The Delinquent Child and the Home

Appendix 2: Testimony of Judge Merritt W. Pinckney

Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott

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(Given before the Cook County Civil Service Commission, November 22, 23, 1911.)

DURING the autumn of 1911, the chief probation officer of the juvenile court was placed on trial by the Civil Service Commission of Cook County on charges of alleged incompetence preferred by the chairman of the county board.[1] During the course of the trial judge Merritt W. Pinckney, who has served as judge of the juvenile court since September, 1908, was called upon to testify. His statements with reference to the history of juvenile court legislation in Illinois, the methods and practice of the court in Cook County, the resources available, the limitations endured, and the lines of development to be followed, were so wise, so accurate, and so sympathetic that his consent to the publication of his testimony was sought. Parts of the examination[2] or cross-examination which had to do with merely personal matters or had some other purpose than the setting forth of simple facts with reference to the court, are omitted as irrelevant. It is believed that in judge Pinckney's testimony we are enabled to present a unique statement as to the achievements of the juvenile court together with the strongest possible plea for the further development of its resources and the extension of its activities.

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Q. Judge, would you make a preliminary statement to the Commission, briefly, about the state of the law with regard to juvenile offenders and dependents prior to the juvenile court act?

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A. In order to explain the law affecting the children of the state, a statement should be made first with reference to the treatment of juvenile dependents prior to July 1, 1899, and second with reference to the treatment of juvenile offenders up to the same date. The condition of dependents in Cook County prior to July 1, 1899, was deplorable. Their condition after that date was much improved. Prior to July 1, 1899, the state exercised neither supervision nor care over any, excepting those who came under the industrial school act for girls passed in 1879[3] and the training school act for boys passed in 1883.[3] These acts were substantially amended in 1885 and embodied all the law relating to dependent children.

The condition of dependent children in Cook County prior to July 1, 1899, may be well illustrated by a statement made before the joint committee of the House and Senate sometime in March, 1899, when the bill that afterwards became the juvenile court law was being considered. A prominent citizen of Chicago stated that he was the superintendent of a society having in its control 20,000 dependent children-who would be known as dependent children now-and that, so far as state supervision was concerned, he could take those children down to the lake and come back alone without any questions being asked, if it were not for the fact that in drowning them he might be held for a crime. This statement was made to the judiciary committee of the legislature at that time and it was not contradicted. Until a child had committed an offense against the state, the state of Illinois exercised neither supervision nor care over him save through the industrial school and the training school acts, except so far as the court of chancery assumed jurisdiction over dependent children as it did from time to time. The chancery court intervened generally to adjust property rights and intervened also in some cases in which other courts could not take jurisdiction. When the child had offended against the majesty of the state, the child was classed as a criminal, and then the state became interested in the child. That was the first supervision and care exercised under the law.

Second, as to children called "delinquents" since the passage

(204) of the juvenile court law, and "criminals" prior to its enactment, the state of Illinois, as we look back upon it now, while ahead of other states in the Union, was, to put it mildly, rather slow, in passing laws intended to improve the conditions surrounding that class of children. In 1845, when Illinois had been twenty-seven years a state, it was enacted that an infant under the age of ten years should not be found guilty of any crime or misdemeanor. The legislators at that period, although they may have understood something about human nature, evidently knew little about criminology, if they could fix a criminal responsibility upon a child of ten years and one month of age, or of any age over ten; and yet conditions improved little in this state from 1845[4] until 1874. In the latter year the criminal code was adopted, which still provided that a child under ten could not be found guilty of any crime or misdemeanor, thus declaring inferentially that any child over that age could be found guilty; and children were convicted under this law.

Twenty-five years more elapsed before the state and the legislature awakened to the fact that it was wrong to call a child just past the age of ten years a criminal, and the juvenile court law was passed in 1899,[5] raising the limit of criminal responsibility to the age of sixteen. In 1907 that age was raised to seventeen for boys and eighteen for girls, with the further proviso that, when a child once came within the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, the court should have and retain custody and guardianship until the child reached the age of twenty-one. That law has been said by a great jurist [6] now dead, to be the best law ever enacted by the state of Illinois, effecting as it did more good in one year than the criminal court by its punishments could effect in twenty.

So much for the evolution of the law. As to development in the practice and procedure, it may be said that the practice was as follows: When a child, having offended by violating a state law, was arrested, the state demanded the same vindication and reparation from him as from an adult of twenty-five. For example, if a child of twelve years of age who had stolen an article worth $15 was

( 205) arrested, he was put in jail or admitted to bail, as the case might be; indicted before the grand jury; asked to plead to an indictment that he did not understand; arraigned as common adult criminals were then and are now arraigned; was tried before a petit jury of twelve men; and, if they decided that he had violated the law, the child was treated as a criminal and was subjected to whatever penalty the statute provided.

Attention should also be called to the development in provision for the custodial care of the delinquent child. Before July 1, 1899, when a twelve-year-old child was arrested, that child was put in jail in company with adult criminals, robbers, thieves, and murderers. He was called a criminal and treated as such whether he was finally so adjudged or not. Before trial, then, even if he were not guilty, he had been contaminated morally, mentally, and physically by association with adult criminals. Before 1891, if he was found guilty he was sent to the state penitentiary. In that year the state decided that there should be a boys' penitentiary, and as a result the state reformatory was established at Pontiac, to which boys were sent after July 1, 1891. Such was the practice with regard to the custodial care of children up to 1899. Since that time the child has not been put in jail. He is brought in by his parents, the case is heard often without restraint of the child's liberty, and if the child is found not guilty, or if he is found not to be a delinquent-because you would not consider or treat him as a criminal-he goes home with his parents. He is attended at the trial by his parents, and often by all his family. If he is found to have violated some section of the juvenile law, he is sent to a school or to a farm, or taken care of on probation, or committed to an institution.

A result of the legislation of 1899 and 1907 is that the juvenile court takes exclusive jurisdiction of children, boys under seventeen and girls under eighteen, and stands in relation to the children not as a power, demanding vindication or reparation, but as a sorrowing parent anxious to find out and remove all the causes of delinquency and to reform the child.

The law as enacted in 1899 includes in its application dependent, neglected, and delinquent children.

Q. How are dependent and delinquent children in the county

(206) brought into the juvenile court at the present time, and how are they discovered?

A. They are generally brought in by their parents on summons; occasionally, though very rarely-two or three times out of a hundred-on warrant. Sometimes when a warrant is issued, it is done at the request of the parents. At other times warrants are issued by order of the court in the necessities of the case, when the child does not appear or is liable not to appear. They are discovered chiefly as the result of complaints sent in by outsiders, and of reports to the juvenile court from members of its probation department. The outsiders are usually neighbors in the vicinity of the child's home. Sometimes relatives, collateral relatives, who think that the father or mother is not taking proper care, or, when the father and mother are dead, that other relatives are not taking proper care, make complaint to the complaint department of the court. The complaints are investigated before the child is brought into court. In many instances, investigation shows that it is not necessary to bring the child into court.

No police work is done by probation officers, because, if a probation officer is afterwards to visit the child's home and to have the care of the child or to exercise any influence over the parents, it would be bad policy for that officer to act as a policeman and thereby incur the enmity and unfriendly feeling of the very people he desires to help.

Q. What is the relation of the police force of the city or county to the bringing in of complaints of juvenile offenders?

A. The members of the regular police force of the county seldom bring children directly into the court. The duty of the police, under instructions from the juvenile court and the probation department, is to report to the probation officer for the district in which the regular city policeman operates; and through the regular probation officer the matter is brought into court. Sometimes a city policeman finds children wandering on the street at night or he may find emergency cases where no one is present to look after a child. He then brings these children directly to the detention home and leaves them there in the care of the superintendent who is in charge of the home, instead of taking them to a jail or to a police station to be locked up. The duty of the police-

(207) man when such a child is brought to the detention home is to specify in writing the nature of the trouble, the name of the child, the name and address of the parents, and the occasion for bringing the child to the detention home.

Q. Do all the complaints result in the child's being brought into court?

A. I think not more than 25 per cent of the complaints made result in the children being brought into court. These investigations take a great deal of time and strength; but in my opinion it it better that ten mistakes be made through the sending in of unnecessary complaints or ten unnecessary investigations followed out, than that one girl should be lost to good citizenship and go to the red light district through our inactivity. I would rather have my probation officer do extra work and make extra trips than have one out of fifty girls or one out of fifty boys go wrong or fall by the wayside for lack of active and earnest effort in looking after their interests. In some cases it is necessary to bring the father and mother and the children into my chambers on conference day, and the difficulties are adjusted in that way. Or, if the complaint is not well founded, it is dismissed and the person who made it is informed that there is no reason for bringing the children into court. That is, many cases are settled in my chambers, so that they do not become court cases; and many cases are settled out of court. The older probation officers, who have had considerable experience, talk the matter over with the parents and consult me or the chief probation officer; and a decision is reached so that the officer can settle it without any court trial.

With reference to the disposition of these cases, it should be said in the first place that there are very few cases that are dismissed. There are few cases brought into court in which something cannot be done for the child by the friendly visitation of a probation officer. There is, therefore, very rarely an actual dismissal of a case. The great bulk of the cases are continued. This disposition by continuance is made upon hearing the case, if it becomes evident to the court, after hearing the probation officer's report and any testimony submitted by the relatives or those interested on either side, that it is not necessary even to place the child on trial. All that the youngster, girl or boy, needs is a little fatherly

(208) advice, and a lecture, if you please,-sometimes fairly severe warning the boy that he must do differently or the girl that she must do differently, and that the repetition of the practice that has brought the child into court will inevitably mean that he would either be put on probation or sent to an institution. The effort is, so far as my practice has been in the juvenile court, not to make a record against a child until it is absolutely necessary.

Q. What is the usual order of probation, or placing the child on probation?

A. I shall first state the practice with dependent children. The statute provides three orders under which dependent children may be placed. First, there is the order for friendly visitation, or rather a continuance of the child at home, subject to the friendly visitation of a regular probation officer. Second, if the parents consent or if they are unfit and improper guardians of the child, the court may appoint some reputable citizen guardian of such child and order the guardian to place the child in some suitable home. The third order provided for by the law is the order of commitment to an institution, when a child is committed instead of being placed on probation. Those are the three general orders.

The orders for delinquent children are very similar, with one exception. The person to whom the child is sent instead of being called a "reputable citizen" is called by the statute "a proper person." I could never quite see the distinction. That is, under the statute the child may be subject to the friendly visitation of the probation officer, or, if delinquent, paroled to a proper person, or, if dependent, to a reputable citizen, or be committed to an institution. And I might add one other provision of the law. It is provided[7] that the court may, at its discretion, dismiss the proceedings instituted against a delinquent and hold the child over to the criminal court for the jurisdiction of that court. That is very seldom done, but it is sometimes necessary. A child, a boy especially, sometimes becomes so thoroughly vicious and is so repeatedly an offender that it would not be fair to the other children in a delinquent institution who have not arrived at his age of depravity and delinquency to have to associate with him. On

(209) very rare and special occasions, therefore, children are held over on a mittimus to the criminal court.

The statute also provides for the appointment of a guardian with authority to appear and consent to adoption. Such an order for the appointment of a guardian is about half way between the probation order and the commitment order. It has some of the elements of both. It is not quite so strong as a commitment order, in that it does not restrain the liberty of the child as the commitment order does, and it is stronger than the probation order because of the added supervision and authority given to the guardian over the child, as compared with the authority of the probation officer. This order only nominates a guardian with authority to appear and consent to adoption. No child can be adopted even after the entry of that order, unless a proper petition has been filed in one of our other courts,-courts of record,-and a state of facts established under our adoption act that will authorize the petitioner to take the child for adoption. There are six causes on which the child can be adopted.

I should also refer to the power possessed by the court to enter an order to commit a child to a hospital when the child is suffering from a disease.

Q. Referring to the order placing the child on probation subject to the friendly visits of a probation officer, what is that usually called?

A. Simply the ordinary order of probation, where the chief probation officer or a member of his staff whom he may from time to time designate, visits the child and reports the child's condition and the way in which he is carrying out his probation. These are the cases of which the probation department takes charge.

Q. Who are these reputable citizens, judge, who are placed in charge of children by orders of the court?

A. I do not know that I can add anything to the obvious meaning of the word "reputable" as it is used in the statute. As a matter of fact, the number of reputable citizens whom I use to any extent is limited to about five. Now and then, however, some particular case may come to the court in which the parents are desirous of having some prominent citizen of their acquaintance appointed who knows the son or daughter and in whom the parents

(210) have confidence; and I appoint that person as a " reputable citizen" to take charge of the child. That is not the usual case, however. Those of whose services I most commonly avail myself, are, naming them in the order most used, I should say, Father Quille and Father Leddy of the Working Boys' Home on Jackson Boulevard, Mrs. Shannon for the girls, Mr. Colby of the Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, and Mr. Detloff.

None of these, except Mrs. Shannon, who is a regular probation officer as well as a reputable citizen, is paid by the county. They all, however, have commissions as probation officers, the four men being volunteer probation officers.

Q. Will you describe the character of the work done by the four men mentioned as volunteer probation officers as well as reputable citizens?

A. The boys' home on Jackson Boulevard is well known. We have at the head of that institution Father Quille, with a very able assistant, Father Leddy. Father Leddy -- this is a Catholic institution-has seldom if ever since I went to the court in 19o8 missed a day at court during the sessions, except at such times as he was away on vacation, when Father Quille took his place. When I first went there, Father Quille attended the court sessions; but his duties in the Working Boys' Home became such that he was required at the institution, and Father Leddy then attended the court. These two men place children in private families. They have a wide experience and a wide acquaintance among Catholic families who are ready at their request to take Catholic boys into their homes. I always feel very confident when a child is placed with them that that child will be properly handled.

I might add this, if I may be allowed to preface with my own experience in a way. I found upon going to the juvenile court, after I had been there less than six months, that there were a great number of what I call semi-delinquent boys and girls, not bad enough to be sent to a delinquent institution and yet too bad to be sent to a dependent institution. Those children I felt would not be properly handled and cared for, if they were committed directly to a delinquent institution where they were to associate with older delinquent children and older offenders, in many instances repeated offenders; and so I evolved a plan for handling those chil-

(211) -dren by giving them an opportunity to improve without commitment. I turned to the section of the juvenile court law that gave me the right to select reputable citizens to do that work. That was the only relief offered to those children, and under that law and under those sections I have selected these people, to whom I have referred as reputable citizens, to handle this class of children. The cases paroled to them, then, are usually cases of semi-delinquent, sometimes dependent, children, who are to be placed in homes and are to be given an opportunity to make good without being sent to institutions.

Of Mr. Colby, whose work I have observed since December, 19o8, I should say that the character of his work, too, is good; and I might add that during the current year Mr. Colby has shown in the general handling of his cases an ability such as I have not yet recognized in any other officer who has dealt with delinquent children. During the current year he has handled something like 113 children of this class. He has been necessarily in touch with me often in this work, because, through the kindness of some men, bankers and others, interested in this work in Chicago, money has been placed in one of the large banks here in my name as trustee with authority to draw on it to pay the expenses of the transportation of these semi-delinquent boys and girls when Mr. Colby places them, with the consent of their parents, on farms in Cook County and in adjoining counties. I should like to say that the report on these children for the current year shows that about 75 per cent of them have made good in every particular. And of the remainder, their cases are at least very hopeful; they are not considered bad children at all. He has reported one instance of a boy who is now and has been for some time earning $25 a month, who was looked upon as very delinquent-a boy whom apparently nobody could handle. There are five at this time earning $20 a month. There have been as many as ten earning $10 a month, and Mr. Colby reported one boy in particular who, during the time he had him under his control on a farm in this state, had turned over $250 to his mother, and after her death had paid all the expenses of her burial. Now understand that in these cases where children are paroled to our "reputable citizens" under the law, I should say that 95 per cent and perhaps a larger percentage are so placed with the consent

( 212) of the parents, and that the father and mother remain in touch with the children, knowing where they are, receiving reports direct from Mr. Colby, and also in many cases visiting the farmers with whom the children are placed.

Q. What is the character of Mr. Colby's treatment of cases of that sort?

A. The treatment of any delinquent boy or girl is more or less a matter of a personal equation. You are dealing with a human soul and not with a piece of merchandise. You cannot define or lay down any set of rules by which you can say to the officer, "You have to do thus and so with a child." That "personal equation" is what makes a poor or a good officer. It can be determined only when the officer comes in actual contact with the child. That is all I can say about it. You understand that as much as I do. As a general rule, Mr. Colby places nearly all the children paroled to him on farms in the country.

Mr. Detloff, who is a German citizen living out among a population of German farmers, handles a class of cases a little different from those handled by Mr. Colby. He takes boys whose only resource is work with their hands. They are laborers; they have to work hard; and he places them and keeps them employed and looks after them on farms. When I come to the place where I seem obliged to commit a child to an institution, and the mother and father are there, and I am still reluctant to give up the hope of not making a record against the boy, I say to the father and mother, "Are you willing that I should place this boy on a farm, give him a job through the winter or through the summer, or for a year, if necessary?" When they say "yes," I introduce them to Mr. Colby or Mr. Detloff, as the emergency of the case may demand, and with their consent the child is sent to one of these places in charge of Mr. Detloff or Mr. Colby. If I am in doubt whether or not it is possible for the boy to make good under those conditions, I tell him, " Under no circumstances run away,"-although some of them do. " If you are not satisfied with the farm or with the home in which you are placed, report to Mr. Colby or to Mr. Detloff, and he will make a change for you and give you another place; but don't run away. Report to them first. Of course, if you cannot get to them, come directly to the court."

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If they find it is not possible to make it go, or if possibly they do not like the family, they are brought back by Mr. Colby or Mr. Detloff, and I change the order which has been made. Sometimes a boy is brought in after he has been out in the country for a year, and his mother, even if she has received money from him right along, may still want him back in Chicago in spite of the bad environment from which he had been taken. Sometimes I listen to the mother, although I should keep the boy on the farm, and say, "All right, my boy, I will give you a trial at home now, and see, after having had a lot of good air and a lot of experience out in the country, whether you can stand up against the old environment and your old associates. If you can, all right." Then I release him from the probation order or the condition of parole and let him go back home.

Q. What is done by the court with regard to requiring a report from these reputable citizens whom you named, especially the four who are not regular probation officers?

A. No report is required by the court from these reputable citizens. I have always thought the act meant that when a child is placed in the hands of a reputable citizen the citizen should be of such standing and character as to be able to handle the problem of the custody and welfare of that child. I could not, of course, say to a regular probation officer, " I have paroled a child to this or that reputable citizen; you go and look the situation over, make inquiries, visit the child and the home, and find out whether or not the reputable citizen handles that child properly." No reputable citizen in Chicago would take it upon himself or herself to do this work under such conditions. The result would be an interference by others with the control by the "citizen." Then, too, people with whom children are placed are especially sensitive about having probation officers coming to their homes and making inquiries. It attracts the attention of the neighbors and usually has a bad effect on the case. This means, of course, that the reputable citizens become responsible for the homes selected. If perchance, the court should select a citizen who proved to be not worthy and not reputable, the onus would probably fall upon the court, because the selection is left to the discretion of the court. And yet, as I said before, there gall be no specific requirements other than that

(214) the home should be the home of people who are fit to be entrusted with the custody of children-of people who are honest, moral, of good Christian training, and of good reputation.

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We also parole children to citizens who are officers of institutions. We have an institution known as the Angel Guardian Orphan Asylum, and another, St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum; there are also the Louise Home and others. In those cases it is the custom, at the request of the institutions, instead of making a commitment direct to the institution, to make the order to the individual who is president or superintendent of the institution.

The State Board of Public Charities act and also the Board of Administration act passed in 1909 provide for the visitation of all charitable institutions in this state by representatives of the two boards respectively, and the certification of those institutions that are deemed fit and proper custodians of children. They are looked upon thereafter as accredited institutions to which the juvenile court may commit children. Besides this, the juvenile court law provides[8] that a report of these institutions may be asked for by the juvenile court. There is also a provision, as far as Cook County is concerned, that the county judge shall appoint a visitation committee, which shall visit these institutions. Under this authority in the juvenile court law I have sometimes required reports from institutions. If complaint is made of the conduct of an institution, the person making the complaint is asked to file by petition or otherwise a specification of his charges. The superintendent is then summoned, or a notice is served by the juvenile court on the institution, and an investigation is made and testimony heard; and the court acts according to the developments in the case. I might say, further, that it has been frequently my province to call upon the state agent, Mr. Virden, who is now the agent of the Board of Administration and who was the agent of the State Board of Public Charities, to investigate certain institutions to which my attention had been. called, for the purpose of determining for me whether or not the institution is creditable and whether or not the court should send children to it. Mr. Virden has always promptly attended to these cases. I do not, however,

(215) place the matter of inspection in the hands of the probation department, because that department has no authority in the matter.

It should be noted that the industrial school for girls act and the manual training school for boys act cover that situation fully. As has been said, one was passed in 1879 and the other in 1883, and the only visitation relied upon under those separate acts was by the State Board of Commissioners of Public Charities, and, since that has been abolished and the act creating it repealed, by visitors authorized under the Board of Administration act passed in 1909.

A distinction should be made between the power of visitation and the power to require reports, because under the juvenile court law I have a right to demand a report, but none to insist upon a visitation by my agent or by the probation department or by anyone connected with the juvenile court. The probation department therefore has nothing to do with these cases where the child is placed on probation to a reputable citizen who is also an officer of one of these accredited institutions. The order is then practically an order of commitment, because, as in the case of St. Vincent's Orphanage, the child is in the absolute custody and care of the Orphanage. The same is true with the Angel Guardian's Home; and also with the Louise Home. While it is in name a probation, it is in effect a commitment to an institution. The only difference between this order and a commitment to an institution is that it gives a little more latitude to the officer named, as to whether or not the liberty of the child may or may not be restrained by the custody and care of the institution.

If I may explain a little further, the difference between probation and commitment is this: Probation, according to the meaning of the word, is the act of proving; that is, the child becomes, or is thought to be, delinquent, and the mother and the father say, and the child says, "Give me another chance, judge, and I will be all right; I will do the right thing; I will never do this again." The child is then sent home on probation to "prove" his character. It is the act of "proving" whether that child can make good or not. That is probation. Commitment turns over to the institution to which the child is sent the custodial care of the child. This applies both to delinquent and to dependent children. For instance, St.

( 216) Vincent's is a dependent institution, and instead of committing the child to the institution I commit him to Mr. Ryan, a reputable citizen, the superintendent. The same is true with regard to the Angel Guardian Orphan Asylum. Sister Bertina handles the child and is the guardian of the child. In effect, in both cases the child goes to an institution, but there is a little more latitude given in handling the child.

Q. What has the probation department to do with these reputable citizens who are officers of the accredited institutions?

A. Nothing. The probation department has nothing to do with them. I might add this, that after some experience in the juvenile court I had taken up with Mr. Witter and discussed with him the plan of having these reputable citizens who were the heads of institutions report to the probation department about these children-distinguishing, bear in mind, the "reputable citizen" order as against the commitment order, because I did not consider that I had any right to require reports from institutions to which children were committed under the law, but I did feel justified in asking for a report from these reputable citizens. I wanted to see if we could bring this about without friction after nine years' practice in the court during which no reports were required. It had to be brought about slowly and with the consent of the individuals, because if they were to refuse I felt that I could not enforce it.

Q. Has anything been done along that line?

A. Yes, we have taken it up, I should say, with one or two institutions, and are trying to bring it about now.

Q. Does it require their consent and co-operation?

A. Practically and legally it does. I do not think that I could enforce it if I were to try to force them to do it, except that I could discontinue committing children to those institutions that refused to report.

Q. As to the order for the appointment of the guardian that you have mentioned, with a right to consent to adoption, are there any particular persons or institutions usually selected as such guardians?

A. Yes. In cases of that kind the order is generally to the institutions, and it provides for the appointment of the superin-

(217) -tendent or some officer designated by law to act as guardian to the child. This order is between an order of commitment and an order of probation. It is not called an order of commitment in that it does not restrain the liberty. It is more an order of probation because it gives a person authority over the custody and care of the child, not given by an ordinary probation order. Whenever a child is given to an institution for adoption, the institution designates the officer it desires to have named as guardian, and the court consents. I should also say in that connection that in more than half the cases the consent of the parents is given; generally the consent of the parents is secured because the question of religion comes in. In the case of an illegitimate child, the mother is the only one required by the law to consent.

Q. What has the probation department to do with these guardians after they have been appointed?

A. Nothing either in law or in practice.

Q. You spoke awhile ago of another form of order which was that of commitment to an institution. Will you name some of the principal institutions to which you commit children, and the sort of children these institutions take?

A. Yes. I can name them very readily because there are only five to which children can be committed. St. Charles School for Boys, at St. Charles, is a state institution to which delinquent boys of any religious belief may be sent. The Geneva School for Girls is a state institution to which delinquent girls are sent, regardless of the religious belief of their parents. In the city we have the John Worthy School for boys, which is an institution supported by the citizens of Chicago, where boys are sent regardless of religious belief. Then we have two institutions to which delinquent girls are sent. One, a Catholic institution to which all Catholic girls are sent except those who under certain circumstances are sent to Geneva, is the House of the Good Shepherd; the other is the Chicago Refuge for Protestant girls. Those five are the only institutions to which delinquent children are sent by the juvenile court.

For dependent children there are neither state nor county institutions. Nor are there any city institutions, so far. They are all semi-private. You understand that under the law the court

(218) when called upon must send a child to an institution controlled by persons who are of the same religious belief as the parents. Speaking first of the Catholic institutions, there are the Chicago Industrial School for girls at Desplaines (Feehanville), and St. Mary's Training School for Boys at the same place. Dependent boys and dependent girls who are Catholic are committed to those two institutions, generally speaking. The Protestant school for boys is the Glenwood Manual Training School Farm in the southeast portion of the county near Chicago Heights. Dependent girls of the Protestant faith are sent to the Illinois Industrial School at Park Ridge. In addition to these institutions there are many others to which dependent boys and girls, Protestant and Catholic, are committed by the juvenile court.

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Q. What is meant by accredited institutions?

A. Accredited by the State Board of Administration, certificates having been issued to these institutions after visitation by the Board of Administration. This is done under the Board of Administration Act of 1909, which superseded and took the place of the Board of Charities Act. The provision for the appointment of a board of visitation by the county judge applies also to these institutions.

Q. Can the court make investigation by visitation of them?

A. The board appointed by the county judge and also the Board of Administration under the state law can send visitation committees and representatives to these various institutions to visit and inspect. It is the duty of the Board of Administration to issue annually a certificate accrediting these institutions to the people at large and to the juvenile court as proper institutions.

Q. To what extent have you the power to visit and inspect and the power to demand reports from this class of institutions?

A. The power is not very broad, as those reports can be made by affidavit and be within the law, or officers can be brought in and called upon to answer charges made or testimony offered. It is only when a complaint comes to me about an institution that I can exercise the authority under the law to call for a report. When the Board of Administration has issued a certificate annually accrediting that institution to me, I feel that prima facie,

(219) I am justified in sending the children there without further inquiry or investigation on the part of the court.

Q. Do I understand that this power of the court is under that section of the law which says a judge may reopen the case of each child committed?

A. No.

Q. Is it under that section?

A. No, an entirely different section.

Q. Does it empower the court to this extent, that you can issue an order to a certain institution of this character that you want a monthly report or that you want a semi-annual or annual report, something of that kind?

A. No, I do not do that.

Q. You have only the power to do it in specific instances?

A. In specific instances. For instance, if there is a complaint that the institution is unworthy, that the superintendent of that institution is not a fit person to be appointed guardian of the children, then under the law I call for a report from that institution, as full a report as I deem necessary in order to get the facts and determine whether it is a proper institution and whether the guardian named is fit. It is, however, only in special cases that I have such authority.

Q. Not as a general proposition of administration?

A. Not as a general proposition of administration. That is not the law, because it apparently provides for two plans of investigation. One is by the state board and the other is by the county court committee to visit these institutions and report if they find anything wrong. I will, however, read section 9e. of the juvenile law as amended in 1907, which is applicable to these cases.

"The court may from time to time cite into court the guardian, institution, or association to whose care any dependent, neglected, or delinquent child has been awarded, and require him or it to make a full true, and perfect report as to his or its doings in behalf of such child; and it shall be the duty of such guardian, institution, or association within ten days after such citation, to make such report either in writing verified by affidavit, or verbally under oath in open court, or otherwise as the court shall direct; and upon nearing such report, with or without further evidence,

(220) the court may, if it see fit, remove such guardian and appoint another in its stead, or take such child away from such institution or association and place it in another, or restore such child to the custody of its parents or former guardian or custodian."

That is, under this section I can demand a report on the evidence heard and testimony before me as to the character and fitness of an institution to have the care of children. If the court thinks that the institution is not a proper institution to have the custody of the dependent or delinquent child, or that the superintendent who is named as guardian is not a fit person, I can not only remove the child but I can call the attention of the State Board of Control to the situation, and they can act in the case of the institution, although I myself have no authority. I could, however, prevent the sending of any more children to that institution.

Q. Is it your judgment, judge, that that section is not broad enough for you to exercise, say, through some of the agents or officers of the court, administrative jurisdiction over those places? For instance, it says that "the court from time to time." Suppose you should consider as from time to time once a month?

A. I do not think that is the proper construction; I have not so construed it.

Q. Your construction is that you are only to act in specific instances?

A. Yes, when it has been brought to my attention by the father, the mother, or the relative consenting or not consenting or objecting to a child's going to an institution. If members of the family should come in and make complaint that a certain institution is not a proper institution; that the superintendent, who is named as guardian, is unfit to act as guardian; I could then call for a report and could determine what should be done in this specific instance. If it were called to my attention on investigation that the institution was an institution to which children should not be sent, I could refuse to commit them there. My idea is that I should submit a report of the matter to the State Board of Control and ask them that the certificate accrediting the institution to the court be withdrawn. I have done this in the case of two institutions. to which certificates have been refused.

Q. Judge, if a specific instance is called to your attention as

(221) you have just stated, under' section 9e, in regard to an institution to which you have committed a child, you can compel that institution to report, can you not?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you believe that you have a right in order to determine whether or not they were making a correct report to you, to send one of your probation officers there to ascertain those facts? In other words, you are not compelled, are you, judge, under this section 9e, to take alone the words of the testimony, if you please, the evidence that may be furnished you by the institution itself? Might you not take it into your hands and send probation officers there to determine those facts in addition, under that section?

A. No, and I will give you my reason for my construction. If you are familiar with the industrial school act, which has been declared constitutional by our supreme court, you will recall that the act provides not only that the custodial care and guardianship of the children shall be with these institutions until the children arrive at the age fixed by the statute, but also that the institution shall have the right under the law to place the children out and control their liberty and their custodial welfare up to the age of twenty-one, in so far as it does not conflict with the apprenticeship law. It is just this language of the act that leads me to the construction I have given this section. The industrial school act for girls nowhere in its sections provides for the recall of one of those children. The manual training school act for boys in 1885 was so amended that the last section provides for the restoration of the boy to his parents. That was the only exception made in either of these two acts by the legislature, whereby, after a child was once given to one of these institutions, he could be recalled and restored to his parents. Since I have been in the court, I have, notwithstanding opposition, insisted upon the restoration of boys under that act, and I have always felt that the industrial school act for girls should be amended so as to give the same right to girls. My construction is based on all these laws taken together.

Q. Do you think that you have overstepped your rights, judge, when you have insisted on the restoration of the boys?

A. No, because the last section of the manual training school act provides that this shall be done, but the industrial training

(222) school for girls act nowhere says that it can be done. That is why I say, in construing section 9, that at the same time that you construe the juvenile court law you have to construe the other two laws, one of which was passed in 1879 and the other in 1881, because the supreme court has decided that they are constitutional. And there is no provision in any one of them whereby you can recall the girls who have been placed in the industrial school. The distinction between them is a legal distinction as between girls and boys.

Q. You stated a moment ago that you could refuse to commit children to any institution if you wished to.

A. Yes.

Q. Isn't that legal power limited by the fact that the number of institutions is limited?

A. Yes. I am confronted with that situation very frequently and especially with full institutions. The institutions are full and there may be no opportunity afforded for the receipt of the child; and then I am absolutely helpless. And I have from time to time been obliged to send the child back to the old environment and the old home. This happens in the case of girls who should be taken care of by the state of Illinois, because they are wards of the state who have violated the laws of the state; and no provision has been made by the state to take care of them. Under the conditions which have existed during my term of service in the juvenile court, I have seen as many as eight or ten girls waiting to be taken in at Geneva, while Geneva, which is a state institution, refused to take them in because the institution was full.

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Q: Tell the Commission how frequently the children, whether delinquent or dependent, are placed in these institutions with the consent of the parents.

A. So far as the dependents are concerned, the great bulk of the children are sent to institutions at the request of their parents.

Q. Are they subject to the visitation of the parents?

A. Yes. In visiting the children, however, they have to conform to the rules of the institutions by going on visiting days.

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Q. When children are recalled from an institution what is the process?

(223) A. They are either placed on probation or released permanently.

Q. What is preliminary in the way of practice and procedure, may I ask, to their being recalled?

A. A petition is filed for the release, or in many cases the representative of the institution voluntarily brings in the child and asks the court to have him released.

Q. Is any notice required?

A. It is always the practice to have the mother or somebody present in court to receive the child. In such cases there must be notice, because it is necessary under the law to give the institutions ten days' notice to come in for hearing. We could not even compel them to come in and consider a release under ten days.

Q. What is the practice with regard to a change of order in the case of the appointment of a guardian with the right to consent to adoption?

A. There would have to be a petition for rehearing and notice to all parties; that is, to all parties who are of interest and to all over whom the court must have jurisdiction in order to enter the original order. Notice must be given to the parties to reconsider that order or to change it in any way.

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Q. Passing now, judge, from the order which you make with respect to the custody of the child to the question of the release of the child; what are the orders for such release?

A. As I say, it is either a release on probation, or a permanent release. And a release granted by the juvenile court is designated as being a release "with improvement" or "without improvement." That is the practice. There is no legal definition of that kind, but the juvenile court and probation department have put all the permanent releases under the head of those with improvement and those without improvement.

Q. Is there any special day set for hearing such releases?

A. Yes. The time set is the afternoon of the third Wednesday in each month. After I had been in the court some time, the chief probation officer, Mr. Witter, brought to my attention the fact that the releasing of children had been greatly neglected. And after a great deal of trouble, because we did not have enough

(224) help at the time, we finally established a plan, chiefly through Mr. Witter's efforts, by which we consider releases on the afternoon named. The officers from the various districts on this day bring in cases that they think should be permanently released. Where it was thought by the court that a child once placed on probation, who had made good for a long period, perhaps one year or two years, as the case may be, should be encouraged by a permanent release, his name has been wiped off the slate. Those cases have been brought in until I am glad to say there are no back numbers.

Q. What proportion of the releases are "with improvement" today?

A. Well, from my experience in the court I should say from 85 to 88 per cent.

Q. What is the process of marking them "with improvement"?

A. On the afternoon of the day set, the case is brought in by the probation officer from his or her district, and the facts are set out before the court and before the chief probation officer and the situation fully explained. If the court after the explanation sees the necessity or advisability of permanent release, the child is permanently released by the court, and the order is entered so that a child can say, " I was once in the juvenile court but I have been permanently released from it."

Q. Is there at that time a general review of the child's case?

A. There is simply a summary, not a general review, by the probation officer of the facts in the case, showing why the boy or the girl should be released.

Q. What does this percentage of releases with improvement indicate with regard to the work of the probation department?

A. It indicates that they are doing good work-not pretty good, but good work. And I may say that the only source of relief which a judge of a juvenile court has, is that when he sees the boys and girls brought into court after several years' probation, he finds that 85 to 88 per cent of them have improved and are going to make good citizens. If it were not for that, we should feel, as in fact we do sometimes, as if we wanted to quit the work, leave the bench of the juvenile court and go back to the other court to try cases relating to personal property and personal liberty. I wish

(225) that some of you would come over there and sit through it awhile. You know when you sit through a whole year in the court and realize that within those twelve months 4100 children have come into that court, a great mass of children from the highways and byways of this big city, from the streets and the alleys, you will oftentimes wonder why there are any of them who are not criminals. That is the only satisfaction the court can get,-it is the greatest satisfaction. It makes it possible to live over there and carry on the work.

I could preach a sermon here if you wanted to listen to it. In the state of Illinois, you know, they have been pursuing the policy of trying to insure the building after the fire. That is a fact. For a century this great republic of ours has been doing just that. They have studied belated measures, trying to cure the disease after the disease has eaten away the vitality of the youth. Why do they not study causes and prevention? Until we use preventive measures, it is all just simply palliative, nothing else. You cannot go to an insurance company and get a building insured while it is burning, can you? Then why should it be possible to try to make good citizens out of bad boys? We must study these matters, go back to marriage and divorce and such questions as that, study the influences around the children and try to make them live decent lives. Then you will have good citizens instead of four or five thousand boys and girls coming annually into the juvenile court. You know that I feel very deeply on this subject. When I remember what it has been necessary to do over there and what they are all trying to do, and see the good they are trying to do, it seems too bad that people do not wake up and do away with the conditions which make delinquents. We sleep peacefully for fifty years and then we suddenly wake up and say, Oh my! Oh my!

It was not until 1891 that we had a reformatory. Before that time we sent children down to the state penitentiary. The establishment of the reformatory was the first step and it was in the direction of genuine reformation. Reformation meant punishing them to bring about reform-punishment to prevent the repetition of the offense by the same child or by another child. That was the law and practice which held this great rate for nearly a century. Now, we have found out that this is not the

(226) proper course of action; we have found out that we ought to go down into the sources of the evil and study prevention; and you can do that only by finding out what is the cause of the trouble. You cannot manufacture a good citizen out of a vicious, depraved child, or a child brought up in vicious, depraved, and poverty-stricken surroundings.

Q. Judge, what is the function of the detention home?

A. The detention home was established under an act of the legislature, I think in 1907, giving the Board of Commissioners of Cook County in this particular case the right to establish a detention home, where children could be kept instead of being sent to jail or to the police station pending trial. The children are held before trial and are held sometimes after trial, while a new home is being sought or until the institution is ready to take care of them. There are no probation officers in the detention home, and the probation department has nothing to do with its management except to place such children there as cannot be provided for in other homes before the trial, and sometimes to leave them there until they can be placed in homes after trial.

Q. Does the superintendent take the orders of the probation officers?

A. Only to this extent. When a regular county probation officer or a regular city probation officer brings a child to the detention home, the superintendent receives the child and tries to see that the child is properly attended to.

Q. Do they obey your orders-I mean the court orders?

A. Yes, they obey. The institution, it should be noticed, is controlled by a certain code of rules and regulations laid down by the Board of County Commissioners, acting, in a sense I think, with the mayor of the city. The probation department has nothing to do with the way it is conducted, or what goes on up there. It is absolutely under the control of the board.

Q. How does the court use the home in making its orders?

A. When the home is used for the detention of children before trial, it is generally so used by the probation officer. I also use it in the same way occasionally. I use it sometimes during a trial, too, where a continuance is necessary. And once in awhile, after trial, when I know that it is necessary, for instance, to send a boy

(227) out to St. Charles, and the superintendent of the institution informs me that he can not take the child for a week or ten days or maybe two weeks, I allow the child to stay meanwhile in the detention home. Then there are cases where children are kept there for unusually long periods, although those occur very rarely. Such is the case, for example, when a young girl has been raped by some vicious citizen-or vicious man, I do not want to call him a citizen; he ought not to be-and I find that it is necessary to keep that child in the detention home under influences that will prevent such vicious men, depraved relatives, and defenders of the man that has caused the trouble, from getting control of the child and preventing the due process of justice and the prosecution of the man.

Q. What is that danger, judge?

A. The use of money with the parents and the relatives, and the spiriting of the girl out of the city so that the court may be unable to get her when we want to prosecute the offender in the criminal court. Sometimes, when we have to send the child to an institution, they will get into the institution, as was done here recently, when they tried to perform a marriage through the bars of the room where the girl stayed. Marrying the girl under our law releases the offender from prosecution for the crime.

Q. Was that one of the charitable institutions, Judge?

A. It was one of our delinquent institutions. The parents left their little girl there and a justice of the peace came to perform the ceremony. It was only the night before that the plan was found out. Through Judge Kavanaugh the man was sent to the penitentiary. It is just that kind of game that we have to contend against. Out of fifty cases of rape, there are only a few men arrested. And if you allowed the girls to go home, there would not be one out of fifty who could be successfully prosecuted.

Q. Are there many continuances?

A. Oh yes, a good many of them.

Q. And what are these continuances for?

A. Sometimes, of course, one side 'Or the other hasn't its witnesses; or the parties may not be there, or they cannot always agree on the time of trial. Then there are continuances for the purpose of subjecting the child to good influences. The case is continued for the sake of the child, who is put upstairs, under

(228) the influences of the teachers and of the superintendent of the detention home. The child who has lied comes down after a continuance and tells the whole truth. The purpose of such a proceeding is to save the child.

Q. I want to ask at this point, judge, what the court does in regard to dispatching its docket so that children are not held under petitions or in the detention home any longer than they should be.

A. Shortly after my going over there I established a rule in the probation department and with the superintendent of the home, whereby all probation officers when they take children to the detention home report back within from twenty-four to twenty-eight hours, and whereby the superintendent reports within twenty-four hours to the probation department when a child is brought in by the city police. Then the regular probation officer is communicated with and put into communication with the police, and the child is sent home to the parents. If these conditions are not complied with within forty-eight hours, the superintendent has orders to send the child home.

Q. How many days in the week does the juvenile court sit?

A. I sit at the court five days. I am there also on Saturday forenoons ordinarily, cleaning up the business, getting out special matters and special orders and answering the correspondence of persons who want to know about particular cases. Five days I am holding court and trying cases. On Monday, early in the morning, I hear dependent cases that require a jury. During the last year, except occasionally when the dependent docket became congested, it was not necessary to use more than Monday and Thursday forenoons for these, but recently I have been using sometimes as many as three days, and once, I think, as many as four days a week for dependent cases. Friday I use for truant children; the other days, except Wednesday afternoon, are for delinquent cases. On Wednesday afternoons, since September last, I have usually been able to have conferences,-of late, however, I have not been able to devote Wednesday afternoons to conferences.

Q. When do you begin sitting over there?

A. In the morning I am there from half-past nine until twelve or one o'clock for forenoon calls. I take twenty minutes for lunch, and since September last have sat generally until five

(229) or half past five o'clock. Monday night it is generally a quarter to six when I leave.

Q. How many cases do you hear a day?

A. Twenty-five or thirty. I propose to try twenty or twentyfive; that is, twenty new cases with five continued cases. You can start with that idea and give instructions to do that, but you cannot confine the daily call to that number.

Q. What is the jurisdiction of the probation department as defined by the juvenile court act?

A. The part of the juvenile court law passed in 1907 which defines the jurisdiction of the chief probation officer provides, first that the probation officer shall make investigations as required by the court; second, that he shall be present in court to represent the interest of the child; third, that he shall furnish such information from time to time as the judge may require; fourth, that he shall take such charge of the child before and after trial as the court may direct. These four provisions are required by the amendment.

Q. What are the investigations that you mentioned first?

A. They are investigations, generally speaking, made by the probation department prior to the bringing in of the child or prior to the summoning of the parents to bring in the child. They are generally made on complaint sent to the complaint department by neighbors and acquaintances, as I have already said, to see if it is not possible to adjust the matter out of court; or, where a home is alleged to be unfit, to make it fit; or, where the parents are charged with being improper custodians, to see that they change their habits and become proper custodians, so that the case may not be brought into court. That is my interpretation of what is meant by the " investigation required by the court."

Q. What rules does the court lay down in respect to the making of these investigations?

A. There are no written rules; no definite rules other than that the officer should make an investigation covering the home, the parents, the child, the history of the parents of the child, and of the environment, and should ascertain the facts alleged in the complaint sent in by the neighbors or whosoever may make the complaint. After the complaint comes in, an officer goes out and makes the investigation at the request of or by the direction of the chief

(230) probation officer; and when the facts have been ascertained, if there is any question as to whether the child should be brought in on the complaint,-because there may be a difference of opinion between the officer and the parties,-the matter may be brought before me. If the chief probation officer cannot settle it, it is brought before me, and I pass upon the necessity of bringing the case to court. I find, too, that the opinion of the district officer as to whether or not the child shall be brought in on these complaints, is generally borne out on conference days when I come to investigate the matter personally with the children, in conference with their parents. Indeed, I have such confidence in many of the older officers, who visit the homes of the parents, assist in every way possible to remove the cause of dependency or delinquency, and make monthly reports to the head of the probation department, that I often feel like taking their opinion directly in the case.

Q. What would you say as to whether or not this work of investigating has been improved since you were assigned to the juvenile court?

A. I think it has, and it is natural that I should. I suppose that every judge thinks that he is doing things better than his predecessor did them; but that is a personal matter upon which I prefer to have somebody else pass. I do not mean to say that I have through my own efficiency or ability done any better work than my predecessors. I mean that the growth of the system, the experience acquired, solidifies the work and brings it more compactly before the probation department and the court. And through that experience of years, we are able probably to handle the work better than our predecessors.

Q. As to the duty of the probation officers when a case is heard to be present in court to represent the interest of the child; is that required? 

A. That is always required. I know of very few cases in which it is not. Once in a while a case is continued with the understanding that if the child who has been a truant goes to school steadily for the next thirty days, or, when he is a working boy, if he remains steadily at work and does not run on the streets after his work, in order to prevent his leaving his job or leaving his school, it is arranged that lie need not report back on the day desig-

(231) -nated with the officers; but if he communicates with the officer in the district and if the officer in the district sends me direct word that the orders have been carried out, I continue the case without the child's coming in. It also happens sometimes that the regular officer in charge of the case is not present at the hearing because he or she may be testifying in some other court, or may be away on his or her vacation, or for some other such reason. The case is then continued, unless the facts have been placed at the disposal of another probation officer who appears and reports for the one who is absent.

Q. What would you say with respect to whether this requirement is satisfactorily fulfilled or not?

A. It has been, sir.

Q. Now, as to the duty of the probation officers to furnish to the court such information and assistance as the judge may require?

A. That has always been done. Since I have been in the juvenile court, I have had this view of the probation department and of the work-and I have so expressed myself-that if the probation department had not the interests and welfare of the children at heart, the juvenile court could not do the work successfully. I have relied upon the department, and it has furnished me to my satisfaction all the information upon which I enter orders of commitment or orders of probation. In isolated cases, possibly, it has been shown by rehearings that there has been some mistake or some failure to provide sufficient evidence, or possibly it has appeared that the evidence that was presented at the former hearing was prejudiced evidence furnished by prejudiced or biased witnesses. That has been shown in some cases on a rehearing; but these cases have been few, especially if you consider the great number of cases that come to the court.

Q. What rules does the court issue with respect to the furnishing of this assistance and information?

A. There are no definite written rules furnished by the court. There are bulletins that the head of the probation department has issued. The practice I found in vogue when I went there and the practice now in vogue, is that the probation officer is given clearly to understand that it is his or her duty to furnish the court every

(232) fact necessary for the court; not only to determine whether or not a child, a delinquent, has violated some law, because that is the smallest part of this work, but to furnish the facts from which the court may be able to determine the history of the family, their fitness to have charge of the child, the cause that brings about his delinquency, the character of the environment, of the associates everything necessary for the court to determine what to do with that child. As I said before, the mere fact of the violation of the law is the smallest part of the problem of the court. It is how to make a good citizen out of the child in the future and put an end to the conditions that cause the delinquency or the dependency.

Q. Under what circumstances do you observe the work of the officers in this connection?

A. The officers come before me in court in each case. When the case is brought into my court, unless it is a contested case, with lawyers on both sides or parties in interest on both sides, I seek as far as possible to keep the probation officers out of the case. I do not want them to seem to take sides or to be looked upon as taking sides, as they would even if they merely stated the truth. I therefore try to get the facts from the witnesses as nearly as I can and not from the probation officers.

Q. What have you to say in regard to the duties of probation officers in taking charge of the child before trial?

A. That is the last provision of the law passed in 1907. It frequently happens where the child is a vagabond or a runaway. Again, the father and mother may both be dead. Often, too, the probation officer will find a family of children with the mother dead in the house; the father perhaps had died previously, or he may be absent. Somebody must look after the children. It is the duty of the officer to do this and he does; he looks after and takes care of the children. The usual course of procedure in such a case is to bring the children to the detention home, where under the care of the superintendent acting under the county board's instruction they are kept until the trial; but it frequently happens that these probation officers take the children to their own homes before trial.

Q. Are there any rules issued by the court in respect to that?

A. No, no, sir. As I have already said, this matter of the probation officer and the child is a personal equation. We are

(233) dealing with human souls, not with pieces of mechanism. You cannot lay down a written rule that would be just and fair to all; you cannot lay down enough rules, if you spend your lifetime, to cover every individual characteristic of every child.

Q. Now, as to the taking charge of the child after trial by the probation department?

A. That of course happens in many ways in all the cases except those in which a child is committed to an institution, as I have explained. Frequently a child is returned to the home of the parents, subject to visitation. That means that the district officer in the district where the child lives is instructed to look after the child, to visit the home. Then the child may be placed in another home and there, also, the probation officers must look after the child and report to the chief probation officer monthly under the rules laid down. There is a bulletin that covers the way in which the officers shall make their reports upon visitations, the time spent, when they go to work, when they quit, and all that. Those are known as the rules of service.

Q. What are the duties of the head probation officer as indicated by the statute?

A. The only thing I remember to be indicated by the statute is that the chief probation officer shall have charge of the probation officers under the direction of the court. There are no definite written rules on the subject. It is as I have said, with this exception, that since I have been there I have laid down certain regulations in addition to the rules already in practice, and have arranged for certain procedure in the handling of cases and for action by the district probation officers which I thought best for the welfare of the children.

Q. Can you mention any of the directions of the court issued while you have been assigned as judge to the juvenile court?

A. Yes. I think one of the first changes that I made over at the juvenile court was the establishment, through the assistance of the chief probation officer, of the conference days, of which I have spoken. I think that this was practically the first change of any vital importance,-establishing Wednesday afternoon for the time when fathers and mothers and children could be brought. with those complaining against the children, to lily chambers, and the

(234) matter threshed out and adjusted so that it would not be necessary to make a record against the child. We find that the plan works so well that we have followed it through the entire year.

Q. Does the head probation officer take any part in those conferences?

A. Yes, nearly always. Sometimes, of course, the district officer in the absence of the chief probation officer comes in and lays the facts before me in my chambers, with the complaining witness and with the parents and children; but, nearly always, he is there or is instrumental in bringing them in.

Q. What would you say, Judge, with respect to the satisfactory or unsatisfactory character of the head probation officer's work in that respect.

A. I considered it satisfactory, and it was satisfactory. I should also like to say that I found after being over there five or six months, perhaps less, that there was one side of child life with regard to which I was not getting satisfactory evidence. That was the psychological side. Shortly after I went there, I think in the winter time of my first term in the court, through the generosity of two citizens of this county a psychopathic institute was established, at the head of which, under the pay of private individuals, was Dr. William J. Healy, a well-known physician and neurologist, a man especially fitted to look into the psychology of the child. He stayed with me, or in my court room, where I could use him whenever a case required, for about the first six months. Since that time his work has grown so that he has not been present in court except when sent for and when he has been called on to report on cases, or when I have asked him to look into cases with consent of the parents. Only those who have had experience with this work and have studied it will understand the necessity for some assistance of that kind. The judge is often unable in hearing a case, with oral testimony, having only a cursory view and examination of the child, to get at the seat of the difficulty and the cause of the child's trouble. That is especially true in the case of epilepsy or of any kind of mental disturbance which causes the truancy or delinquency of the child. You never can get at the true cause unless you have someone like Dr. Healv, able by examination to determine what is the true cause, and to report. He has often saved me from doing

(235) what would have been the wrong thing for a child by his examination of the child, and by his report on the child's condition; and he is helping the court today, gratuitously, so far as the county is concerned, in that work. Whoever goes to the court will find that he needs just such a man as Dr. Healy if he intends to do the proper thing for the welfare of the children in the court.

Before I leave this subject, I should add one point more. Through the probation department, I first requested Mr. Witter to see that the officers communicated with the parents, and asked them if they would be willing to have the children examined by Dr. Healy, before trial, if possible; and when the children have come before me and I have not been able to determine what the real trouble is, then I have asked the parents and secured their consent, on a continuance, to have the child examined in that way, so that all this work done by Dr. Healy has been done in nearly every instance with the consent of the parents. It has now become so popular among the fathers and mothers that they come in and ask me to do this even before the children are brought into court.

Q. Do you make any directions as to the bringing of children into the detention home?

A. Yes. I found the detention home greatly overcrowded when I went over there in September, 1908, and it is a constant source of trouble now. Until changed by the order of the court, it was the habit, especially of the city policemen, instead of taking children to their own homes, to dump them into the detention home and leave them,-any little fellow between eight and twelve years, and sometimes younger, that they happened to pick up on the street. I issued instructions through Mr. Witter, and told the department to see to it that these city policemen should in every possible case take these children to their own homes instead of bringing them to the detention home. I also urged upon the probation department that the first duty of the officers should be to see that these children went home instead of being held in the detention home, so that children should be held there only in extreme cases. Even with all that care, the detention home is overcrowded all the time, and the children are not taken care of as they should be because of the close quarters in the home.

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Q. Have you made any direction in regard to the service of summons?

A. Yes, I took that up with the officers and with the chief probation officer early in my term of service, directing that the usual process which the law contemplates, the service of a summons, should be first tried; and that, except in extreme cases where it would be obviously ineffective, a summons should be used first. I also found that repeaters, some of whom had been sent to institutions, were released from the institutions to go home without having the record in court clear; that is, without bringing the child into court for the purpose of having the record of commitment vacated or the child released. And I directed, and it has been the practice ever since, so far as I know, that the probation department should make inquiries at the institution on the day on which the child is brought in again and require its representative in court to explain to the court why that child is away from the institution and why he has not been reported for release. You will remember that the institution has complete authority in disposing of children committed to it. Under both the industrial school act and the manual training school act for girls and boys, respectively, and under section eight of the juvenile court act, the very last part, under "guardianship, etc.," it is held that the institution can hold the child in the institution, subject to its by-laws and rules, and under the same law it has authority to parole or release. I have, however, authority to make this requirement because of a provision of the law which says that all parties in interest must be made parties defendant. When we file a petition, and a custodian, as shown by my record, is such a party in interest, that custodian must be made a party defendant in order to make the court record clear. t do not know whether if they refused I could make them come. But they could be defaulted, and then I should go ahead with my order and the court record would be clear.

Q. Could you hold them in contempt if they did not comply with the summons as defendants in cases of that character?

A. No, because, like all other defendants, they can default, and the law provides for the entry of the default. Then I have another reason. I do this not only to meet the legal requirements of the record but also in order to get all the information I can so

(237) that I can know what to do with the child. He is a repeater, and I try to get that information through the agency of the institution. I have the statutory authority to do this under the Practice and Procedure sections, where it says that the parents, guardians, and custodians must be made party defendants. Otherwise they might cause us trouble, because the institution has placed the child on parole, and after I enter some order they might say, "Why, here, we only paroled that child for six months," and they might come and take the child away from the place where I had sent him. I prevent such possibility by default after summons, so that they are through with that child and I have the right to control.

Q. Then in your opinion, judge, there seems to be this break in the juvenile court's authority. You have all authority over the child when it is brought into your court until you make your final disposition or order directing the child into some institution. When it goes there, your authority ceases, except in special instances as you have said, under section 9e. But when the child has gone out from that institution under some rule or law, and he is again found in trouble and brought into court, you can then cite that institution into court for the purpose of finding out why the child was let go?

A. First for the purpose of making the record clear, so that whatever order I subsequently enter will be right.

Q. Yes, for the purpose of making your record you think that you have a right to cite the institution in. In other words, from the statute your general authority apparently breaks when the child enters the institution and commences again for the purpose of keeping a record of the child when he is out of the institution?

A. Yes. And I have always thought and so expressed myself that the court ought to have the right to demand information or reports from these institutions as to what disposition they make of the child. There are, however, two sides to the proposition. My idea is this; that when a father, mother, and child are brought into the juvenile court, when it is found necessary for the welfare of the child and for the interests of the state to send the child to an institution, the father and mother if they are fit,-not prostitute mothers, not drunken fathers, not parents that would disgrace the

(238) children in the homes where they are placed, but fit fathers and mothers,-at any subsequent date ought to be able to go to the juvenile court and say, " Where is my child?" and learn where their child is. The record ought to show that the child is either in an institution where they could go and find him and see him, or else in the home where the child has been placed on parole by the institution. It should be remembered, however, that in 1910 there were more than 2500 delinquent children. Of those children, I 1 75 were so delinquent that they should have been placed somewhere away from their own homes. The delinquency of 75 per cent of these was caused by the incompetency and neglect of parents, parents who are absolutely unfit to look after their children. If you take a child from such parents, and do so justly, and if you place it in an institution, and the institution finds a good home for the child, would you think it right if yours was one of the families who had a nice boy or girl given to you by an institution, to have a drunken father stumbling over your doorstep, or a prostitute mother entering at your door inquiring for that child? I think not. Homes could never be found for children under such conditions. So there are two sides to this proposition, and it has been argued pro and con. It is not an easy thing, and you cannot draw a line here and say for this child thus and so must be done, for that child thus and so. It is a personal equation again, this time with the parent or parents. The authority ought to be given to the juvenile court to exercise at the court's discretion, and when a father knocks at the door of the juvenile court and says, " Where is my child?" the court can ask: "Mr. Smith, how have you lived?" and "Mrs. Smith, are you in the red light district?" " Mr. Smith, are you a drunkard? If you are, the state of Illinois demands for the welfare of the child, which is its first and only interest and should control its actions, that you see that child no more." I stand for that. But on the other hand, I stand just as firmly for the proposition that after a child has been once taken from a fit father and mother through misfortune of poverty or other mischance, since that father and mother have the first natural right to the child, the child should be returned to the father and mother when they are fit and able to take proper care of the child. Such parents always get the child when they come to me, and I have made the institu-

(239) -tions, so far as the law gave me the right and authority, yield to the parents' demand.

Q. What have you done, judge, in regard to making delinquents who have stolen make restitution?

A. Well, I suppose that every judge sometimes does things he has not the legal right to do, but knows to be just and right. I have laid down and followed the rule and insisted that Mr. Witter and his officers follow the same rule, that whenever a boy is guilty of larceny, or what would commonly be called guilty of larceny," or is a delinquent because of having stolen money or destroyed goods of a certain value, that boy must be required to work and earn the money and pay back, making restitution. And I have found no better way of making that boy take notice, change his habits, stop stealing, and work. In many cases he steals $20 to $3o, and this means making him work two or three months and pay a dollar a week out of his wages, until the money he has stolen and spent at five cent theaters or nickel shows, etc., is all paid back. And while, as I say, I have no legal right to do that, I have done it, because I considered it the right and proper thing to do. The results are admirable.

Q. What is the practical method, judge, by which you induce the delinquent boys who have stolen to make restitution?

A. The practical method is for the boy to find a job. He is sent out to work, a job is procured for him, and he is required to pay so much a week to the man or to the woman from whom he has stolen this money until the restitution is made. And if he does that, and most of them do, he is nearly ready to quit being bad, quit being a thief. He has had a lesson that is an object lesson which he does not forget. He has had to take it out of his hard earned money, his wages, and pay back what he has stolen and spent recklessly. If he does not do it, I bring him in, and as the case has been continued from time to time, I still have jurisdiction. Sometimes I send him to an institution. I cannot legally enforce it against him, of course, but the boy is generally very glad to do it.

Q. What have you done with regard to eliminating the prosecuting spirit among probation officers, if that ever exited?

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A. There is not much of that now. A new officer coming upon the force may get the idea that he must prosecute; that it is a part of his duty. That is soon taken out of the officer by instruction. Especially if I find that spirit apparent at a trial, if the officer should testify as though he were in a way prosecuting the child, I let him see that he is not there for that purpose; that he is there to represent the interests of the child and the welfare of the child and to lay the facts, simply the facts, before the court.

Q. What has the court done, Judge, with respect to promoting co-operation between the city probation officers, sometimes called police probation officers, and the county probation officers?

A. To make that clear, I ought to say that we have, I think, something like thirty city probation officers paid by the city of Chicago. They are policemen, but they travel the district to which they are assigned in citizen's clothes without club or star. They are paid by the city.

The way in which it came about that the city of Chicago, although not legally required to do so, furnished a quota of officers from the city police force to serve in the juvenile court as probation officers under commission issued by the judge of the juvenile court, was as follows: When Judge Tuthill first came to the juvenile court as judge, there was no provision made for paid probation officers, and the work was done entirely by volunteers. He soon found it impossible to do the work without the assistance of men and women whose business it was to go out into the highways and byways to make these investigations, and also to look after the children after they were placed in the homes. There was no way under the law by which these officers, if they gave their services, could be paid. On that account, he took it up with the mayor, Carter H. Harrison, and explained to him why as a judge of the court he thought that the city should supply to the juvenile court, officers from the police department who should serve as probation officers. He called the mayor's attention to the fact that while acting as probation officers, they would still be policemen looking after the welfare of the citizens of Chicago and their children, and that in effect they would be doing police duty; and that therefore it was no more than right, since the great mass of children who are becoming dependent and delinquent in the city of Chicago

(241) were necessarily a charge upon the municipality as well as upon the county, that the city should do its part, in furnishing employes or officers to take care of those children, both before and after the hearing.

It took some time to convince the department of the city that this should be done, but the Honorable Mayor, when he understood the true meaning of the law and the needs of the case, acceded to the request of judge Tuthill. The judge then at the request of the mayor called in the captains of the various police precincts in Chicago and explained the law to them, the need of this kind of assistance, the kind of men wanted on the force; and after the matter was thoroughly understood, discussed, and digested, the practice was adopted of having about thirty officers from the city police department detailed to the juvenile court to do the work in connection with the county probation officers. That is how the city policemen, as they are called, came to take off their uniforms and leave their clubs and revolvers at home, put their stars under their vests, and as plain clothes citizens walk the districts in company with the county probation officers and assist the juvenile court in doing its work. In the same way, a lawyer from the city department has been detailed. The judge was not able at first to get assistance from the county attorney's office. Mr. Deneen, who was formerly state's attorney, sent over to the court from the state's attorney's office as a representative of the children and of the state, an attorney, who acted for quite a while. He could not be there all the time, however, and again judge Tuthill took the matter up with Mr. Harrison, who arranged with the city corporation counsel's office to send over an attorney from that office to look after the work. That is the system that I found in effect when I went over there. Then we have a group of thirty-five county probation officers, beside the chief and the assistant, paid by the county. Now, through the assistance of the chief probation officer, we get them together so that there is neither jealousy nor any spirit of antagonism among them. They work harmoniously, and they have an organization among themselves.

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Q. Have you ever made any directions, judge, with respect to police probation officers or citv probation officers reporting to a

(242) probation officer who already has charge of a child that the city probation officer has taken up again?

A. Yes. The court arranged in cases in which a child came under his observation outside of the regular district-very frequently children in an outlying district come down town and are found peddling gum, selling newspapers, etc. -- that the city probation officer should take the child and report to the county probation officer in the district in which the child lives.

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Q. The court enters orders from time to time requiring parents to pay for the support of the child?

A. Yes.

Q. How are these orders enforced?

A. They are enforced under my chancery powers. I think it is section 22 of the juvenile court law which provides that where the father is able to contribute to the support of the child, an order can be entered by the court requiring him to pay for the support of the child, and security may be demanded by the court; and if he does not comply with the order, he will be punished for contempt. That is somewhat of a joke so far as security is concerned, because not one in a hundred of the poor people who come to the court could furnish security if their lives depended on it. If they were to be hung or furnish security, you would have to hang them, because there is no security which they can furnish. So the only recourse that a court has is to enforce the payment of this money under contempt proceedings, which every lawyer knows is a slow method. This means, first, that an order is entered for the father to pay perhaps four or five dollars a week for the child, or ten dollars a month for the child, to the clerk of the court for the use of the mother or of the institution to which the child is committed. You first have to wait thirty days to find out whether he is going to make the payment; then when he does not make the payment, it is necessary to enter a rule to show cause why he should not be attached for contempt. Notice must then be served. You cannot arrest him and bring him in and put him in jail; you must first serve notice on him that you are going to ask him to show cause why he should not be attached for contempt of court. In nine cases out of ten, when such notice is served, the man disappears from

(243) the horizon. When you come to enter the next order, which is the rule to show cause within ten days, or any fixed time, he is not there, and you cannot get service on him; or if he is there, and you get service on him, he disappears between that time and the time you issue the writ of attachment. And when you issue the writ of attachment, the officer hunts and hunts and does not find his man. That is the situation at the present time under this law. I t is unsatisfactory, hard to handle, and while I have done everything I could since I went over there, starting out within three or four months to enforce these payments so as to assist the county in defraying these expenses, I have not been able to do much, and find it an unsatisfactory proceeding.

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Q. Do you know the way in which the force of probation officers is divided so that different groups specialize in different matters?

A. The city of Chicago is divided into about twenty-six districts, and an officer is assigned to each one of those districts. This is necessary in order to avoid overlapping and confusion. That leaves officers who can do other work, and who are placed on special work. Mrs. Shannon, for instance, who through her connections and friends and acquaintanceships is especially adapted to placing children, chiefly girls, in Catholic homes, is used for that purpose; another woman, a probation officer, is at the head of the claims department; there is now or will be one at the head of the Funds to Parents act department, and there will have to be two or three officers assigned to special aspects of that work, because the work is so great that no person, however great his intellect or how big his physique, will be able to handle it all without able assistants directly under him.

Q. How many cases pass through the hands of the court every year?

A. I think this court was organized July 31, 1899, and the docket number shows that there are close to 39,000 new cases which have gone through the court. In 1910, which was an unusually heavy year, we had over 4100 children in court.

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Q. (Commissioner Greer.) I wish to ask you, judge, if you want to state anything about the reforms needed in the juvenile court?

A. There are a great many reforms that ought to be inaug-

(244) -urated there. I have tried to mention some of them. You, this honorable board and society in Chicago, could help the juvenile court very much. First, provision should be made for the care of the epileptics who come into my court, sometimes as many as three or five in a week. It is an outrage on a civilized Christian community to think of the hundreds of epileptics who have come into the court during the time that I have been there and fallen on the floor in the throes of their trouble, who are not taken care of. There is not an institution in the county of Cook, city of Chicago, state of Illinois, where they can be taken care of. That is the most serious trouble we have. These epileptics are turned loose on the street. Epileptic girls, at an age when they become delinquent, are susceptible to influences that other girls with mental capacity and strength of character can resist; but they fall, and you force the court to turn them loose to go back to the red light district. Epileptic girls who are delinquent are a positive menace to society. There is no place in God's world to send them.

Then, secondly, you have a detention home that may have been big enough at the time it was built. Now it is wholly inadequate. Give those poor children in the home a playground around the institution where they can go out and stretch their limbs and get a little breath uncontaminated by the air that they are inhaling in that institution. Do not any longer crowd eighty and one hundred children into corridors where they cannot move about without knocking elbows and heads together. You have, too, a court room in which it is wrong to ask anybody to sit who has any regard for health and life. I do not say this as a bid for sympathy. I had the former county board examine it through two of their experts in sanitation and ventilation, and they conceded that the building was put up without any method of getting out of the court room the vile odors and smells that accumulate within the three and a half hours, or even an hour, during which court is in session. Give us a place in which we can sit and hold court and be healthy and well. Turn your attention to some of these things, and give us some assistance along these lines.

Then, too, we need more help in the probation department. I shall be glad to take that up with you along lines that are constructive-not in a hasty, ill-advised way, but in a careful, construc-

(245) -tive way. We must have it. I am in favor too of amending this law, if it can be done constitutionally, so that when children have been sent to an institution, the institution must report back to the juvenile court what becomes of those children, leaving it to the discretion of the juvenile court when in later years people come back to ask for their children, whether or not the place to which the child has been sent, or the family to whom it has been sent and with whom it is living, should be disclosed. I have always been in favor-of that and I am in favor of it today, but there are limits. Consider the welfare of the child and the interests of the state of Illinois. The court should certainly have the power to say, when the mother is a prostitute or the father a drunkard or in the house of correction, that the little girl must not be disturbed in her future life by having such parents knocking at the door of the good home where she has lived the last eight or ten years. There are among my acquaintances young ladies who are adopted daughters whose mothers are immoral and whose fathers are no good. Do you mean to say that it is for the welfare of the child under these circumstances to allow those parents to go and claim kinship? That is not the purpose of the law and that would never be right in any Christian community having at heart the interests of the child and the welfare of the state. It should, however, be within the discretion of the juvenile court. And the court, having once sent a child to an institution, should have a record there to know what has become of the child. Any institution that wants to safeguard the rights and welfare of the child conscientiously ought to consent to such an arrangement.

We must also have relief along other lines. Perhaps you will find some judge after next July who can do all this work and handle it easily and without trouble and without breaking down his health. I hope that you can. But I say that it is unfair under the present system to ask one judge to do it all unassisted and that some plan or practice whereby some of the work can be taken off his shoulders should be devised. At one time I was in favor of having the court held in different districts. I am afraid that plan will not work out well. I believe in keeping in touch with the children and in personal relationships between the court and parents and children. You must have one man at the head and you must

(246) figure out some system, some method whereby with one man at the head you can lighten this work. A plan might be worked out whereby the district officer here and there, or assistants to the judge, could eliminate a great mass of this work and only send up the most urgent and the most serious cases to the judge. Something must be done, and that very soon.

There are a great many other reforms which I think ought to be brought about. I think that we ought to have a home for semi-delinquent boys and girls. I think that it is a failure of the administration of the juvenile law to take a girl who has gone wrong once by some mischance and place her in the company of women and older vicious girls from the red light district. I insist that there ought to be a midway station between the girl at home on parole and the girl in the Chicago Refuge, in the House of the Good Shepherd, or at Geneva, where the girl can be given among her own kind-that is, among other innocent, unfortunate, girlsan opportunity to turn away from the life that she unfortunately fell into, and to become a good citizen. That is a serious need; it must be met. It is the same with the boys, the semi-delinquent boys who are first offenders and not recidivists-such boys ought not to be sent to the John Worthy School. With all respect to that great institution, managed well and conducted as properly as it can be conducted under present conditions, it is not the place for the semi-delinquent boy. As yet, there is no other place for him.

Now, for the repeatedly delinquent girl; we must also have some place to send her. I turned back to their old environment and to their old associates, from 150 to 200 girls in 1910, not only to go to ruin themselves, but to drag down good girls and good boys by contact and association. There was no place to send them. The great Training School for Girls at Geneva, the only state institution that we have for Protestant delinquent girls, could take only 35 girls in 1910, and we had 475 delinquent girls that year in the juvenile court who needed institutional care. These are some of the things that need attention. Why, I have written about these needs and I have talked about them and I have made speeches about them, but no one pays any attention. Gentlemen, if you will turn your thought along these lines and help supply their needs, you will accomplish something for the cause of the children of Chicago.

Notes

  1. It is only fair to say that these charges were not sustained by the evidence.
  2. This examination was conducted by the attorney for the defense, Mr. Albert M. Kales.
  3. For these laws as at present in force see Illinois Revised Statutes (1909), chap 23.
  4. Illinois Revised Statutes (1909), chap. 38. Criminal Code, sec. 283.
  5. See Illinois Revised Statutes (1909), chap. 23, sections 169-190c.
  6. Judge Murray F Tuley
  7. Juvenile Court Law, sec. 9. Illinois Revised Statutes (1909), chap. 23, sec. 177.
  8. Sec. 9e. Illinois Revised Statutes (1909), chap. 23, sec. 177e.

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