CHAPTER VI

THE BOY AND THE COURT

[This investigation was made in 1909-10. Since that time great progress has been made in the children’s court of Manhattan. The failure of the kind of treatment described in Sections II and III of this chapter has been recognized by the court and a great step forward has been taken in the reorganization of its probation work. A number of improvements give evidence of a genuine and growing desire to make the work of the court more thorough and humane. These and other modifications will be noted in detail by footnotes in the following pages.

The description of court procedure here given is therefore to be read with the fact always in mind that the conditions described are those of several years ago. The account has been included because the material relating to the court, while partly out of date, is inextricably interwoven with the material describing neighborhood conditions which are practically unchanged. The improvements in the children’s court have not yet had time to seriously affect the district.

A further reason for including some statements regarding partly outgrown court conditions here is that they are not wholly outgrown in other cities. There are still children’s courts in other places which have no special children’s judge, where parole is used instead of probation, and where the records are entirely inadequate.]

The foregoing chapters have reviewed the situation back of the boy’s delinquency and have shown that his difficulties are deeply rooted in the whole neighborhood life of the Middle West Side. It cannot be denied that the courts are a necessary instrument in the handling of such lawlessness as we have found to be characteristic of our tenement neighborhood. But it must also be admitted that the unsupplemented efforts of a court of law, however humane its methods, cannot be the ultimate answer to our question of what to do with the West Side boy.

From the point of view of the neighborhood the children’s court takes its place among the various forces which influence him as wholly foreign. In the first place, the point of view of the tribunal is strange to his little savage mind. The judge is a sort of Setebos whom the little Caliban, sprawling in his West Side mire, both fears and scorns. In the second place, the court building itself is far from the district and beyond the range of his familiar haunts. After the boy is arrested, he is taken to the children’s court by way of the detention rooms of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In his own estimation he has made a notable journey by the time he reaches the court. His parents, too, view the trip to court as a considerable journey, which involves putting on their best clothes and the spending of carfare. It may also mean the loss of a day’s work and the possible loss of a job.

In order to make clear the experience of the boy in the court, at this point we must give a brief description of the growth, equipment, and processes of the Manhattan Children’s Court and its allied agencies. Later we shall examine some of the tangible results of this treatment in individual cases from the West Side neighborhood.

As a first essential to an understanding of the causes of arrest and the methods of the court, we must know the legal definition of juvenile delinquency. Chapter 478 of the Laws of 1909 provided that “a child of more than seven and less than sixteen years of age, who shall commit any act or omission which, if committed by an adult, would be a crime not punishable by death or life imprisonment, shall not be deemed guilty of any crime, but of juvenile delinquency only.”[23] The offenses, however, are still registered in the court according to the law violated. The clauses under which charges are most frequently made are given below. The number of the paragraph in the Penal Law containing the full text of the law is given in each case.

Sec. 486 Penal Law

a. Improper guardianship (peculiar in that the child was arraigned for the offense of his guardians).

b. Disorderly or ungovernable child (on complaint of parents or guardian).

Sec. 720 Penal Law

“Any person who shall by an offensive or disorderly act or language, annoy or interfere with any person in any place or with the passengers of any public stage, railroad car, ferry boat, or other public conveyance, ... shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Sec. 43 Penal Law

A person who commits “any act which seriously injures the person or property of another, or which seriously disturbs or endangers the public peace or health, or which openly outrages public decency, for which no other punishment is expressly prescribed by this chapter, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Sec. 1310 Penal Law

a. Petty Larceny.

b. Grand Larceny.

Sec. 405 Penal Law

Burglary and Unlawful Entry.

Sec. 242 Penal Law

Assault.

Sec. 1610 Penal Law

Peddling without License.

Sec. 1990 Penal Law

“Riding on freight trains; boarding cars in motion; obstructing passage of car.”

Sec. 2120

Robbery.

Besides the violations of the penal law, violations of the compulsory education law and of the child labor law are frequently the ground of complaint.

The list of offenses with which our special group of 294 boys was charged agrees in the main with those given above. The list of court charges[24] according to the number of arrests for each is given herewith for the whole group of 463 arrests.

OFFENSES IN 463 CASES OF ARREST CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO COURT CHARGES

Violation of compulsory education law 29 Improper guardianship 60 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 486.) Ungovernable child 12 Disorderly child 4 Violation of child labor law 10 In danger of being morally depraved 1 Disorderly conduct 186 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 720.) Injury or destruction to property 15 Injuring railroad and appurtenances 1 Petty larceny 43 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 1298.) Grand larceny 12 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 1296.) Robbery 5 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 2124) Burglary 38 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 404.) Riding on freight train 3 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 1990.) Assault 15 (According to Penal Law, Sec. 242-246.) Unknown 31 --- 465 Deducting duplicates[25] 2 --- Total 463

As early as 1892, a law was passed permitting the separate trial of children in New York City, but it was not until September, 1902, that a separate court was established in Manhattan in a building of its own at the corner of Third Avenue and Eleventh Street.[26] The children’s court, including all those sitting in the various boroughs of Greater New York, is called the Children’s Part of the Court of Special Sessions. The court sits daily until the calendar is cleared.[27] The cases before the court had to be rushed through with great speed. In 1909, over 11,000 cases were handled by the Manhattan court. This allowed the judge an average of five minutes for a trial, including the most serious and perplexing.[28]

The court building, which was once the headquarters of the Department of Corrections, has long been congested, inconvenient, dingy, and unsanitary.[29] The room where the hearing is given is always crowded and noisy.

An account of the court’s equipment is incomplete without a word in regard to the detention quarters set aside in its own building by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The detention home, with dormitories and dining rooms, is given rent free. The total expense of caring for the children temporarily in the care of the society in 1909 amounted to something over $20,000.[30] The total amount spent by the city for court service in handling over 11,000 cases in 1909 was $56,012.15. This averages $5.00 less per capita than any other large city in the country.

The development of a probation system for juvenile delinquents was of very slow growth in New York City. The first probation law in New York state was passed in 1901, but children under sixteen were excluded through the efforts of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.[31] In 1903, a compromise was made which permitted the appointment of an official probation staff. Until the series of adjustments and improvements recommended by the reports of the Page Commission[32] in April, 1910, was begun, the agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the volunteer probation societies did the only work approaching probation in nature.[33] The court process, however, was not probation, but parole, though until recently the words were used as synonymous in the court. “At the end of the period of parole, sentence is suspended if the child has done well,” wrote Mr. Homer Folks. “The term ‘parole’ as used in this court signifies practically an adjournment of the case. The oversight of the children on parole is not clearly separated from the work of the agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”[34]

Very early in the history of the court private efforts were made to help the many children who, it was felt, were not receiving adequate attention. The impulse to reform and save the child, being largely moral, naturally originated in the churches. The result was a division of volunteer probation along church lines which left its impress on the later developments of probation work.

In Manhattan the first to enter the field were the Catholics. The Catholic Probation League, incorporated February 3, 1907, under the auspices of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, was the appropriate sponsor for the movement. The pioneer work had already been done, however, by a small group of women known as the Catholic Ladies’ Committee. After the formation of the Probation League, its parole committee co-operated with the ladies’ committee by taking over the cases of the older boys. The committee took all the girls’ cases and gave them especial attention. The members themselves did the visiting, and at one time maintained a paid worker. Some of them favored the establishment of an official probation staff. They thought that the willingness of volunteer agencies to shoulder the entire burden was delaying this important move.

The Jewish Protectory and Aid Society had for several years engaged in parole and probation work to a certain extent. The society maintained a paid worker who represented its legal authority as guardian of all Jewish juvenile delinquents in the city and who was made a special officer by the police commissioner. Until the recent establishment of the Jewish Big Brother movement he bore the brunt of all the visiting of Jewish cases, and handled as best he could all the cases passing through the court or paroled from the Hawthorne School.

Before the founding of the Big Brother movement, there was no organized effort in behalf of the children of Protestant parents who passed through the court and were not committed to an institution. Ernest K. Coulter, clerk of the court, seeing the need of work similar to that of the other two great religious groups, induced a club of men in the Central Presbyterian Church to promise that each one would act as “Big Brother” to one court boy. The preliminary work was carried on by the club for a couple of years, and the movement aroused considerable interest. Other church clubs also took up the work. In March, 1907, the movement was reorganized, so as to be independent of the churches. For a time the branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association acted as “centers” while neighboring church clubs acted as “locals.” Later the alliance with the Association was severed, the work becoming independent of sponsorship.

The Jewish Big Brother movement, modeled in many respects upon the Big Brother movement of the Protestants, was formally organized in February, 1909. At first, this society took only the boys on parole from the Hawthorne School, but later the work was extended to include parole cases from the House of Refuge.

All these religious agencies,[35] in contrast to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, have not been in any way connected officially with the court.[36]

1. GETTING INTO COURT

Let us follow a boy, accused of violation of the law, through all the possible vicissitudes of a court experience in Manhattan previous to September, 1910. The task may prove tedious but not nearly so meaningless or bewildering for the reader as for the thousands of families who had to go through it every year.

Once arrested, he was led to the nearest police station, followed by a throng of curious onlookers. At the station house children were occasionally discharged, but ordinarily their names were entered on the police docket and the parents were informed. If no one was found at home, a message was left with a near neighbor. Some one must vouch for the boy’s appearance in court the next day before he could be liberated. If the boy was arrested in the evening, he might be taken directly to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for detention and the parent notified to appear there for the child before midnight or at court the following morning.

The law provides that in cases of delinquency which do not involve a felony the police sergeant may accept the word of the parent or guardian as sufficient surety for presence at trial, without bail. However, the decision is left to the discretion of the officer, and bail was sometimes required for trivial offenses.[37] There is opportunity here for the local political “boss” to foster the belief that he is able to help a friendless family, and later to send his henchman to enlist the vote at the next election. There was no evidence that the local “boss” had any influence in the children’s court; it is significant, however, that the people thought he had.

In one case the great political “boss” of the district personally accompanied the mother to the court. This was when Mrs. Hannon, apparently believing that it was the thing to do, had “got up her ‘noive’” and appealed to him at once, without waiting for her husband to tell her. Furthermore, Mrs. Hannon triumphantly pointed out, the boy who had been brought in simultaneously with her son, was fined $3.00 “because his father was not ‘in’ with the Senator” at that time. In two other cases it was the aged mother of the “boss” who seemed to have the deciding voice as to his actions! There were other parents, one a saloon keeper, who boasted that they could have secured aid if they had happened to need it. One old woman resident said she had “enough friends to get the boy off the gallus if nade be!” These stories illustrate the Celtic feudal relation which existed between the political sponsor of the district and its inhabitants.[38]

Bail was seldom demanded at the headquarters of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. When the boy was once inside this building, the general public could learn little of what went on except through the annual reports of the society, a formal visit, or reports from the families themselves. To many families the functions of the court and “the Gerry,” as the society is called after its founder, were indistinguishable amidst the irritating confusion of their court experience. If any distinction was made, there was a dread of “the Gerry man” (sometimes used as a “bogey”) which was not felt regarding the court.

By 10 o’clock of the first court day following the arrest, the boy was deposited by the society’s agents in the waiting room on the second floor of the court building, or brought by his parents to the court room. After a tedious wait his name was shouted through the corridor back of the court, and relayed to the waiting room. He was then taken into the noisy court room, where he stood one step below the witness stand while the officer or complainants were sworn in and corroborated the data on the judge’s or their own memoranda. The judge had only a brief record of the arrest and charge at this time, with an occasional verbal report from an officer of the society or a volunteer.[39] No investigation of the case, individual or social, was made before the trial. Our records contain cases which, had they been investigated, would have shown feeble-mindedness, adenoids, bad eyes, frail constitution, self-abuse, or terrible home conditions. On the other hand, there were cases where the character and family surroundings of the child should have shown a severe sentence to be unnecessary. Sometimes faulty records failed to show a previous arrest and the boy’s word was taken that he had never been in court before.

Following the accusation the boy was allowed to speak for himself, pleading guilty or not guilty. He stood on the top step, the center of a small group, about three feet from the judge. The distracting noise of the court room had at least one advantage; it prevented the audience from hearing what was said. After the boy had spoken, the mother or guardian might be admitted inside the rail to speak to the judge. In some cases, this privilege was refused. This constituted the distinct grievance of a group of parents who were not all of low type by any means. On the other hand, in two of our worst cases the judge, ignorant of conditions, proved susceptible to a shrewd appeal by the mother. It is hard to see, however, how the court could avoid such mistakes without an adequate investigating staff.

Occasionally the parents had engaged a lawyer, who was semi-officially recognized by the court and who collected what fees he could from the defendants. Sometimes the engagement was due to the initiative of the lawyer. In fully 80 per cent of the cases there was no lawyer formally pleading, and even when one was engaged he was in most cases unnecessary. The delay, and the cost to defendants, would have been much reduced if he had not been present. Since, however, every case registered as pleading “not guilty” was supposed to have had the opportunity of counsel, a lawyer’s name was formally entered in the record after every such case.

Before disposing of a case the judge might remand the boy to the care of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children while an investigation was made, if he were not sure of the proper treatment to be given. Only flagrantly bad conditions show up, however, under superficial investigation. A case was occasionally “remanded for investigation” in order to give the boy and the family a lesson; a remand of this sort being in reality a mild punishment. Since the reformatories have refused short commitments, this has frequently been the substitute.

Unless the boy was an old case, it was only after the court had acted and he had stepped down from the stand that the volunteer probation agencies took a hand. By this time the boy and his parents were pretty well bewildered, and in the excitement it was often impossible to make clear to them what was meant by the questions asked or the suggestions offered by these volunteers. The entire court experience meant for the more sensitive among both parents and children a nervous shock, or, at least, an extremely trying ordeal which was frequently out of all proportion to the triviality of the offense in question. Where the type of family which passed through the ordeal with indifference was concerned, it was correspondingly ineffective.

* * * * *

The kinds of disposition which the judge might make of any given case are as follows:

(1) Dismissal for insufficient evidence. Evidence applies, as in criminal courts, only to the specific act; and if it be lacking, the court is powerless to act as guardian of the child as it could do if it had equity powers. However, in especially flagrant cases a child dismissed under one charge may be returned for improper guardianship.

(2) Acquittal, if the boy pleads not guilty, and there is some evidence that he was not involved in the escapade. This is sometimes technical and takes no account of serious delinquency which may lie back of the affair.

(3) Suspended sentence, after conviction, with a warning of reprimand, but no supervision or visiting.

(4) A fine, usually one or two dollars, though it may be as low as 50 cents or as high as five dollars. This is used ordinarily as a lesson to the parents, since the burden of the fine falls upon them.

(5) “Committed for one day to the parental care of John Ward.” This is for the purpose of having an officer give the boy a “licking” upstairs in the court, when a parent refuses to do so. Occasionally sentence is suspended, or fine remitted, on condition that the parent do this, in case the boy or his parents have not learned to say, when the judge asks the question that he has already been licked. This method is said by some of the judges to be very effective in preventing recidivation. Its reforming effect is not quite so certain.

(6) Parole in the custody of the parents, to be visited by the agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. A boy’s parole is often continued month by month. At its expiration the boy may be discharged from parole, committed to an institution, or given a suspended sentence. In the case of school children, especially truants, the principal acts as a parole officer and signs the parole card daily, vouching for the boy’s attendance and conduct. In case of serious offense during this period, parole may be revoked, and disposition made on both offenses, one sentence being held in reserve for its deterrent effect. If a child and his parents fail to appear on the prescribed date, a bench warrant is issued and the child is arrested and brought in. The same thing is sometimes done in improper guardianship cases, if the agent’s investigation has revealed conditions unimproved.

(7) Commitment to an institution, if possible to one of the same religious faith as the child. Neglected children are sent to charitable institutions; delinquents, usually older boys, after several offenses, violation of parole, or serious incorrigibility, to one of the reformatories. The House of Refuge is in many respects a prison for minors. Boys are committed to it who cannot be cared for by the New York Juvenile Asylum, Catholic Protectory, or Hawthorne School. Truants, if committed from this court, are sent to one of the truant schools.

This résumé of dispositions forms a basis for a natural division of our case material. We have studied the effects of the court experience upon different groups of children according to the sentence received. To a large extent the home visiting was apportioned among our investigators along the same lines. The disposition indicates the judgment of the court as to the seriousness of the offense, and it is the effect of this judgment which is to be tested.

As has been stated in the introduction, a statistical study of the delinquency of boys was made in 241 West Side families. Four hundred and sixty-three arrests of boys occurred among these families during the period covered by our investigation. Data are available concerning the offenses committed and the action taken in court for 454 of these 463 cases. As some boys were arrested more than once, and as some families had two or more boys who were arrested, the 454 arrests affected but 259 boys and 221 families.[40]

There were, in the families investigated, a number of boys who were not themselves arrested, but who were, nevertheless, properly included in our study of delinquency. Their gang relations or other connections with the boys who were arrested made their cases significant. As these boys and the boys concerning whose arrests complete statistical information is lacking numbered, together, 35, the total number of boys dealt with is 294.

Not all the boys were really delinquent. Some were brought into court because of improper guardianship, an offense on the part of the parents rather than on that of the children; and others who were not incorrigible came to the notice of the investigators. The word “delinquent” seems properly to apply to 249 of the 294 boys.

We shall divide the 454 arrests studied into three main groups: (1) The group of 260 cases in which the court did nothing after the child left its doors; namely, those acquitted, discharged, released under suspended sentence, whipped, or fined; (2) the group of 95 paroled cases; (3) the group of 99 cases committed to institutions. Each of these groups will be considered separately in the following sections.

II. THE BOY WHO IS LET GO

The majority of the children who daily passed through the court were dismissed either on the day of the trial or, at the latest, after the rehearing a day or two later.[41] We have recorded 260 of these cases, considered trivial by the court and closed officially as soon as the offender passed out of the door on Eleventh Street. As some children were arrested more than once on these petty charges, the 260 arrests affected 197 individuals and 176 families. In the words of the district, these 197 boys were simply “let go.”

The district phrase does not discriminate between the several verdicts under which this might happen. If evidence was wanting to prove the child guilty of the special act of which he was accused, he was “discharged.” If, on the other hand, he was convicted, he might still be allowed to go free with a “suspended sentence,” under which he might be retried at any time during the ensuing year. However, a retrial practically never occurred unless the boy was rearrested under a new charge. This fundamental distinction, then, between innocence and guilt becomes a mere technical difference and must be gleaned by the stickler for verbal accuracy from the court records and the rulings of the law. It is not to be discovered in the minds of either parents or children. Both verdicts came to the same thing in the end. “Aw, he got out a’ right the next day. They couldn’t do nothin’ to him for a little thing like that.”

Sometimes the boy was let go but a fine was imposed. This was a fact never to be forgotten by his parents. Several years after the event, the mother would recall ruefully: “He cost me two dollars for that fine, he did--an’ him only standin’ and lookin’ on.” When the fine was not forthcoming, the youngster might be held for the day in the court building and then dismissed. Sometimes the record reads “Committed for a day,” which means that the culprit had received a trouncing from an official of the court. But there was very little difference after the lapse of a few months in the effect of these verdicts, whether of discharge or suspended sentence, because none projected themselves very far into the later experience of the boy. There was some additional hectoring at home and the full recital of events to the gang. Then, with a few exceptions, the experience became past history.

Owing to the thousands of petty cases which flood the court the individual case was cursorily handled during the hearing as well as afterward. There was seldom any effort to probe deeper into the affair than appeared from the version given by the little group before the bench, consisting of the officer who made the arrest, the complainant, if there was one, perhaps a friend or witness who was interested and chose to be present, and the boy’s parents. Sometimes the mother did not even reach the bench, so great was the speed with which such cases were reeled off. Very seldom was there any time for patient questioning, without which the truth cannot be obtained from a reluctant and fearful child or from a parent already on the defensive. The disposition of the case, according to the routine procedure, must be based on an inadequate knowledge of the circumstances. On a minor charge the judge would seldom utilize his right to adjourn a hearing, and even this so-called “Remand for Investigation” might be used merely as a light punishment, since the child was kept for several days in the detention rooms of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. It did not necessarily mean that any further inquiry was made.

In so rough a hopper as our system of arrests, boys of all sorts are run in on petty complaints. Of course, many of the tales of needless and mistaken arrests must be taken with a large grain of salt, as the mother is often quite ready to accept the boy’s version. But the evidence of disinterested residents and social workers in the district indicated the casual nature of many of the arrests. An arrest was simply bad luck, like the measles. “I ain’t been in court yet!” said Joey Burns. “I’ve only been in court twice,” said Patrick Coogan.

Nor is the argument entirely against the “cop.” The chances are that, if the boy wasn’t throwing craps then, he had done it often enough before, and the policeman, as the mother bitingly comments, “has got his job to hold down.” In case of a bonfire or a fight, it is humanly impossible to select from a horde of running boys the exact one who threw the can or lit the match. An onlooker is pretty sure to be hauled in and an angry woman to be down around the officer’s ears with, “It’s a foine sight of a strappin’ strong man ye are t’ be takin’ up a poor innicint b’y an’ lettin’ thieves and sluggers get away on yez.”

Yet there are important differences among these boys arrested on a seemingly trivial class of charges, such as “Loitering in the hallway of a house in West Forty-ninth Street,” “Making a noise,” “Shouting and creating a disturbance to the annoyance of the occupants of said house.” The offender may be a weakling, frail, ill-nourished, and backward. For this type of boy, sensitive and timid as he already is by nature, the court experience simply serves to increase his defect. Or, at the other extreme, he may be the leader on his block, and the prime spirit of all its “deviltry.” Hardened by a long career of semi-vagabondage in the streets, this boy is likely to be utterly scornful of the courts and their discipline. But most of the boys brought in on minor charges belong somewhere between these two extremes. Many of them are merely “wild,” like scores of other fellows on their streets, and would have a fair prospect of turning out well under proper supervision.

It is safe to say that “delinquent” was a misnomer for at least one-fifth of the 197 boys so easily dismissed from court. On a conservative estimate, 39 of these boys could not be charged with real misdemeanor, still less with crime. The sum of their iniquity was the violation of a city ordinance; they had “obstructed a sidewalk of a public street while engaged in playing” some game ranging from football to craps.

One boy, for instance, was arrested for pitching pennies. His parents were sending him to high school and had managed to give each of his older brothers two years in a business college--facts which betoken in our district unusual family energy and ambition. The boy himself was the leading spirit of an especially vigorous settlement club. His mother was firm in her protest that “parents ought to be given a chance to punish for such little things themselves.” Even the graver offense of stone throwing, when traced to its origin, does not always proceed from criminal instincts. The course of public opinion on his block draws any spirited boy, sooner or later, into some of the closely contested fights which occur periodically in lieu of a better form of recreation.

These charges are less a reflection of the boy’s waywardness than of the community’s disregard for his needs and rights. Apart from the misdemeanors which brought them into court, these 39 boys were well up to the best standard of behavior in the neighborhood. In only one case was there any serious truancy and the boys of working age all had steady jobs. The explanation of their better behavior was to be found, for the most part, in the better circumstances of their families; for most of them lived in fair homes in the more prosperous blocks of the district.

A few of this group, however, belonged to the most heavily handicapped families of our acquaintance. One boy, in particular, stands out for a degree of courage and energy remarkable for his years. His name was Sam Sharkey. His family lived on a river block from which it was assumed that no good could ever come. “If the rent’s paid, there ain’t nothing more looked for from that lot,” was the neighborhood opinion of this particular row. On the ground floor of one of these squalid houses Sam and his mother kept up a home for the younger brothers and sisters. Mrs. Sharkey scrubbed the floors of the dental college and the boy drove a delivery wagon. Sam was his mother’s steadfast right hand, sharing every responsibility with her. During one period of four weeks, for instance, while Mrs. Sharkey lay in the hospital with peritonitis, fifteen-year-old Sam kept up the home without her. “All the time I was out of my head,” said Mrs. Sharkey, speaking of her hospital experience later, “I was talking about Sam and calling on him to do things. The nurse, she says to me when I was myself again, ‘Who is this Sam that you’ve been talking about all this time?’ says she. ‘That’s my boy,’ says I. And I was for getting up and coming right home to help him, only they wouldn’t let me.” This was the same boy who had been arrested not long before his mother’s illness, for playing craps. In his case there was great need of outside help and interference of the right sort; but thanks to the marvelous stamina of young life still to be found occasionally even in the depths of squalor, there was certainly no problem of delinquency.

The largest group among the 197 boys discharged from court, which numbered 96, were of the type which the neighborhood characterizes as “wild.” This means boys who are troublesome in school and are probably truants. They are common nuisances, marauding on streets and roofs, damaging property, lying, and pilfering. Boys of this sort may be counted by the hundreds through these blocks. There was nothing to indicate that the 96 representatives who had been in court were very different from their neighbors, except by their ill luck in being “pinched.” It would be a desperate outlook indeed if all the “wild” lads of the West Side were likely to develop into the lawless Gopher element which as boys they emulate. Still, for all of them the chances are precarious. There can be no question, however, that it is still possible to counteract the influences which are hastening many of these boys along a criminal path.

The record of one twelve-year-old boy shows the typical cross currents of influence which affect the boys in this class. Hugh Mallory was the youngest of eight children. During the first ten years of his life his family had lived in the house in which he was born. Here they suffered so much from sickness, death, and poverty that they finally moved to another street, hoping to “change their luck.” After this they were more prosperous for a time until the father and one of the older boys got out of work and things began to look less cheerful. Mallory was a hard drinker, especially when out of work. The younger children feared him when he was in liquor, as it made him ugly-tempered. A special antagonism existed between him and the second son, who would get out of bed even late at night and go out on the streets if his father came home drunk and in a quarrelsome mood.

Still, the family had “never had to ask help but had had enough to eat and could get along.” James, the oldest son, a young man of twenty-three, was the mainstay of the family. The mother had done well under the hard load she had had to carry. She was thrifty, making all the children’s clothes, even to the boys’ jackets, but she showed the effects of her hard life in both her thin, worn appearance and her slack moral standards. She was not above conniving at such pilfering on the part of the boys as would “help along.” For two years Hugh had brought home coal regularly from the neighboring freight yard. Mrs. Mallory said that he was very smart about it and showed with pride two large bags which he had gathered. The method, she explained, was for one boy to climb on a car and throw down the coal to the others, who picked it up. She was, however, constantly in fear lest Hugh should be arrested. The court records showed that Hugh had never been brought in for stealing coal, but he had been arrested for stealing old iron. It was natural that “swiping coal for his mother” should lead to “swiping” things for his own purposes. Hugh and his fifteen-year-old brother were members of a club in a Protestant institutional church. The club had a camp to which both boys went in the summer. They had to pay their railroad expenses, and got the money, in part at least, from their winnings at craps. The outcome for Hugh was hard to foretell. It was a toss-up as to which of the elements playing on the boy’s nature would ultimately assume the dominant place. An effort to swing the balance with boys like these seems thoroughly worth while.

Youngsters like these form a large group, and are perhaps the most vulnerable point of attack for a court. With those who are merely “wild,” the oversight and help of a good probation officer should bring the best results. Leaders in settlement clubs, Big Brothers and social workers generally, agree that the problem of the boy of this type, whatever his surroundings, is largely one of wise direction of his sports and other activities. If the families of the culprits and the social agencies which have the welfare of the city boy at heart could be brought into close co-operation with the court through an efficient probation department, it is believed that results would quickly be shown in the diminution of the delinquent boy problem.

The remaining 62 of the group of boys let go presented a less hopeful aspect. The court charge was not an index to be trusted. Charges of petty theft were frequent, and six burglaries were recorded against this group. On the other hand, some of the boys, whom we knew to be seriously delinquent, had been brought before the judge for playing craps, building a fire, or some equally trifling offense, and discharged. When we pushed the investigation further, we found in the case of all these 62 boys a situation whose elements already foretold a useless if not a vicious manhood, unless vigorous and sustained effort were made to rescue them.

Matty Gilmore, for instance, had been brought in on the charge of “maintaining a bonfire on a public street.” On nearer acquaintance, he proved to be a boy in whom a definite criminal tendency was already noticeable. He had never worked more than a week or two at a time in spite of the many jobs to which he had been “chased.” In this he was carrying out the tradition of his family. His father and three older brothers had always loafed by spells “on” the mother and sisters, who worked steadily.

One of the jobs he had held for two weeks was that of delivering packages and collecting for the Diamond Laundry. At the end of the first week, his employer discovered that he was pilfering. Accused by the manager, Matty confessed his guilt but earnestly declared that he had been induced to pilfer by a friend of his, “a bad boy,” who was also in the service of the laundry and who was discharged forthwith. Matty remained. On Tuesday of the next week, two friends of his brought back a package with the tale that Matty had been run over by a train and was too badly hurt to work. He had entrusted them with the package to see that it was returned. It was not until several days later that the laundry discovered that Matty and his friends had delivered all the packages but one that morning and had pocketed the money collected. His mother and sisters made good the laundryman’s loss and the boy was not brought into court. A year later, he was arrested for disposing of several gold watches which had been stolen in a Connecticut town. As he was sixteen by this time he was sent, after a week or so in the Tombs, to the town where the theft had been committed, and spent several weeks in jail awaiting trial. He was then dismissed and allowed to come home again, where he took up his old habits, lounging in the streets and “hanging out” with the gang in its headquarters at “Fatty” Walker’s candy store.

The transient court experience leaves perhaps a deeper impression on the mother than on the boy. Many, to be sure, take it lightly enough and look upon the whole elaborate system as a sort of adjunct to their family discipline. “It was just as well,” one would say, “Oh, of course, he plays now, but he did keep off the streets there for awhile. I guess it did him some good, scared him some.” As for its effect upon herself, this type of mother is likely to show the indifference of the woman who “don’t seem to mind, she has seen so much of them courts.”

This statement does not necessarily mean that the woman has been to the court repeatedly. A single experience may go a long way toward inducing this state of mind. Mrs. Tracy’s account of Michael’s trial, for instance, shows how the cursory hearing given the case was bound to diminish her respect for the court. Michael’s actual trial, which was over in three minutes, was the anticlimax of a distressful day. It had begun with a hurried appeal to the local political boss, which had been followed by a trip to the court under the direction of one of his henchmen and by a long, anxious wait at the court from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. And then, according to Mrs. Tracy, “The judge says, ‘Officer, did you see the stone in his hand?’ ‘No,’ says he. ‘Well,’ says the judge, ‘don’t bring me any more cases like this.’ We none of us got a chance to speak, me nor Michael, nor the man who made the complaint, and who come down to court.”

But many cannot take it so philosophically, especially those who work hard and are not so much in the drift of neighborhood events and sentiments. They have not heard enough gossip to regard an arrest as a necessary episode and to discount its dangers. Instantly the great fear looms up that their boy is to be taken away. In the momentary panic, good women who have the welfare of their children most sincerely at heart will falsify to the judges without a scruple. A clergyman of the district said that more than once he had heard the same mother who had previously come to him in deep anxiety concerning her son’s misconduct give him an unblemished reputation before the judge. It rarely occurred to one of these women that any real aid was to be had from the court. To them it was simply another of the many hardships which worried and harassed their overburdened lives. Loss of time, and perhaps of money for a fine, are a very real sacrifice for the woman who works; but even these are nothing to compare with their worry and distress. “I couldn’t help crying, do you know, all the time I was there, and it made me sick for a week.”

We have then to consider the result of this whole cumbersome system of minor arrests and discharges. On the whole, we were led to the conclusion that the handling of minor cases in the manner described did hold in check the trifling delinquencies, more properly termed nuisances, especially in the better blocks. In the poorer sections it was not very successful even as a check on nuisances, as the casual passerby quickly learned; and it did not seem to have the slightest effect on serious lawlessness, where the need of restraint and discipline was greatest. The hurried hearing, the slight consideration, and the facile discharge were not only ineffective but often positively harmful. There is no getting around the fact that the court dealt with unjust severity with some boys, while with others its very leniency tended to make order and justice a mockery.

There is no simple panacea for all these troubles, but in the immediate situation and along the lines of court action some changes are worth trying out. The matter of arrests is a difficult one to control; often no valid distinction between the guilty and the innocent can be made on the spot, and even the best of police are in no way equipped to decide with certainty as to the degree of an offender’s guilt. However, it would be better to eliminate altogether a number of the most trifling arrests rather than to treat the offenders in too cursory a manner after they are brought into court.

The greater expenditure of time and money which a more thorough treatment of those arrested presupposes is an absolute necessity if we are to increase to any marked degree the success of the court in grappling with the real problem of delinquency. For this problem, as has been indicated, the best solution undoubtedly is to be found in the maintenance of an adequate and efficient probation staff, whose duty it shall be to furnish data concerning the situation back of the minor charges as well as of the more serious ones, upon which the judge may base his action.

III. PAROLED IN THE CUSTODY OF HIS PARENTS

As there was no official probation[42] in the children’s court of Manhattan, the judges had to rely on volunteer probation and what is known as “parole.”[43] Under the so-called parole system as it existed in connection with the Manhattan Court, no constructive effort was brought to bear on the boy beyond reproof and advice given in court and an attempt to impress him with a fear of the consequences to himself if these were disregarded. This method was used in cases deemed too serious for immediate discharge, yet not suitable for commitment to institutions. There are among our records 95 arrests where this solution was tried. The number of children concerned was 83; the number of families, 76.

The procedure in such cases took more time and consideration than when the child was simply discharged. Sometimes the “parole” was granted on the day of the first hearing without any previous investigation, but usually the child was sent to the detention rooms of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for two or three days to await a second hearing. During this time an officer of the society made an inquiry and brought a report to the court. If the judge then decided to “parole” the culprit, he was sent home to his parents, to whom the following card was given:

“Your child ..................., paroled in your custody until ............, on which date you will report with h... at the Children’s Court, 66 Third Avenue (Corner of Eleventh Street), at 10 a. m. for further instructions from the Court.

“The disposition of the case will depend entirely upon h... conduct while so released and your supervision over h....

“The case will be re-investigated by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Children, and a full report submitted on the date set for the return to Court.”

The date set for his next appearance was generally about a month later. Just before it arrived another inquiry was made to form the basis of a new report to the court. The officer of the society to whom the case was assigned had no responsibility for the conduct of the child during this interval. His sole task was to discover what it had been and to report it correctly. The judge glanced over the papers concerning the previous hearing, read the new report, and accordingly terminated or extended the “parole.” As a usual thing it was only two or three months before the forces of the law ceased to concern themselves with the boy, and for the time at least he passed beyond the oversight of the court. He might have to report, perhaps once, perhaps four times--very seldom more. In case of failure to do this, a bench warrant might be issued on which he would be brought in, but this happened very seldom.

A comparison of our 95 paroled cases with all the cases, 1,805 in number, under the care of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children during 1909, shows that the average period of parole was about the same for both groups. Speaking in general terms, about one-third of the children in each group were on parole a month or even less, and at the end of three months the parole was ended for all but a small proportion of the cases in both groups. The inadequacy of the one to three months’ parole is best indicated by comparing it with the usual term of commitments. The institutions have, by common consent, declared that a commitment of less than one and a half to two years is not sufficient to effect any real change in the character of the offender. There is, then, little to expect in the way of actual reformation from brief parole terms. Especially is this true so long as they are not re-enforced by any direct effort to modify the conditions of the child’s life or to influence his character and conduct.

A second defect of the parole system was the important part played in the court’s decision by the written word of the parole officer. Meager statements, even when accurate in themselves, may be as misleading as if they were false. Two reports placed in the hands of the judge may, on the face of them, be not dissimilar; but in the light of further investigation, one of the cases may prove to be far more serious than the other.

An investigation too frequently was made as follows: The parole officer secured the mother’s statement as to the boy’s conduct, hours, and associates; the testimony of the neighbors as to the character of the family; a statement from the boy’s school; and, perhaps, if he was working, a statement from his employer as to his regularity, conduct, and quality of work. The following is a typical record of such an investigation:

This record concerns Patrick Staley, a boy of twelve, living at West ---- Street, “charged with disorderly conduct in that he did climb on the rear of a truck moving through said street and take and carry away merchandise, to wit: one jar, containing a quantity of mustard.”

The report of the investigation reads: “Defendant lives at the above address with his widowed mother, in a very poorly furnished home of three rooms, where they have resided the past two years. Mother of the defendant is employed as a cleaner in Public School 51 where she earns $6.00 a week. This is the only income of the family. Mrs. Staley was seen and states that her son Patrick has been very well behaved since arrested and paroled. Further states that he attends school every day at Public School 51 and that he has no bad associates that she knows of. Further states that he is never on the street at night and is well behaved in and about the house. Neighbors, all of the poorest class, state that the boy Patrick is a good boy. No school record was obtained as there is no school this week.”

With every rehearing the same ground was covered in the reinvestigation--a second interview with the mother, the neighbors, the school, and possibly the employer. In addition to the parole officer’s report, the boy was supposed to present a card signed daily by his teacher and parent. Of the full family make-up, its history, the attitude of the parents, the temper of the home, the character of the neighborhood, the boy’s individuality and interest,--in a word, of the whole vital human situation represented, nothing is to be gleaned from the curt and general phrases of hastily gathered reports. The importance, therefore, of insuring complete and thorough investigation through the employment of a trained staff of workers cannot be over-emphasized.[44]

The following record, as brief as the one quoted above, was based on a very thorough investigation by a trained worker.

This report concerns James Riley, a boy of fourteen, living in West 53rd Street, charged with creating a disturbance by “throwing missiles and knocking off a man’s hat.”

The report of the investigation reads: “Defendant resides at the above address with his parents in a fairly clean and comfortable home of four rooms. Mrs. Riley was seen and she states that her son has been very well behaved since on parole. That he has been attending school regularly and has no bad associates to her knowledge. Further states that he is never out of the house evenings. Further states that her daughter Mary practically takes care of the home and that she herself is employed in Bellevue Hospital and her husband is a longshoreman. Neighbors and janitress all speak favorably of the Riley family and state that the boy James since on parole is very well behaved in and about the premises and seems to attend school more regularly. At Public School 82 the following report was obtained: “Attendance satisfactory, conduct excellent, work fair to good.”

The two boys, the two homes, the two situations were radically different. Yet, although there may be no misstatement, the cases of the boy James and the boy Patrick appear, on the face of the reports, to be quite similar.

It does not follow from the brevity with which facts may be presented that they are the sifted truth from which the chaff of falsehood has been blown away. And yet in gathering this kind of evidence, judicious sifting is absolutely necessary. The word of the parents must be considered and is of great importance, but it cannot be taken on its face value. In a district such as ours, with its marked hostility toward the forces of the law, it would indeed be strange if a parent on the defensive would choose to give reliable evidence rather than evasive and misleading statements. And the more serious the charge, the less reliable, naturally, is the parent’s word. At best it is merely indicative of the father’s or mother’s judgment, which is often too feeble a staff to be depended upon.

For similar reasons, the testimony of neighbors is open to question. The Bransfields, who had a reputation from one end of the block to the other as being the “toughest of the tough” were nevertheless, according to court records, “favorably spoken of in the house.” Thus, also, the parents of James Burckel were set down as “to all appearances respectable. They are favorably spoken of in the house. They have lived there for the past four years.” Yet the father of James Burckel had served three terms in prison. On the other hand, really respectable parents deeply resent the stigma of having the news spread through the house that a probation officer has been inquiring about them. Evidence of this sort, unreliable as it is likely to be for the court on the one hand and mortifying to the parents on the other, should be gathered only with the greatest care and discrimination.

The school has been in the past, and must continue to be in the future, one of the most important contributors to the information of the court. Here is to be found a group of people--principal, teachers, and possibly truant officer--who are free from the personal bias of the family and who have been in daily contact with the child arraigned. This joining of forces with the school was one of the great advances made by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in its development of the parole system. A good school record was a concrete argument in favor of the boy, while truancy and loafing were nearly certain to go hand in hand with any very serious misconduct. But in order to be useful such records need to be as full as possible. School attendance, for instance, is best reported by giving the exact number of days absent and present. Similarly, inquiry concerning his employment should include the statement of his hours of work and the exact periods of unemployment as far as this is possible.

The work record of the wage-earner corresponds in importance to the school records of the younger boy. This inquiry must be handled very carefully. The fact of a boy’s delinquency, if brought directly to his employer’s attention, may bear disproportionately hard upon him. But often the mere recital of his work history by his parents or by himself would reveal the essential facts, such as the number of shifts in employment, the speedy “throwing up” of his job, and the long waits between work.

Parents, neighbors, school, and place of work--this completes the list of sources from which, at the time of our investigation, the court drew its information. The start made with the schools had not been extended to the social and charitable agencies of the neighborhood. Yet the records of the relief societies often contained in compact form, ready to hand, facts which were vital to a full understanding of the case. In 41 of the 95 parole cases which came under our observation, the families had records in the offices of relief societies. Some of the family histories extended back fifteen or twenty years, but in none of these cases had the records been consulted by the court.

The agencies which keep less systematic records and yet come in close personal touch with handicapped families--settlements and churches--are no less valuable as sources of information. In one of the parole cases, involving a rather serious charge of burglary, the insufficient account of the home surroundings was supplemented by the apology, “As the house in which the family lived is tenanted entirely by Italians, very little information could be obtained for or against the boy.” Yet across the street was a settlement in which the boy’s history was well known and which was well qualified to sponsor plans for his improvement. No opportunity was given it to advise commitment for this lad in preference to the parole and suspension of sentence which sent him back to the streets absolutely without supervision. Thus the social worker who may have been watching a hopeless situation drag on for years without power to intervene may lose the chance to carry out a plan for the child’s welfare, and the court may fall back upon a hasty judgment in place of the social worker’s well matured program. The decision which may hang upon a slender thread of scanty information is one of no slight importance. It determines the environment of the child for several years during one of the most plastic periods of his life. The verdict of the judge will determine whether these will be spent either in his own home or in an institution.

The main test of any system which either assumes the name or takes the place of probation is its effect on the individual child. What is the consequence for the boy? Does it improve or encourage him so that he makes any effort in a new direction? This is a difficult task to accomplish, and to measure results is perhaps still more difficult. Yet a priori it is evident that with a system of parole carried on as here described permanent benefit for the individual will not result. In studying the entire history of any boy, the few months of parole seem such a minor influence in comparison with the other forces constantly working upon him, that it is impossible to assign any large share in the final outcome to the effect of such casual oversight as the court has given. Nor was insufficient supervision from this source compensated for by the volunteer probation. As far as we could discover, only 36 per cent of the paroled children on our records had been visited by volunteers. Yet this percentage was undoubtedly higher than the percentage for all cases brought into court, because we deliberately selected more than a due proportion of our cases from among those under volunteer probation.

We have traced as accurately as possible the outcome of parole in our 95 cases.[45] In 78 cases the boy was discharged or sentence was suspended when the parole period ended; in 14 cases the boy was committed to an institution during parole. There were other cases in which the boy was either rearrested and committed or rearrested and discharged after parole. In fact, our records show that this was true of about one-half of the boys. A considerable group, however, did not return to court at all before the age of sixteen. The fact that the boys of this latter group escaped being arrested again does not justify us in concluding that they were “reformed.” We therefore studied the later histories of the 83 boys concerned in the 95 cases of arrest and parole, to ascertain, as far as possible, whether the outcome was poor or satisfactory. This inquiry was conducted, and the results were considered, on the basis of boys rather than of cases. Our judgment was determined by each boy’s regularity at school or work subsequent to his parole, by the accounts of his parents as to whether he was “out from under them” or doing well, and especially as to whether he had committed any offense more serious than the mere prank, which in most of the cases had led to the original arrest. It appeared that of the boys rearrested almost all had conduct records that amply justified their being again brought into court. In less than one-third of the histories studied was the recent record so satisfactory, or the cause for complaint so slight, that reformation may be said to have taken place. That the system had a deterrent effect on some of the boys is undoubtedly true, but that it accounted for any real reformation is not very probable.

IV. THE BOY THAT GETS “SENT UP”

The theory of commitment is in itself a matter for serious consideration. It involves an attempt by the state to undo in a new environment the evil results of old environmental and home influences. In other words, the law decides that the family life has broken down for the time being and that others shall undertake to do what the parents have failed to accomplish. This is a grave step, presupposing a crisis and justifying itself only through absolute necessity and the actual achievement of its purpose.

The first question to be asked concerning any sentence of commitment is, was no better alternative possible? The preceding discussion has shown that the judge has been seriously hampered through lack of provision for more adequate methods of treatment. He could not obtain for the boy, who needed also guidance and incentive as well as discipline, the careful oversight which a well organized probation system would have afforded.

The second question concerns the effectiveness of the sentence. Has the boy himself been helped in the direction of discipline and an ordered life, and has the neighborhood been benefited by the removal of a lawless spirit? These are the questions which we shall try to answer concerning some of the boys “sent up.”

The emphasis put upon the neighborhood point of view has excluded any critical examination of the institutions to which the boys were committed or any statistical inquiry into their results. As in the previous chapters, the angle of vision was exclusively that of the district. A certain group of the neighborhood boys had been committed, and we tried to find out how the neighborhood appraised this action and what its results had been for the neighborhood and the boys concerned. The methods of different institutions, whether sound or otherwise, their successes and failures, did not concern us in themselves, but only as they had influenced the lives of our children and were reflected in the attitude of our people.

The conclusions of this section are based on a study of 99 commitments, meted out to 75 children, in 67 families. In this group were the boys who had the longest and most serious delinquency histories, and it was important that the account should be made as complete as possible. Five different sources were consulted--the court record of the trial, the report of the investigating agent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the school records, the relief society records, and statements from the family and neighbors. None of these sources was complete in itself. However, the outline of the boy’s delinquency history, including trivial arrests and more serious escapades for which no arrest had been made, was pieced together as fully as possible. There is surely much more, at least in the way of illuminating detail, that cannot be known because it had been left unrecorded. The meagerness of the information is a serious handicap to the agencies which seek to reform the boy, and to the judge who must pronounce sentence upon him.

There are several different institutions to which the boys of this group had been committed from the children’s court. The division of these cases falls largely along religious lines. The Catholic Protectory receives all the children of Catholic parents, excepting the extreme cases of delinquent girls, who are sent to the House of the Good Shepherd. The children of Protestant parents are sent, if they are truants merely, to the New York and Brooklyn truant schools. In the more serious cases of delinquency, the boys are sent to the Juvenile Asylum and the girls to the House of Mercy. There is one city institution, the House of Refuge, which is nonsectarian and usually takes charge of the most seriously delinquent boys.

In committing a boy to an institution, the judge was obliged to be guided mainly by the culprit’s court record. The number of the boy’s arrests had perhaps mounted past all ignoring and he was “put away.” On the other hand, he may have been caught in some particularly striking offense, or his gang may have been in need of a subduing example. In some of these cases the judge meted out the drastic punishment even where there had been only a single previous arrest. He had, as we have seen, no facilities at hand for having a thorough investigation made of the situation.

The absence of investigation was definitely traceable in our group of committed cases. The records of 53 arrests were studied to discover whether the cases had been remanded for investigation or not. Eleven, or about one-fifth, of the 53 cases had been so remanded; 42, or four-fifths, had not been remanded. The significance of the 42 cases lies in the fact that the decision was given on the day of the first hearing. Therefore it is certain that no new investigation was made, and that the boys were removed from their homes at a time when it was impossible for the court to have known what these homes were like.[46] In these cases, it was the home and the family rather than the boy which were tried and judged without investigation. Moral bankruptcy was declared without the necessary evidence in hand. We may well doubt whether in the cases of some of these boys there was not a better alternative to the institution sentence.

Even when from the point of view of the court the crisis has been reached, a thorough investigation will often make the sentence more intelligent, and occasionally reverse the decision for a commitment. Certain cases that seem desperate at the hearing do not prove hopeless when conditions are thoroughly understood, and are sometimes capable of disentanglement at home. Certainly every intelligent effort should be made by the court before allowing the odium of commitment to rest upon one of its charges.

There were three boys in the group of 53 in whose cases commitment had been a serious error. The first was a Jewish boy who had been caught pilfering with a gang of thieves. At his school, where he was rated as a well behaved and promising pupil, the teachers declared that the act was foreign to his character. In fact, the school refused to believe that the charge was true. The boy was overwhelmed by his sentence. He refused to return to his class, gave up his previous plans of going to the high school, and settled down as an assistant in a trade for which he had no aptitude. A thorough knowledge of his home and school relations would have shown the court the sufficiency of a lighter sentence and would have left the boy his elasticity and ambition. A second lad, who came from a family of very high morals, was arrested during the slack season of his trade. His entire previous history from all sources showed that the sentence was unnecessarily severe. The third case was that of a boy who was in the care of a Big Brother. During the temporary absence of the latter from the city, the boy got into trouble and was immediately “sent up” without waiting until the Big Brother could be consulted. The boy had had a brutalized childhood, but was being slowly won back to confidence in his fellows, and the temporary lapse should have been condoned. Commitment took away practically all his chances, and all the work of his Big Brother friend had gone for nothing.

But let us consider the boy whose case really cried out for extreme discipline, and who was accordingly “put away.” This drastic step ought to have formed the climax of his delinquency history. The test of commitment is whether it really pulls the boy up short in his delinquency career. As a matter of fact we find that it frequently did not. The boy who had several arrests on his record tended to add another commitment to his first.

The final criticism of the system lies in the fact that the commitment was often only the beginning of further trouble. This is illustrated by the history of two brothers, John and Michael Moran. The Morans were respectable Irish people who had lived in the district for years. The careers of the two boys given below were by no means in line with family precedents. The mother was a decent, hardworking woman who had been a widow for many years. The boys, as she said apathetically, had “got out from under her” and conditions had been too much for them. More terrible pictures of childhood than those given in these records would be hard to find.

John’s court career was begun before he was ten years old. A year later he was brought into court a second time on a charge of theft. A few months afterward a third arrest sent him to the Catholic Protectory. The commitment was a short-term one--thirty days--and obviously had little effect. Six months later he was brought into court a fourth time and in this case he was paroled. One month later there was a fifth arrest, and although his parole had not yet expired, his case was neither investigated nor his parole revoked, but he was simply discharged. Three months afterward a sixth arrest sent him to the Protectory for a second term.

Michael, his brother, had had three different sentences to the same institution, where he had in fact spent a great part of his short life. His first arrest was for the theft of a pair of shoes. He was committed to the Protectory for ten months. Three months after he had been set at liberty he was recommitted for over a year, this time for stone throwing. A year and a half intervened,--only one arrest during that time, though that was on the serious charge of burglary--and then he was once more sentenced to the Catholic Protectory for a year and a half. The charge was truancy. Four months after his discharge he was arrested again, and a year after he had been discharged from his third term he was back in an institution. In this last arrest his mother testified “that he wouldn’t work at all, and might just as well be put away.” There was a touch of humor in the fact that he expressed a preference for some other institution, because “he had been in the College three times already.” He was sent to the truant school.

The following outlines give in graphic form the delinquency records of these two brothers:

JOHN MORAN’S DELINQUENCY RECORD

May 7, 1907 Arrested in company with other boys. Remanded until the 8th. Pleaded guilty. Sentence suspended. June 9, 1908 Arrested for theft with another boy. No complaint. Discharged. October 22, 1908 Arrested for selling newspapers at midnight. (No record of this at S. P. C. C.) Committed to the Catholic Protectory. Discharged November 20, 1908. June 10, 1909 Arrested on a charge of improper guardianship; found asleep in a hallway at 2:30 a. m. Adjourned until June 14, then paroled until August 14. July 24, 1909 Arrested for begging and selling newspapers at night. Discharged. (No parole investigation.) October 7, 1909 Arrested at 11 p. m. in a disturbance in the street. Recommitted to the Catholic Protectory.

MICHAEL MORAN’S DELINQUENCY RECORD

November 9, 1905 Arrested for theft of shoes and committed to the Catholic Protectory. Released September, 1906. December 12, 1906 Arrested for stone throwing and committed to the Catholic Protectory. Released January, 1908. May 1, 1908 Arrested for burglary--stole iron fixtures from a vacant house. Paroled. June 23, 1908 Charged with truancy. Committed to the Catholic Protectory. Released December 14, 1909. April 23, 1910 Arrested. Hearing 25th. Fined $1.00. January, 1911 Arrested for stone-throwing. Sent to the truant school.

One of the most important elements in the problem is the attitude of parents toward the commitment of a child. Perhaps most of them resent it and look upon it as a misfortune and a disgrace. The very fact of commitment is denied if possible; the boy is “in the country,” or he is “visiting relatives.” The parents are anxious to have him home again as soon as the term is up or an application will be accepted.

Another group of families take a commitment with the same indifference with which they accept all the other unavoidable facts of life. If babies die, or the husband is out of work, or the children are sent away for a couple of years, it is all a part and parcel of the inevitable, all equally removed from choice and regret. Often the parents are so busy earning a meager living that they hardly know where the children are passing their time, and so the boys develop into rowdies who spend their nights on roofs or stairs and their days in loafing. Victims of drunkenness, need, and sickness, they do not know the meaning of discipline, and it rarely occurs to their families that they can do anything in the matter, much less that they ought to.

More rarely the judge has to deal with a parent who sees in the court the child’s best chance of improvement. This happens chiefly in cases where the father or mother is at work away from home, and cannot be personally responsible for the children’s attendance at school. The father of one of our boys, for instance, was a skilled English waiter, whose wife had died some years before. His oldest daughter kept house, but the two younger boys were beyond her control. The father recognized the danger of their becoming increasingly delinquent through his absence and the influence of the neighborhood, and therefore allowed them to be placed in the truant school as a safeguard.

Indeed, a large part of the trouble with the children comes from the impossibility of proper supervision by the parents. The absence of the father or mother is a prolific cause of delinquency. The women say, “He was all right until his father died”; or, “I can’t do nothin’ with him since my man’s sick”; or, “Since my husband went to all-night work in the slaughter house, Jimmy and Tommy are always out late”; or, “I go out to scrubbin’ at five o’clock in the mornin’ and there’s nobody to give the children breakfast and chase them to school.” In other instances, the prospect of the long summer’s vacation spent idling on the streets makes the mother uneasy, and she asks the judge to “put him away until school begins to keep him off the streets.” At other times the parents grow discouraged at the strain of gang influence as against family discipline and tell the judge to send the boy up “as his last chance to be decent.” They occasionally have masses said for the improvement of the child under commitment and hope great things from his return home, sobered down by a year or two of routine life. In these cases, the parents have given the problem the most intelligent thought of which they are capable and have concluded that the institution is a preferable alternative to the home and the streets.

Again, there is a group of families who use commitment for their own purposes. They are usually very poor and seek by this means to make provision for children whom they are unable to support. In some of these instances, the parents had made an effort to have the boy committed as a dependent. Failing in this, they had then brought him into court on the charge that he was “ungovernable” and was “in danger of becoming morally depraved.” In other cases, the mother of a child who will not stir himself to find a job, or will not hand over his pay envelope at the end of the week, tells the judge to send him up, as she “has only bad of him.” In all these cases, the children have somehow or other proved a burden, and the parents utilize the court to relieve themselves of a responsibility which, for a time, they are unable to meet. When these children come of age, or are sufficiently disciplined to go to work, there is generally an application for their release. The connection between the lack of earning power and the commitment is an obvious one.

But whatever attitude the different families took toward the juvenile court, whether they were resentful, or apathetic, or whether they co-operated with the court or used it for their own purposes, it was certainly true that the more intelligent and disinterested element in the district was strongly against commitment. Temporary improvement there may have been, but little if any permanent help resulted.

Wherein, then, lay the weakness of the method of commitment employed? First, let us examine the histories of boys whose lives showed notable improvement after the sentence. There were two such boys, in particular, who had been distinctly “bad” boys before their sojourn in the institution.

Martin Donnelly was one of the “successful” institution cases. His mother “lived out” as a cook, and he stayed with an aunt and uncle who had no children of their own. His aunt said he was “a merry little grig” until about his eleventh year, when “he began to know too much.” He began to smoke, play truant, fib, and avoid his home. Entreaties or punishment merely made matters worse, and the notices from school and officers became numerous. Martin set his whole gang as spies upon his aunt, stole out of the back door when she had followed him to school, and generally so upset the family that it was an actual relief to them when his petty thieving finally landed him in the Protectory. He stayed away for months, and returned much sobered down. His aunt said that he hardly spoke aloud when he first returned, and that he “went about so quiet” whereas he used to “racket down the stairs as if the house was afire.” Soon after his return events proved his friend, for his mother remarried and settled in the country. He was taken into a new environment and given a steady job. Ten months later he was still faithfully at work and proud of his weekly six-dollar pay envelope. Further report said there was not a gang of boys within a mile of him, and that he was safely out of trouble. In this instance the commitment made a break in the life with the gang, but it was left to mere chance events to complete the break.

A still more exceptional case was that of Stephen Waters. He had been involved in all kinds of trouble and had a court record. At the age of thirteen he had been arrested for burglary but had been allowed to go free. A half year later he had quit school entirely and had spent all his time on the streets. Arrested for theft and committed to the Catholic Protectory, he had escaped after three days and it was almost a year before he returned to finish his sentence. In spite of all this, Stephen was not really a vicious boy. He was merely weak and feared a beating if he did not follow the gang. Upon his discharge from the Protectory he decided to change his life. He left his family, took a room on the East Side, and obtained a regular job driving an express wagon. At the time of our inquiry he had been steadily at work for a year.

These two boys, then, were exceptional cases in which commitment, combined with other circumstances, had actually and radically accomplished its purpose. The discipline of institutional life had been followed by a total separation from old comrades and by steady work. In both cases, fortunate circumstances combined with the effects of commitment produced happy results.

On the other hand, the boys who return to the old streets and the old gangs have not much chance for progressive improvement. In the Doyle gang, for instance, we had eleven boys who had all been serious delinquents and who had been committed to institutions, some of them many times over. It is true that several of these terms had been short, determinate ones, but every one of these boys had had a longer commitment also. The leader of the Doyle gang came from an entirely respectable family. The father, a steady and reliable man, had set a very fair example of conduct to the boys. But Mrs. Doyle was a “slack” mother at home and shielded her boys continually from any discipline from outside, including the school. Proceeding on the principle that “there has to be a black sheep in every family,” she had achieved the distinction of being the mother of five of the “wildest” boys in the neighborhood. All five of the Doyle boys were enrolled in “tough” gangs, and even the two youngest were bad influences in the neighborhood. Even six-year-old Dennis one day opened the school door, and, with all his childish strength, hurled a stone into the hall full of children. All of these boys had a sophisticated air and a certain hard look of withdrawal when in the presence of teachers or strangers, or, indeed, of anybody outside the gang.

Raymond Doyle, the oldest of the brothers, was sixteen. He was described by the principal of the school as “having energy enough to supply ten boys.” He made cat’s-paws of those that were weaker than he, and domineered over even the stronger spirits of his gang. In fact, he had been one of the very worst influences, and responsible for a great many lawless happenings in the street.

In May, 1906, he was arrested for robbing a grocery store, but there was no complaint and he was discharged. Later on in the same year he was arrested on some unknown charge, and fined $5.00. At this time his continual truancy became too serious to be ignored and he was committed to the New York Truant School. Mrs. Doyle resented this action and immediately transferred the other children from the public school to the parochial school.

Raymond was released from the truant school in 1907, but was not long out of trouble. He was in company with John Larrabie and the two Rafferty boys when Larrabie threw a brick and killed an organ grinder. He escaped arrest for his complicity in this affair, but six months later he was again in court, this time on a charge of burglary. Together with two other boys, he had broken a pane of glass in a stationery store and had run away with some fishing tackle and two baseballs. The boys were put on parole and later the sentence was suspended for all three.

In the fall of the same year, Raymond conceived a bold plan for outwitting the truant officer. He persuaded George Riley to join him, and together they arranged a home on one of the tenement roofs. Here they lived for three months, stealing enough food for their needs or money to buy it and going down to the streets only when necessary. One day in January, when life must have been growing chilly out of doors, George Riley was caught stealing a dozen eggs. He was taken down to court, and sent to the Protectory on his former record. Raymond was clever enough to escape without even an arrest. A year and a half after this episode, in August, 1909, Raymond was again in court, this time on a charge of petty larceny. He was discharged. Four months later he was involved with his brother Patrick and another boy in a very serious burglary and re-committed to an institution.

Patrick Doyle, his brother, had also had a grave delinquency history. It is true that Patrick was not considered an instinctively wayward child and might have been influenced for better at the proper time and by the use of wise methods. But under his brother’s unchecked leadership his mischievous tendencies had led him into lawless ways, and the court’s way of dealing with him did not prove reformative. At the age of nine he was brought into the public school by the truant officer, but the next day he ran out during the session and did not return. Toward the end of that year, 1908, he was arrested for stealing bread from a wagon. Three months later he was caught with Matthew Rooney in the burglary of a grocery store, and paroled for two months. After one month of this parole had expired he was caught again in another burglary and committed to the Catholic Protectory for three months on account of having violated his parole. Six months after he had been discharged from this commitment he and his brother Raymond, and a third member of their gang were caught stealing in an apartment--the serious case mentioned above--and all three were sent away for long terms.

The circumstances of this burglary were secured from various sources--the court records, the newspapers, the school, and neighborhood gossip--all of the accounts tallying in an unusually neat and accurate way. Raymond and Patrick Doyle took Charlie Muller in tow and broke into a neighbor’s apartment in search of anything that could be readily converted into money. They found a trunk standing in a corner and turned the contents upside down upon the floor. From the pile they selected a few articles of underwear and a watch. They took a gun that was lying on a chair and snatched up a canary bird in its cage. As they turned to go, they were confronted by the older son of the family, who had returned from work and was standing in the doorway. One of the boys, this young man declared, “pulled a knife for him,” so that he “ran for his life.” On the corner of the street he found a policeman, who took his address and promised to send a detective. Meanwhile the boys came out of his house and went to a restaurant, where they were subsequently taken in charge by the detective. The judge sentenced two of the boys to the House of Refuge and one to the Protectory, each for fifteen months. Raymond, after his discharge, refused to work and spent his time loafing at his usual “hang-outs.”

The attitude of the neighbor whose apartment had been entered was significant. The older son, Samuel, who had arrived at the climax and intercepted the gang, was very vindictive. He appeared in the children’s court as complainant and did all in his power to secure the three convictions. On the other hand, Samuel’s brother and sister wished to hush the matter up or, at least, to keep it out of court. “All boys will be wild and these are little things and mean nothing. They just wanted nickels for moving pictures.” Reasoning in this way, according to the easy-going standards of the neighborhood, they tried to dissuade Samuel from going to court and appearing against the boys.

Charles Muller, who was sent to the House of Refuge with Patrick Doyle, came from a respectable home. His father had been dead for many years and the family income consisted of the wages of his mother and older sisters. Before the girls had become old enough to earn the family had passed through a period of the direst poverty. Charlie was not an ungovernable lad. On the contrary, he had a weak and sullen disposition and was often used as a tool by his comrades. His first arrest was for playing craps in the street, and he was put on what his mother called “patrole.” A son-in-law went down to court and “paid $5.00 to a red-headed lawyer fellow who said he could get him off, and did so.” Some time later he stayed away from school for seven weeks without his family’s knowledge, always coming in regularly at lunch time and pretending to go back to classes. At this time his mother had a stroke of paralysis, and he took advantage of her lameness to disregard the previous rules about bedtime, meals, and so on. He was arrested again, and this time it was the daughter who paid the lawyer $5.00. In the last arrest, for the apartment burglary, the family refused to re-engage this man, and, according to Mrs. Muller’s vehement declaration, “every boy in court that day was sent away for fifteen months, Charles among the rest.”

Joseph McGratty was another of the Doyle gang who was first arrested at the age of nine. The McGratty family was supported by the father, who was a street-cleaner, and by an older son who was a jockey. Joseph’s irregularities began with truancy and his first arrest was for petty larceny. On this occasion he was discharged. Shortly afterward he applied for a transfer from his school on the ground that his family were moving to a certain address in West Twenty-sixth Street. The story of the moving was entirely untrue, and Joseph never presented his transfer at any other school. The school has since learned that the McGrattys were still living at their old address, but it has never been able to lay hands upon Joseph by any means in its power and force him to attend. He has been arrested for stone throwing, for theft, for larceny of an automatic clock in company with the notorious Rafferty boys, and twice for burglary, the first time in company with the brother of the gang leader. His last arrest sent him to the Catholic Protectory.

John Larrabie, who killed an organ grinder, was no worse than several of his gang. His family was degraded and desperately poor. The father drank and the mother was given to loud-voiced harangues and to calling maledictions down upon neighbors who displeased her. John came to school ugly-tempered and resentful. At a rebuke from his teacher he attempted to jump out of the window. One day as he stood on a roof with Raymond Doyle and the two Rafferty boys, the quartette spied in the street below a couple of Italian organ grinders with whom they were carrying on a feud. Loose bricks were at hand for missiles and in an instant John Larrabie had thrown one at the “ginnies.” The boys saw one of the men drop in the street--the victim died, in fact, only a few minutes later--and two of them escaped across the roofs. The other two, Larrabie and Joe Rafferty, were caught and taken to court on a charge of felonious assault. They were remanded for four days and then discharged to the coroner. The court records show that John Larrabie was rearrested at the coroner’s for manslaughter, that his guilt was patent, but that no complaint was taken. Four months later he was committed to the Catholic Protectory, at his father’s instance, as an ungovernable child, his father being ordered to pay $2.00 a week toward his support in the institution.

The brothers Riemer, Henry and Alexander, were two of the “wildest” boys of this gang. Both were incorrigible truants. They were arrested in November, 1906, for stealing coal from a neighbor’s cellar and were paroled. In February, 1907, Alexander was sent to the Protectory for three months for stealing a chicken from the Washington Market. Four months after his discharge he was re-committed for nearly a year’s term. Shortly after this, in April, 1909, he was arrested for stone throwing, fined $1.00, and imprisoned one day. In November he was arrested for assaulting another boy. As he had been away from home four days, and from school a week, and had been involved in the theft of a pair of gloves, and also because his mother recommended commitment, he was sent to the Protectory for a third term. He was not discharged until of working age, when the family secured him a job directly under his father’s supervision. Henry Riemer was arrested several times with his brother, and also twice for theft, once for striking a boy over the head with a pistol, and once for injuring property. He saved himself from a commitment in one affair, a glove robbery, by informing on Harry Rafferty and sending the latter to the Protectory on his evidence. He himself had had two terms there, and was still under commitment up to date.

The report of this extraordinary gang can fitly be ended by a description of two of its most conspicuous members, Joe and Harry Rafferty. Their home was the scene of continuous brawling. The floors were littered with broken crockery, with ham bones, and glass--with anything that could be used as missiles. The father and mother were drunkards, although both had taken the pledge at times to obtain charitable relief. After the father’s death from typhoid the conditions grew still more serious. Joe “beat up” his mother cruelly whenever there had been beer in the house, and Mrs. Rafferty at last deserted her family for several months in order to go and live on a sympathetic neighbor, leaving the small children to shift for themselves. When she returned home it was to bring back a “boarder” with whom she lived in immoral relations.

The records of the Rafferty boys were, of course, very bad. Joe was taken to the court with John Larrabie at the time of the killing of the Italian organ grinder. The neighborhood reported that Joe, who was over sixteen, “saved his own skin by turning state’s evidence.” The fact that there was no record of Joe Rafferty in the court history of the case does not necessarily contradict this statement. Certain it is that he was credited with having “snitched” by the neighborhood and also by the rest of his gang. The boy fully believed that the latter intended to “do him up” and that his only chance for safety was to leave the city.

Harry Rafferty’s teacher described him as “a little dock rat who is usually dressed in rags and with the skin of his face half torn off because of his many fights.” He had always been a bad truant. In 1908 he was arrested twice, once for stealing boards from a wagon, and once for stealing two loaves of bread. In April, 1909, he and Matthew Rooney, mentioned above as an associate of Patrick Doyle in thieving, ran off with a clock stolen out of a waiting automobile. Harry was committed to the Catholic Protectory for three months. In July he was discharged, and in November he was recommitted for stealing a pair of gloves with Henry and Alexander Riemer. This second commitment was also for a short term, and soon after his release he was once more in court on a minor charge. In October he was sent to the Protectory for his third term.

In the face of these facts it was astonishing to find that these boys were not completely ruined; that, indeed, there was something distinctly worth while in both Joe and Harry. Of course, their records were very bad, and both were growing less sensitive to moral control with the years. But Joe had an instinct of family loyalty and had struggled hard to keep his brothers and sisters together. He had visited and written them when they were sent away to institutions, and had turned up promptly to take charge of them on the day of their release. This affection and protective instinct had been his only anchor, and the necessary breaking up of the family, consequent on the mother’s immorality, had promised to deprive him of his last motive to reform.

The Rafferty family was one in which vice, drunkenness, and squalor had combined to misshape the lives of the children. The law should have proved the salvation of the good qualities that in some miraculous way still existed in that atmosphere. It is obvious, however, that the law’s method in such extreme cases--the frequent commitment--had failed to change the conduct of these boys and to accomplish any reformation in their lives.

* * * * *

Commitment ought to induce a radical alteration of life. But in many of our cases the commitments merely proved interludes in wrongdoing. Even a temporary improvement after discharge was not met with; the dates of the subsequent offenses followed closely upon liberation. In the face of such records a comparatively short commitment, followed by the return of the boy to the same neighborhood without any official supervision and guidance, seems futile indeed. The histories recorded here indicate clearly that with few exceptions neither boy nor family nor community had been benefited by the action of the court.

It must be conceded that this district is exceptionally lawless and gang-ridden and that the gang which we have described was one of the worst in the whole neighborhood. But what is here presented is not a study of average results of commitments in average cases. Such a study would have necessitated establishing close co-operation with the institutions, in order to follow up those children who had not returned to their old environment at all after commitment, but had been placed out in employment, or adopted into new homes. It is from among these children that the institutions claim the greatest number of their successes, and it would have been necessary to include them if a presentation of the whole problem had been attempted.

On the other hand, since commitment is conceded to be an extreme method of dealing with extreme situations, our examination and our conclusions seem all the more pertinent. To examine the results in the most extreme cases seems to be a perfectly fair way of testing the working of the system. If a method particularly planned for helping the worst cases of delinquency does not help them, we must question the use of the method in these cases, at least, and ask what we should substitute for it.

V. SUMMARY

Reviewing our study of the three groups of boys described in the preceding sections--the boy who is let go, the boy who is paroled in the custody of his parents, and the boy that gets sent up--we find that the impression made by the court was rarely a permanent one. One after the other we have seen how the typical boy of each group passes through the hands of the court and returns to his West Side environment scarcely changed by his experience. For the boy who is let go, it means but a ripple in his life. The court again goes further and “paroles” him. At the end, he is still the same boy. The most drastic treatment of all, commitment to an institution for a definite short term usually fails to remake the character of a boy who has been subjected both before and after his sojourn in the institution to the full force of the neighborhood influences. When a boy is so difficult to manage that commitment becomes the only adequate remedy, the term should be indefinite so that release may depend on education, behavior and development of character. And release should be followed by supervision by a representative of the court or of the institution until the boy shows that he can stand morally without such assistance.

A well organized official probation staff without doubt furnishes the most effective method for dealing with most of these cases. This applies to all three classes described in the preceding sections--the boy who is let go, the boy who is paroled in the custody of his parents, and the boy that gets sent up. The use of official probation does not necessarily exclude volunteer probation, but it should make possible careful supervision and co-ordination of volunteer work under the court.

Our study points out the necessity of recognizing both the family unit and the neighborhood unit in handling cases. In order to do efficient probation work, the investigator must be familiar with local conditions. He needs to know, on the one hand, all the influences which have helped to make the boy what he is, and, on the other hand, the neighborhood agencies which are familiar with his individual and family history, and may be enlisted in reforming him.

A thorough physical and mental examination is necessary in many cases before the court can proceed intelligently in its treatment.[47] A fundamental need also in the treatment of juvenile delinquency is the conferring of equity powers on the court, in order to avoid the hindrances of purely criminal trials and to reach the child and his family more directly.

Finally, we must not forget, in considering the darker aspects of the extreme cases presented in the section on commitments, that all delinquent boys are not of that type. As a rule, the boy delinquent stands out among the ranks of mishandled West Side youngsters only as one of them who has had the misfortune to be apprehended where others equally guilty have escaped; in most cases he does not differ in any great degree from his mates. Viewed from the standpoint of the district and in the light of what we know of its manner of life, juvenile delinquency is seen to be largely the product of conditions dangerous to youth in the homes and on the streets. To deal with the boy only after he has committed a crime is to deal with the product and not at all with the source of his offending; to allow him to return to his old surroundings without official supervision and control is, except in rare instances, a futile expedient.