Chapter VI: The Boy and the Court (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV. THE BOY THAT GETS “SENT UP”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These eleven-year-old delinquents are a challenge to the community]

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

JOHN MORAN’S DELINQUENCY RECORD

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

MICHAEL MORAN’S DELINQUENCY RECORD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

V. SUMMARY

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

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

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

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

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