Chapter VI: The Boy and the Court (1)

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

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the material relating to the court, while partly out of date, is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

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

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

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

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

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

Sec. 486 Penal Law

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

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

Sec. 720 Penal Law

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

Sec. 43 Penal Law

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

Sec. 1310 Penal Law

a. Petty Larceny.

b. Grand Larceny.

Sec. 405 Penal Law

Burglary and Unlawful Entry.

Sec. 242 Penal Law

Assault.

Sec. 1610 Penal Law

Peddling without License.

Sec. 1990 Penal Law

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

Sec. 2120

Robbery.

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

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

OFFENSES IN 463 CASES OF ARREST CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO COURT CHARGES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. GETTING INTO COURT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II. THE BOY WHO IS LET GO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III. PAROLED IN THE CUSTODY OF HIS PARENTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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