The Delinquent Child and the Home
Introduction
Julia C. Lathrop
Table of Contents | Next | Previous
THIS study of juvenile delinquency in Cook County, Illinois, should perhaps be prefaced by a brief statement of the conditions which led to the establishment of the juvenile court of Cook County. These conditions are of importance since they were in general such as survived in other parts of the world at the time of the enactment of the Illinois law in 1899. They must also be taken into consideration in weighing the unquestionable imperfections which still exist in the organization of the Illinois juvenile courts and in their resources.
Until the opening of the juvenile court of Cook County, July 1, 1899, the offenses of Chicago children were dealt with under the same laws and in the same courts as were the offenses of adults. The police courts, 11 in number, scattered over the 190 square miles of the city, had jurisdiction over most of the offenses for which children were held. Children who were arrested and were unable to furnish bail, were placed in the cells of the police station, tried by the police justice, and if punished, were fined and imprisoned in the Bridewell, the city prison. The child "laid out" his fine unless his parents were willing and able to pay it. If the fine was paid, the resources of the family were reduced by just so much, with an effect upon the family comfort which can be judged better after reading the chapter entitled The Poor Child.
As to the effect of imprisonment, we have no way of measuring the intrinsic demoralization of a child from a prison term, however great the effort to minimize its evils by such methods as the helpful instruction given by the John Worthy Manual Training School, maintained by the Chicago Board of
(2) Education at the city prison, and by the Pontiac Reformatory, maintained by the state of Illinois.
From the first of January, 1899, when the legislature met which enacted the measure popularly known as the juvenile Court Law, until the first of July, 1899, when that law went into effect, 332 boys between the ages of nine and sixteen years were sent to the city prison. Three hundred and twenty of them were sent up on the blanket charge of disorderly conduct, which covered offenses from burglary and assault with a deadly weapon to picking up coal on the railway tracks, building bonfires, playing ball in the street, or "flipping trains," that is, jumping on and off moving cars. The fines imposed, as the following table shows, varied from less than $5.00 to $500 and were "laid out" at the uniform rate of 50 cents a day.
| Amount of Fine | Number of Boys |
|---|---|
| No fine | 3 |
| Under $5 | 11 |
| $5 and under $10 | 13 |
| $10 and under $15 | 29 |
| $15 and under $20 | 24 |
| $20 and under $30 | 81 |
| $30 and under $50 | 1 |
| $50 and under $70 | 71 |
| $70 and under $90 | 47 |
| $90 and over | 52[1] |
| Total | 332 |
The first of the two following tables shows that nearly half of these boys were under fourteen and that, while in a small number of cases their fines were paid and in a large number of cases the boys were pardoned by the may or. the great majority served terms varying from a few days to nine months. it is of interest that the one nine-year-old boy served between three and four months.
Of greater interest, however, is the second table, which shows that one-third of these boys had been committed before, some of them as many as six times.
(3)
| Final Disposition |
AGE AT COMMITMENT |
Total | Per Cent | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | |||
| Released without serving time by | ||||||||||
| Mayor's pardon | .. | 4 | 9 | 17 | 17 | 23 | 18 | 15 | 103 | 31.0 |
| Payment of fine | .. | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 10 | 4 | 12 | 36 | 10.8 |
| Order of court | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 1 | 2 | 0.6 |
| Suspension of sentence | .. | .. | .. | .. | 2 | .. | .. | 1 | 3 | 0.9 |
| Served sentence of | ||||||||||
| Less than 1 month | .. | 1 | .. | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 13 | 36 | 10.8 |
| 1 to 2 months | .. | 3 | 3 | 13 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 15 | 58 | 17.5 |
| 2 to 3 months | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 2 | 0.6 |
| 3 to 4 months | 1 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 41 | 12.4 |
| 4 to 5 months | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 1 | 0.3 |
| 5 to 6 months | .. | 4 | 3 | 6 | 13 | 6 | 8 | 7 | 47 | 14.2 |
| 6 to 7 months | .. | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 2 | 0.6 |
| 8 to 9 months | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | .. | 1 | 0.3 |
| Total | 1 | 18 | 20 | 48 | 56 | 60 | 57 | 72 | 332 | 100.0 |
| Number of Times previously committed | AGE AT LAST COMMITMENT | Total | Per Cent | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | |||
| Once | 1 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 17 | 9 | 11 | 15 | 67 | 60.4 |
| Twice | .. | .. | 2 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 25 | 23.5 |
| Three times | .. | .. | .. | .. | 3 | 1 | 4 | .. | 8 | 7.2 |
| Four times | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 3 | .. | 5 | 8 | 7.2 |
| Five times | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 1 | 0.9 |
| Six times | .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 | 1 | .. | 2 | 1.8 |
| Total | 1 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 26 | 20 | 19 | 27 | 111 | 100.0 |
The alternative to imprisonment was discharge. But discharge did not mean, under conditions then prevailing, escape from demoralization. Children who were brought to court were
(4) again and again "let off" by the police justices who dreaded to send them to the Bridewell; and as may be seen from the first table, many of those who were found guilty and sentenced were later pardoned. Out of the 332 cases sent to the Bridewell during the first half of the year 1899, nearly one-third were pardoned by the mayor. These pardons, usually an alderman's favor, depended upon "pull" at the city hall rather than upon the merits of the case. But the significant fact which must not be overlooked is that, even if "let off" by the justice or pardoned by the mayor, no constructive work was done in the child's behalf. He was returned to the same surroundings that had promoted his delinquency, in all probability to be caught again and brought before another justice who, knowing nothing of the previous arrests, would discharge or fine him again as seemed wise at the moment.
That is, whatever was done in the case was necessarily done with little or no relation to the child's history or surroundings. Not only in Cook County but throughout the state of Illinois these conditions existed. Boys were kept in "lockups" and jails in the company of adult prisoners, under circumstances which were a guaranty of ruined character, and were "let off with a scolding" by the justices because a jail sentence, however well deserved according to the law, was so manifestly bad for the boy.
For years a number of public spirited citizens in Chicago and throughout the state, representing numerous organizations of men and women and various religious beliefs, had felt deep concern over these conditions. Finally, as the culmination of long effort, there was enacted the law of 1899, drawn by Hon. Harvey B. Hurd. It was entitled a Law for the Care of Dependent, Neglected, and Delinquent Children.
Certain provisions affected local Illinois conditions, but the features which have attracted universal attention have been, of course, those of general application-the recognition of the delinquent child as a ward in chancery and not as an accused or convicted criminal, the separate court for children's cases, and the system of probation. Doubtless none of these provisions was an original conception, but the combination of a separate court, a separate place of detention for children, the abolition of tines,
(5) and the system of returning the child to his home and providing probation officers to help him there, was probably new, and was certainly unprecedented in a city as large as Chicago.[2]
Undoubtedly, the spectacular quality inevitable in a court assembling the neglected childhood of a city of 2,000,000 inhabitants was an element in securing interest for the Chicago court; but the rapid adoption of similar methods in other parts of this country and abroad was an almost simultaneous expression of a slowly matured, popular conviction that the growing child must not be treated by those rigid rules of criminal procedure which confessedly fail to prevent offenses on the part of adults or to cure adult offenders.
Obviously, the new method of dealing with neglected children should take into account not an isolated child, but a child in a certain family and amid certain neighborhood surroundings, and a judge should base his action upon the value or the danger to the child of his surroundings. Hence this study inevitably deals with the families to which the children belong, or, too often, with the broken and disfigured fragments of those families.
As the material gathered from the court files, the probation
( 6) officers' records,[3] the interviews with probation officers, and from the investigators' visits slowly took form, the histories of these "delinquent" families became so compelling in their interest, so luminous yet so baffling, that it was determined to print in the appendices a series of these brief biographies in the belief that such compressed but faithful records should be preserved.[4] They will bear many interpretations, but we believe that primarily they show with a new emphasis the importance for weal or woe of the family unit. The waywardness of the sons and of the daughters goes back to the same causes, is indeed of the same stuff, but with differences of manifestation due to the fact that each child follows the line of least resistance. One sees again and again in the histories of the delinquent boys reference to an older sister gone wrong, just as in the histories of the girls sent to the State Training School at Geneva, the brothers frequently appear as delinquents.
The family histories show groups of children whose difficulties are assigned to some one principal cause, although they are seldom or never unmixed with various elements, which are considered under the headings of the separate chapters.
In addition, certain figures emerge through all the classifications. Of these none is more often met and certainly none can be more appealing than that of the working mother. Into her lap ill fortune has poured calamities that have crowded out her children. First come all the causes that take away the support of
( 7) the breadwinner: death, too often due to industrial accident or disease, wages below a living standard, lack of work, illness, drunkenness, desertion-all these either temporarily or permanently compelling the mother to be also the breadwinner.[5]
The children, as the phrase goes, "get ahead of her" because there is no one to look after them in the hours when they are not in school. To one familiar with poor neighborhoods, with the records of charity offices and of the juvenile court, there can be no question that a mother cannot be expected to succeed in the duty of keeping her house and children while she uses up in earning money time and strength all of which are needed to discharge the more fundamental duty. Doubtless some women of exceptional ability do so succeed, but that does not affect the many cases of heroic failure.
These paragraphs, together with the chapter which deals with the school,[6] make a vivid presentation of the fact that many boys are far from possessing that primary tool for earning a living in this country, a decent command of the English language, whether this lack may be chargeable to causes within or without the child's mind.
In the selected histories of the families of boys [7] who have been obvious failures and who are now in Joliet, Pontiac, the Bridewell, and other places of detention, we find drunkenness, poverty, indecency, cruelty, demoralizing childish work at selling papers and at other unskilled, irresponsible occupations, sickness, insanity, nagging and beating, coarse bullying, fathers' and mothers' quarrels-in brief, there is no phase of family misery which is not illustrated in this fearful picture of a bad child's progress. On
( 8) the other hand, nothing is more touching than the many cases in which the boy returns spontaneously and unaccountably from waywardness and settles down to the heavy pull of supporting the family into which he was born, under the very circumstances which seemed to have provoked his rebellion. If a boy's will is the wind's will, and the period of wilful adventure must have its gusty way, it is quite as true that the wind often quiets, and the young worker comes meekly under the family yoke and shows the finest proof of fealty to the family by bringing home his pay envelope unopened.
It is not so easy to speak of his elder sister's return, and we are still too unused to regarding her waywardness as of like quality with his, however different its manifestation-a difference which increases so inexpressibly the difficulty of her return to orderly living, yet which, as a few of the histories show, does permit her return also to hard, thankless toil under the parental roof.
Of course there is a mysterious innate tendency to steadiness as the child grows up, and an invincible goodness which emerges at last triumphant over the perils of youth in persons of certain vigor; otherwise these sad pages would contain a far more desperate record than they do of the comparatively few members of the family groups in whom goodness was not invincible.
Important as are the immediate services of a juvenile court to the children who are daily brought before it for protection and guidance, because the family protection has broken down and there is no family guidance; painstaking as are the court's methods of ascertaining the facts which account for the child's trouble, his family history, his own physical and mental state; hopeful as are the results of probation; yet the great primary service of the court is that it lifts up the truth and compels us to see that wastage of human life whose sign is the child in court.
Heretofore, the kindly but hurried public never saw as a whole what it cannot now avoid seeing-the sad procession of little children and older brothers and sisters who, for various reasons, cannot keep step with the great company of normal, orderly, protected children. Arnold Toynbee said, "If West London could know East London there would be no East London"; and so in time, we may believe, the picture presented by the juve-
( 9) -nile court will by repeated emphasis so impress itself upon the mind of the town that new safeguards will be found for adequately protecting the most precious possession of the town-its young life.
The results of this investigation lack that precise definition which is comforting to the reforming spirit. The study shows that there are many elements combined in uncertain numbers and quality, some, not all, discernible, none answering absolutely to quantitative analysis. The question would be comparatively simple if it could be considered one alone of better income for the family, save in certain defined groups; for instance, in those groups which include widowed mothers incompetent to rear their children even if they had time.
While the study gives reason for going forward in the direction already taken it shows no cure-all. It makes the question of youthful delinquency very searching and subtle, not to be solved by any court or system of institutions, or probation, or other wise contrivances attempted as substitutes for wholesome, orderly, decent family life. These contrivances wholly restore some children, partly restore others, and sometimes fail; but they never seal up the sources of delinquency.
Never before has the setting of the child in his family and city been made part of the statement of his overt disobedience to law; never before has this picture been submitted to a court of law, instead of the facts technically recognized as legal evidence; never before has the judge been free to dispose of the child solely with a view to offering him the best chance of wholesome life without regard to previous offenses.
Is it not plain that such a court to be effective must be provided with very different facilities from those of jails and prisons, with officers of a different experience from that of sheriffs and bailiffs? In the particular court under consideration these facilities are still meager. Public money for such boarding-out of children as Scotland and Massachusetts have long carried on with brilliant success, is absolutely lacking. Institutions are painfully inadequate, whether public or private. They are almost without exception crowded, overgrown, and incapable of affording proper classification. Th? excellent staff of probation officers
( 10) and the many devoted volunteer agents, private agents or agents of voluntary societies, in the service of the court give their efforts unstintingly and succeed in restoring many children and many families. Yet as this volume shows, we must remember that they are called upon in too many instances to deal with conditions of so baffling a complexity as to have been regarded heretofore as beyond human reach. Of course, failure is the frequent result. As soon as the public provides the equipment obviously essential we shall see a growing effectiveness in the care by the court of the children under its direction. But the great and memorable fact must remain, that all children need for successful rearing the same conditions: homes of physical and moral decency, fresh air, education, recreation, the fond care of wise fathers and mothers. These essentials curtailed at any point, the degree of human wastage grows with the curtailment. No institution, no probation system, no orders of court, can instantly produce from chaos these essentials.
After reading some of the children's histories published in the appendices, the reader may be tempted to exclaim with horror, "The juvenile court is a failure," though if his eye had first fallen on another group his comment would have been one of approval; but such comment in either case misses the point. For the first time in history a court of law, the so-called juvenile court, reveals a great social situation and thereby bestows the greatest aid toward social justice which this generation comprehends-the truth made public.
