- 36, 65, 66 , 69, 78
Criminal instinct___________ 28, 35, 36, 63
Criminal procedure_________ . 39, 48, 76, 78
Criminal stigma, elimination o f ____
16,
19-21, 33-35
Custody, continuing____ _____________43-44
o f children---- -------------------- 43, 68 , 97
rights of parents to----------------70
Dean, May E______________________ 99—100
Death, punishment by (year 1833) _ 13, 21
Delinquency:
Causes o f— 8 ,11, 23-25, 27-30, 35-36
Contributing
to,
prosecution
for____ — ___ 31, 34, 38-40, 54,
57, 64, 70-71, 72
Prevention o f__________________ 12, 30
Problems o f treatment________
23-30
Relation o f feeble-mindedness
t o ______________
20
“ Delinquent,” definition in District
of Columbia____________
40
elimination
of
term
sug
gested____________ 35,37-38,39
term not in California law____ 39, 64
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Page.
Delinquents,
juvenile,
care
of,
pending hearing------------- -17,47
criminal instinct not preva
lent am ong______ 28, 35, 36, 63
individual, study of, as pre
liminary to treatment___ 21 , 22 ,
23-30, 31
segregation of, from crim
inal adults- 15,16,17, 31, 49, 96
Dependency cases, method of dealing
with________
51
Dependent children, custody of-------- 43, 97
placement of___________________
90
Detention________ .____________ ____ 15, 17,
31, 47, 48-49, 51, 78-79, 93, 103
methods of, in District of Co
lumbia ______ - _______ ,__
48
without entering charge— -------48
Detention homes__________ 47, 78, 93, 103
control o f _____________________ 48, 54
Development of juvenile court- 9, 11, 65-66
Disposition of cases, by referees__71-72, 90
plans f o r _________________
90
District of Columbia_______ : 39, 40, 48, 99
District supervisor (Philadelphia)__89,90
District system in Utah----------73
Domestic relations’ court___________- 39, 62
Equity court_______ _____ 36, 65, 66 , 69, 78
Evidence, conformity with rules o f__55, 58,
59, 66
juvenile-court, use of, as basis
of other legal action_6 8-69
weight of___________________ 55, 59-60
Wigmore on, Vol. I ll, sec. 1672—
citation ________________
61
Examinations, mental and physical,
for juvenile delinquents-8 , 11 .
17, 22, 31, 91, 98
in rural communities_______ 76, 79-87
Fagan, Bernard__________________
Family court. See Domestic rela
tions’ court.
Federal juvenile courts,advocacy o f-
105
37,
40-43
Feeble-minded, need of institutions
94
f o r _______
Feeble-mindedness, relation of, to
delinquency______ ______
20
Felony cases, trial of__:_____ 39-40, 64, 71
Field of the juvenile court, T h e:
Judge Edward Schoen—•
paper read___________:__32—37
discussion-------------37-44
Fines, payment of, by children___15,17
Flexner, Bernard, and Baldwin,
Roger
N .:
Juvenile
courts and probation—
citation________________
77
Founders of juvenile court, pur
pose o f__________________ 14-15
Fundamental principles of the juve
nile court and its part in
future community pro
grams for child welfare,
T h e : Judge Charles W.
Hoffman— paper read___13—23
INDEX,
Page.
W. H. Stuart: Children
and the law— citation—
13
George, William R . : The junior re
94
public— citation------------G irls:
Procedure in girls’ cases______
51
Women probation officers for__
10,
31, 51, 62, 73, 96
Women referees for_ 55, 61—62, 65,101
Guardianship o f State-------------------16,
18, 19, 34,35, 37, 66 , 70
Garnett,
Hanging, punishment by (year 1828) _ 13, 21
Haupt, Rev. A. J. D----------------------40
Healy, William, M. D_________ 23—30,105
Hearing, investigation before--------28,96
privacy o f--------------------------- 10, 55, 57
See also Trial.
Hoffman, Judge Charles W-------------- 13—23,
70-71,104
14
“ House of refuge ” ------------------------How far can court procedure be
socialized without im
pairing individual rights ?
Judge Edward F. W aite;
Judge Samuel D. L ev y;
Miriam Van Waters— pa
pers read_________________55—69
discussion______________________ 70—73
Hulbert, Judge Henry S__ 44-48, 52,105
Individual delinquent, adjustment of
treatment to needs o f__87-102
study of, as preliminary to
treatment____ 21, 22, 23—30, 31
“ Individual rights,” definition of—
55
Industrial schools-------------------------94
Influence of juvenile court upon
community___ 12, 19, 33, 54, 55
Institutional facilities, juvenile-court
need for__________ _— 87, 93-95
Institutions for feeble-minded chil
dren, need o f----------------94
Introductory statement:Julia C.
Lathrop_______________
7—9
Investigation, before hearing------------28, 96
into circumstances of offense 55, 60-61
Jail, commitment of children to____
15,
16,17, 78, 96
Januszewski. See Cases cited.
Johnson, Mrs. Clarence A------------- 75-81
Judge:
Appointment of—
Alabama _________________
81
California — i*.-,__________
64
Michigan ---------------- .--------45, 52
North Carolina_______ 76—77, 78
St. Louis, Mo______
96
South Carolina---------84—85
Importance of special qualifi
cations o f__________ 8 , 9, 29, 69
Power vested in (California)—
64
Relation of, to detention home47
Tenure of office------------------------- 78, 84
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109
Page.
Jury trial, for contributing to delin
quency___________ 38, 55, 60, 71
for felony cases of adults— 39—40, 71
for juvenile delinquents-_____ 55, 60
Juvenile cou rt:
Age limit of minors brought
before ______ 34, 39, 40, 64, 76
Basic principles of______ 18,19, 77—79
Contribution of, to the childwelfare movement_____ 9—13
Cooperation of agencies with---10,
12,19, 21
County-wide---- ----------------------52,
76-80, 81-82
Criticism of__ 15, 17, 19, 20—21, 26—27
Definition of------- ---------------- 32—37, 65
Development of___________ 9, 11, 65-66
Distinctive features o f------------- 9—10
Distinctive services of----------------- 10—12
Fundamental principles o f--------13,19
Institutional facilities needed
by___________________ 87, 93-95
Misconception of_________ 19, 21, 32-34
Operating under criminal proce
dure—
District of Columbia______
48
North Carolina, prior to
juvenile-court la w s-------- 76, 78
Origin o f ____________
65-66
Purpose of founders of____ _____ 14-15
Responsibility of — ____________ 9—11,
20-22, 36, 37, 44-54
Standards proposed by confer
ences of 1919___________
31
Juvenile-court judge. See Judge.
Juvenile-court laws. See Laws.
Juvenile-court standards. See Stand
ards, juvenile-court.
Juvenile delinquents.
See Delin
quents.
Juvenile officers. See Police proba
tion officers.
Kentucky statutes, 1915, s. 331 e
4— citation-____________
1?
Lathrop, Julia C., introductory state
ment by______ ¡at— --------.
7—9
“ Law,” nature o f_________ —______
69
Laws, juvenile-court, interpretation
*
o f ___________________ 16,19
need of enforcement of_ 17, 20-21
number of States having---- 9, 14
Legal status of children, advance in,
effect on treatment of de
linquents ----------------- ;—- 13,17
Lenroot, Katharine F ------ --------------103-104
Levy, Judge Samuel D— .---- 4?--------- 62-64
Limitations of juvenile court-----------14—15,
17, 20, 21, 25, 26-28, 34
Lundberg, Emma O------------- ------------5,101
Mental and physical examinations— 8 ,11,
. '
17, 22, 31, 82-83,
91, 98, 99, 100
in rural communities______ 76, 79—81,
83, 85-86
110
IUDEX,
Page.
Page.
Privacy o f hearings____________ 10, 55, 57
____________ 45,52
____ ______
40 Probate-court judge as juvenile-court
judge________ 45, 52, 81, 84—85
43, 50—5t, 101,105
____ ,____________ *52 Probation:
___________
54
Juvenile, need of specialized
service f o r ------- .----------- 10, 31
number of States provid
National child-labor c o m m i t t e e :
ing for__________ _____ _—
9
Child welfare in Ken
principles o f _____________ 22-23
tucky — citation________
17
National Probation Association, ad
Commissions__________________ 101—102
dress by Edwin J. Cooley
Committee, work o f (Califor
22
before_____________
n ia )____________
100-101
committee on children’s courts- 73-74
Officers, adjustment of cases by_
91
progress o f ____________________
105
qualifications of_____ _____
22 ,
Nebraska_______________ !____ 53—54, 82-83
79, 89, 92, 96
Needs of juvenile court_______ ,— 8 , 29—30
relation of judge to---------47
32
New Jersey------------salaries of_______________
7,79
Newkosky v. State Home for Girls.
supervision o f- 88 , 89—90, 99—100
See Cases cited.
testimony o f_____________55, 61
North Carolina______________________ 75—81
volunteer______ _________ 79, 97—98
women as___ 10, 31, 51, 62, 73, 96
Offenders, adult, method of trying- 31, 34,
Staff, organization o f_______
87-90
38-40, 54, 57, 64, 70-71, 72
work o f___________ 87—88, 90-93
segregation of children from
15,
Procedure, court, socialization o f— 55—74
16,17, 31, 49
Psychiatric clinic in connection with
juvenile. See Delinquents, ju
juvenile court_____ -------- 8 , 11 ,
venile.
17, 22, 81, 79, 80, 81
Organization of county juvenile
Psychological and physical examina
courts in a rural State,
tions __________________ - 8 , 11 ,
T h e : Mrs. Clarence A.
17, 22, 31, 82-83, 91, 98, 99, 100
Johnson— paper roa d ___ 75-81
in rural communities--------------76,1
discussion_____________________ 81—87
79-81, 83, 85-86
Origin of juvenile court_____________ 65—66
Public, exclusion of, from hearing—
10,
Orphanages, commitment of depend
55, 57
ent children to__________76, 82
Public agencies, cooperation of court
with_____________________ 10 ,2 1
Parens patriae___________I______ 36,'37, 55
Public trial, constitutional right to_
57
Parental delinquency____ 35, 38, 40, 44, 68
Punishment of delinquents— 13—17,19-21
Parental schools^— ------------------------- 94—95
by death (year 1833)------------- 13,21
Parents, rights to custody------------70
Parsons, Hon. Herbert C_43—44, 81, 87,
Qualifications, of probation officers22 ,
98-99, 100, 101,102, 104-106
79, 89, 92, 96
Penal institutions, commitment of
special, need of, for juvenilechildren to — __________
15
court judge________ 8 , 9, 29, 69
Penitentiary, commitment of chil
dren to _______________ 14,15
Referees, disposition of cases by-----61,
Perrin, Judge Solon-----------------------42
62, 71-72, 90, 91
Philadelphia______ 71-72, 89-90, 91, 94-95
women_____________ 55 ,61 -6 2 ,65 ,1 0 1
Physical and mental examination
for juvenile delinquents- 8 , 11 , Reformatories, commitment of chil
dren t o ______ 14,15, 40, 63, 76
17, 22, 31, 82-83,
elimination o f_________
:- 94, 95
91, 98, 99,100
Responsibility of juvenile court— :— 9-11,
in rural communities-____ 76, 79—81,
20-22, 36, 37, 44-54
83, 85-86
Results of treatment, study o f— 26—27, 29
Placing dependent children------------90
Ricks, Judge James Hoge— --------- 70, 71, 72
Placing difficult children___________90, 94
“ Rights, individual/’ definition of—
55
Placing - out agencies, cooperation
Rights of parents to custody---------70
w i t h ____________ 82, 85, 90, 94
Robinson, Louis N___________________ 87—95
Play, supervision o f_______________
12
55,
Rules of evidence, conformity with__
Police department, relation between
58-59, 6
court a n d __________ 45, 46,48,
Rural communities, mental and phy
51, 52, 54, 72
sical examinations in-----76,
Police probation officers in Chicago- 50, 51
79-81, 83, 85-86, 99-100
Poverty as cause of delinquency---8
organization of juvenile-court
Prevention o f delinquency________ 12, 30
work in______ 52, 75-81, 85, 99
responsibility of schools in_ 20 , 21—21
M ichigan___________
Minnesota________
Moss, Joseph L _____
Murdoch, Mrs. W. L
Murphy, Joseph P__
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INDEX,
Page.
St. Louis, Mo-------------------- __ 79,96,97-98
Salaries of probation officers_______
7 , 79
Schoen, Judge Edward_____________
38,
39, 49-43, 87-95
School-attendance department, rela
tion of, to juvenile court- 77 , 79
Schools, relation between juvenile
courts and-._________ 47, 62, 73
responsibility of, in prevention
of delinquency______ 20 , 21 -22
Scott, Elmer__I _____________________ 85-87
Segregation of juveniles from adult
offenders------ 15, 16, 17, 31, 49
Sellers, Judge Kathryn_____________ 39,40,
42, 48-50, 99, 104
Sex offenses, victims of, protection
o f ---------------------------------31
Sheridan, Judge Michael S_________
7
Shontz, Orfa Jean--------------- 39-40, 64, 65
Smith, Jesse P _______________________ 95-98
Social agencies, cooperation of, with
court------------------ 10 , 12 , 19, 21
Socialization o f juvenile-court pro
cedure ---------------- v______ 55 -74
Socialization o f juvenile-court pro
cedure, The : Miriam Van
Waters— paper rea d __64-69
South Carolina_________________ 1____ 84-85
Standards, juvenile-court, need for___
9,
12-13, 32, 33
See also Committee on juve
nile-court standards.
State, guardianship of__________16,18,19
34, 35, 37, 66 , 70
State v. Schilling. See Cases cited.
State commissions for promoting so
cialized courts, need of__
102
Status o f children, legal, advance in,
effect on treatment of de
linquents-______________ 13 ; 17
Study of the individual child as a
preliminary
to
treat
m ent: William Healy,
M. D.— paper rea d _____ 23-30
Study of results o f treatment___ 26—27, 29
Superintendent of public welfare,
county, duties of (North
C a rolin a )_____ _____ ____
77
Supervisor o f district (Philadel
phia) ---------------------------- 89, 90
Supervisors, work o f_________ 89, 99—1Ó0
„
Page.
Swearing o f witnesses_____________
58
Tenure of office of judge_______
78
Testimony, methods of taking____ 55, 58-59
o f probation officers___________ 55 , 61
Texas----------------85-86
105
Thurston, Henry W___________
Treatment, adjustment of, to indi
vidual needs____ 23-30, 87-102
study of results of__________ 26-27, 29
truancy __— ___________________
95
Trial, jury, for contributing to de
linquency------------38, 55, 60, 71
for felony cases of adults__ 39—40,
71
for juvenile delinquents___ 55 , 60
public, constitutional right to__
57
See also Hearing.
Truancy, symptom of other condi
tions____________________
12
treatment o f ______ _________________
95
U tah ______________________________»
73
Van Waters, Miriam___________64r-69,105
Victims of sex offenses, protection
o f ---------------------------------31 ,
Volunteer probation officers_____ 79 , 97—98
Waite, Judge Edward F ___________
13 ,
14,18, 37-38, 42, 55-62, 65
Walker, Charles P __________________71—72
Wards of the court_____________ 39 , 50 , 64
Where does the responsibility of the
court begin : Judge Henry
S. Hulbert; Judge Kath
ryn Sellers— papers read- 44-50
discussion________________ __SSI 50—54
Whipping, punishment by___________
17
Wigmore, Prof. John H .: Evidence,
Vol. I ll, sec 1672— cita
61
tion _________ __________ *
Williams, G. Croft___________________ 84-85
Witnesses, swearing of_____________
58
Women probation officers_________ 10 ,
31, 51, 62, 73, 96
Women referees in girls’ cases_____
55 ,
61-62, 65,101
Workhouse, commitment of children
to — -------------16
o
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