The Delinquent Child and the Home
Chapter 11: The Court and the Delinquent Family: Some Aspects of the Problems of Treatment
Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott
Table of Contents | Next | Previous
IN the foregoing chapters an attempt has been made to describe those conditions surrounding the children of the court that may have a bearing on their delinquency. The statute classes together as terms capable of a single definition "dependent" and "neglected," but we believe that the delinquent child appears in this study as likewise a neglected child-neglected by the home, by the school, and by the community.
It is also evident from the facts which have been presented that the unit with which the court really deals is not the child but the family.
It remains for us now in this final chapter to set forth briefly some of the problems of the family as they are presented to the court. The court is an instrument by means of which the community attempts to direct and supervise the care of the delinquent child. Obviously the possibilities of successful care of the child by the court depend largely upon conditions in the home and the neighborhood, and so long as the child is left within the home or withdrawn only temporarily from it, the court deals with the child only by dealing in some measure with the entire family group.
Looking at these "delinquent" families from the point of view of the court they fall into several classes. There are first those in which the conditions within the home are favorable and in which the parents understand the child's delinquency and either appeal to the court to support their authority or, when they do not take the initiative themselves by bringing the child into court, are quite willing to co-operate in the measures taken for his welfare. This is a hopeful and fortunately a numerous class so far as delinquent boys are concerned; and it includes homes from every eco-
(171) -nomic stratum. In these families over and over again the mother's comment to the investigator was that little Bill or John had not been "really bad" and that "getting into court gave him such a scare that he straightened up at once and the officer did not have to come very long." It is clear that in cases like this where the home is good and the parents merely need to have their own policy with regard to the child given the temporary support of a coercive authority, there is no "family problem" before the court. The family becomes only a most valuable co-operating agency.
In a different class, however, are those homes in which the parents wish to co-operate, but in which the conditions in the home or the neighborhood make co-operation impossible. The figure of the widowed or deserted mother who goes out to work looms large in this group. Although she is intelligent enough to know what a good home is and does her best to maintain one, the condition of her misfortune renders her most strenuous efforts futile. In the families in this group, the spiritual power is greater than the pecuniary resources. They are poor because the breadwinner may have been disabled or because there may have been illness or accident or other misfortune. In these homes the ideals are good, but misfortune leading often to economic pressure seems to necessitate the sacrifice of the children. This class presents a difficult problem to the court and one that can never be adequately dealt with except by such effective co-operation between the court and the organized public and private charity of the city as will keep the competent working mother at home, lighten the economic pressure that is exploiting the child, improve the neighborhood conditions that are promoting delinquency, or move the family to safer quarters. Until this co-operation is perfected the court must remain handicapped.
There are many cases in which the court, recognizing the good intentions of the family, puts the child on probation without having the resources to alter the conditions which are really responsible for the child's presence before the judge. Sooner or later, however, because of these conditions, the child is returned to the court and committed to an institution, while the family circumstances remain unchanged. After a brief time he is returned to the delinquency-promoting conditions from which he originally
(172) came, is later returned again to the court, returned to an institution, returned again to his family, and then the vicious circle begins all over, not only for the boy but for his younger brothers and sisters. The court returns the child to the home, because the essential rightness of the intentions of the family is recognized and because the only alternative to the home is an overcrowded institution, which may soon turn the child out to make room for the "next case." It is not a choice between the poor home and the ideal institution, but between the home that seems bad and the institution that is surely worse.
In a third class of families, which presents a still more difficult problem to the court, there is no question of economic pressure or unlooked-for misfortune. In these families the child is being sacrificed or exploited because his needs either are not properly understood or are wilfully disregarded. Unlike the families in the first class, these neither seek nor welcome but rather resent the relationship of the court to the child; unlike the second class, the spiritual rather than the material conditions are unfavorable. The father while not " brutal" is often extremely severe, the mother too little concerned with the care or training of the children. Here the sense of parental right is strong and the court is regarded as a trespasser and interloper. In dealing with families of this type, the coercive power of the court is exercised over the parents rather than over the child. While no poverty exists, there are often crowded conditions of living because lodgers are taken either to share the rent or to add to the fund for purchasing the house. In short, homes of this type are uncomfortable for the child and often unsafe. Here the chief function of the probation officer is to expound to the parents the standard to be maintained for the child and if possible to enforce that standard.
A fourth class, though not a large one, is interesting and should be noticed. It includes families again not poor nor outwardly degraded, whose homes seem comfortable, so that it is not easy for the court to contemplate removing the child. There often are marital difficulties,-occasionally divorce; or a diseased spot in the family life may be discovered; but sometimes the character of the delinquency and the fact that none of the children -or none of the girls in one case-escape the taint, is the chief
(173) evidence of a degeneracy evidently far gone in the family life, which is like a fruit of fair exterior but rotten at the core. For children from homes such as these little can be done except to place them in institutions and postpone the day of their complete undoing. In the treatment of such cases, until further light is thrown on the subject by the researches in biological and psychological laboratories, the court must act feebly and on the whole blindly.
Finally there remains the class in which are found only the dregs of family life, and here action must be sure as it should be swift. For here are found drunkenness, immorality, crime, filthy and degraded homes-homes below any acceptable standards of cleanliness, of decency, and of competence. In these homes the court finds only opposition in the intentions of the family and insurmountable difficulties in the way of maintaining right conditions of living. Here the right of family life has been forfeited and that privilege should be denied by the court. As a major operation is undertaken by a surgeon, amputation should be resorted to in these cases and the child promptly and permanently removed from the contaminating influences.
Thus it may be said that so far as the family problem before the court is concerned, the homes fall, broadly speaking, into two large divisions, the one containing those homes in which the care of the court can be exercised in co-operation with the family, the other those in which it can be exercised only in opposition to the wishes of the family, and in which the family is antagonistic to the standards that the community has set for its children.
From this it is evident that there must be developed a much finer discrimination in judging of the rights of parents. To the competent parent all aid should be given; of the competent parent the efficient performance of parental duties should be demanded. Over the inefficient,[1] careful supervision should be exercised. To the well-intentioned, aid should be rendered by the use of such agencies as the school nurse, the visiting housekeeper, the truant
( 174) officer, and the sanitary inspector; to the degraded parent no concessions should be made.[2]
When there are evidences of drunkenness or vicious and immoral living, complete separation is probably the only safeguard. To accomplish this, the machinery of the court for dealing with dependent children should be rendered strong enough and skilful enough to discover conditions unfavorable to child life at a very early period, and the staff of probation officers should be efficient, well equipped, and thoroughly grounded in the principles of relief and of sound family life.
After such an analysis, attention need not be called again to the difficulty and delicacy of the task set before the court, nor need reference be made to the dignity, insight, intelligence, patience, and thoroughness that should characterize its agents. When one compares the equipment of the court with its undertaking, it is not surprising if the court has in some respects failed of perfect service. But however much, because of inadequate equipment, it may have fallen short in other respects, it has not failed as a means of exhibiting the wrongs of childhood, nor need its services in this capacity be limited to Chicago alone; for after all, if the needs of neglected children in Chicago are made clear the needs of neglected children everywhere can be better understood.
In studying the treatment of delinquent children in Illinois, it becomes apparent that the juvenile court should be strengthened in its relation to other courts that it may take cognizance directly or through the probation officers of charges brought against children everywhere and of other controversies, of whatsoever kind, affecting their interests and well-being.[3] When that is accomplished we shall have in fact, as we have long had in name, a parens patriae, an agent through whom the parenthood of the community can be brought to bear upon the orphaned condition of any needy boy or girl.
( 175)
The suggestion may not be out of place here that any real substitute for the care of the natural parents will contain the elements of both the paternal and maternal character, and will involve, when the machinery of the court is fully developed, the representation of the maternal and the paternal in the final decision as well as in the supervision of the child under probation. It is obvious to any thoughtful student of the problem under consideration, that eventually men and women acting together will have to arrive at a final decision as to what is to be done with each child, and will have to be jointly entrusted with the control of the children from day to day. One can but remember that the community has been very slow in giving the mother "equal powers, rights, and duties" with the father in respect to their children[4] and in observing that, though the large majority of probation officers are women, the final disposition of the case lies wholly in the hands of a man. Nor can one fail to realize that, even when the judge is a genius at understanding the child, or devotedly kind and genuinely sympathetic, there is often the need not merely of advice from a woman, but of deciding power exercised by a woman.[5]
In the chapters of this book, attention has been called to the need of strengthening the child labor law and some other laws for the protection of children. More important however than new legislation is the enforcement of such laws as have already been passed. Orders recently issued by a Chief of Police to the members of his force [6] in which he exhorts them to watch for violations of those
(176) sections of the municipal code which relate to the protection of minors, and to regard themselves as guardians not of the law, but "of the children who go upon the streets, into stores or public places unattended," indicate an extraordinary realization of the necessity of a new kind of protection which will make all public places safe and decent.
A strong plea is presented for the adaptation of the school curriculum to the actual demands of industrial and commercial
(177) life, the multiplication of uses of the school buildings, the prolongation of the school year by means of vacation schools, the establishment of continuation schools, the further development of industrial and trade training, and the perfection of the machinery for apprehending all truant children and securing their regular presence at school, as well as the working out of some plan by which the connection between their school life and their working life may be economically and intelligently made.
And finally it may be said that the most important lesson to be learned from any study of the juvenile court in its relation to the delinquent child is that the only way of curing delinquency is to prevent it. The juvenile court cannot work miracles unaided. It cries out to the community for the co-operation of all its citizens in removing the conditions which are feeding into the court thousands of delinquent children every year. As the community comes to understand the obligation which rests upon it to abolish the causes of delinquency, one may hope that new methods of conservation will be devised to take the place of the old waste of child life. By such means may be builded a stronghold of good citizenship and noble, competent living. And when that stronghold shall have been erected, into it will be found builded the lives of the neglected children, the little strangers, the orphans, the degraded, poor, and ignorant ones, who have passed in and out before the judge of the delinquent children in Chicago; and through whose wrongs, laid bare by the machinery of the juvenile court, greater wisdom and greater gentleness have been acquired.
