The Origin of the Children’s Court
For several years the Howard Association, of London, England, has been advocating the establishment of Children’s Courts in that city for youthful offenders, but for a long time nothing came of it, as the English mind is slow to act on all such innovations, especially in a case like this, where the law which has stood for hundreds of years has to be changed. The same Association has also recommended the appointment of special magistrates to deal with truant children and their parents. But juvenile courts and probation officers have been in operation in Massachusetts for nearly a dozen years, longer indeed than in any other state in the Union, and with marked success. In Chicago the Children’s Court has been in existence since 1901, Milwaukee 1901, Philadelphia 1901, St. Louis 1901, and Washington, D. C., 1901. There has also been a Court for child offenders in Buffalo, N. Y., since 1901. By an agreement between the magistrates and the Children’s Society Judge Murphy has given two afternoons a week to the trial of juvenile offenders, making a court house out of one of the Society rooms.
The following year the Children’s Court was opened in New York, and then only as an experiment, as few persons were found ready to believe that it had a future. Indeed, many members of the bar discouraged its advent and thought it a foolish and expensive institution. At best, this Court was only a venture in the line of trial experiences, but before many months had passed everybody competent to judge pronounced it an unqualified success.
During the first year of its existence no less than 7,447 youthful offenders were before it, for nearly every crime on the calendar except homicide. While this Court is in business, the visitor who is present, is impressed with the quite orderly behaviour of all present and the kind and humane treatment of the attendants toward the children.
The Special Sessions judges, who sit on the bench by rotation, take a deep interest in the young offenders and as each case comes along tries hard to straighten out the domestic “tangles” which are so common where parents and children get mixed in their testimony. It is gratifying to know that this city does not furnish a large number of the “Wild West” boy toughs and fewer still of the Jesse Pomeroy class of criminals. While it is true that a large number are untruthful, depraved and devoid of moral sense, yet they are not beyond the reach of kindness and good treatment.
Crime among the children of the poor is largely the result of social conditions. Bad homes, negligent and intemperate parents, sickness and poverty will account for most of it. And the fact that we have not ten times more juvenile offenders than are on record is owing to missions, chapels and Sunday Schools scattered all over the city.
Almost every session of the Court is full of pathetic scenes and experiences where mothers and children shed many tears. The object of the Judge is to find out the truth in each case, and in this he often spends hours of patient labor.
After a thorough investigation we take it for granted that a child is found guilty. The ruling motto of the Court is to deal leniently with a first offender. If he has a good home and parents who will care for him he is paroled, but if his home is of a vicious character he is sent to an institution where he will be cared for and learn a trade. The main object of the Court is to save the child from a degrading home influence and put him in a place where he can work out his own salvation either on a farm or in an institution.
Some of the cases brought before this Court are as follows. We refrain from giving real names.
John Smith, who lives on Avenue A near Tenth Street, is said to be an incorrigible; he is only twelve years old; he is the terror of the neighborhood; he stays out late at night, commits petty depredations on the small traders and otherwise annoys the people of the Avenue. After the Judge inquired into the merits of the case he finds that the boy is bad and that both parents are in the habit of getting drunk. The Judge finally decides to send the boy either to the farm of the Children’s Aid Society in Westchester County or to the Juvenile Asylum where he can learn a trade.
Aside from the judicial interest manifested throughout the proceedings, Mercy weeps tears of sorrow over the wayward boys and girls and nothing but kind words are expressed regarding them and every one seeks to do them good.
In former years the work done by this Court was carried on in the most humane manner by the Children’s Aid Society under the direction of Charles Loring Brace and, since his death, by Charles L. and Robert Brace, his worthy sons. The Children’s Aid Society has done more toward saving the children of the slums the past fifty years than all other humanitarian organizations combined.
The following lines by Philo S. Child will in a measure express why children commit crime in this great city:
“Alone in the dreary, pitiless street,
With my torn old clothes and my bare cold feet,
All day I have wandered to and fro,
Hungry and shivering and nowhere to go;
The night coming on, in darkness and dread,
And the chill blast beating upon my head;
Oh, why does the wind blow upon me so wild,
Is it because I am nobody’s child?”
CHAPTER XV
THE ROD AS A REFORMATIVE AGENT IN THE EDUCATION OF YOUTHFUL LAW BREAKERS
A recent ruling of one of our city judges, after reprimanding two lads brought before him for a trivial offence, decided that they should be birched in “the good old way” prescribed by King Solomon, and he further declared that children brought before him in future may be punished by public school teachers just the same as they would be by their own parents, and he bases his ruling on Section 713 of the Penal Code, which reads as follows:
“When a person under the age of sixteen years is convicted of a crime, he may, in the discretion of the court, instead of being sentenced to a fine or imprisonment, be placed in charge of any suitable person or institution willing to receive him, and may be kept there until reaching his majority, or for a shorter term, subjected to such discipline and control of the person or institution receiving him as a parent or guardian may lawfully exercise over a minor.”
For several years some of our best American prison reformers have been in favor of the restoration of a mild infliction of corporal punishment in reformatories and other institutions where juvenile delinquents are kept. Indeed, after ten years of experience as Chaplain, I am satisfied that a sound birching would be a godsend to many a New York boy in the early stages of crime, and in a large number of cases might possibly cure him of his foolish delusions.
As many persons consider the phrase “corporal punishment” offensive, I am willing to accept ex-Superintendent Brockway’s suggestion, and call it “corporal treatment.” And I am inclined to believe that the word “treatment” would not militate against it as much as “punishment.”
“The object of punishment,” says Horace Mann, “is the prevention of evil.” If corporal punishment does not inspire our youth to do good works, it certainly in many cases deters them from doing evil ones.
It is interesting to know that four-fifths of all the school teachers and principals of Greater New York are in favor of the revival of corporal punishment for bad boys and have petitioned the Board of Education for its restoration. When this matter came before the Board a few months ago it was lost by only three votes, but it will come up again—and may possibly become a law next time.
A large number of our school principals and teachers of wide experience believe that something ought to be done to the boy who calls a teacher a vile name and wilfully despises his superiors, besides turning him out of school as an incorrigible. By that one act the Principal who is unable to punish him for his bad conduct simply puts him on the street to begin a criminal life. The only thing a bad boy fears is a spanking. And as there is no discipline in thousands of homes, the Principals of our City Schools in their appeal for the restoration of the rod, affirm that used under certain restrictions it would save yearly a very large number of our youths from moral shipwreck.
Z. R. Brockway while Superintendent of Elmira Reformatory frequently spanked unruly young men, but then only as a last resort. Personally I am opposed to the use of the lash in State prisons as entirely antiquated and out of place where the appeal should be to reason and the higher nature of man. But in dealing with malicious, disobedient and incorrigible boys it is different. They will not listen to reason and perhaps pay no attention to your warnings and will rush into crime like a horse to battle unless they fear the rod. I believe when a boy under sixteen years of age commits a crime, if he were taken aside and given a sound birching, as is the custom in many English and German towns, it would be vastly more beneficial and would make a deeper impression on him than sending him to prison to be the associate of thieves and pickpockets.
An English town clerk in a borough of 12,000 people writes, “It has been our rule for more than forty years, not to permit a boy or girl to go from our town hall to prison. The substitute, at least for boys, is a birching. In case of repetition of the offence another birching is given, and in one instance three whippings were given within a few days. The result is we have not a juvenile thief in town. Thieving is unpopular with boys who do not wish to be birched. But were it not for the birching which is very painful, many of them would not mind to be heroes in a prison or reformatory.”
In considering the right of parents to inflict corporal punishment on their children, the common law as interpreted by the best jurists sanctions it. There is no revenge whatever in the act—it is entirely eliminated. In a large number of cases it is a matter of absolute necessity. Although parental government preceded civil government, it is no less coercive and often force must be used in the home to carry out the will of the parents. Again, the parent is recognized as the natural custodian of the child and is accountable to God and society for his upbringing. Nor should we overlook the importance of inflicting corporal punishment on youthful wrongdoers as a deterrent to commit other offences. Punishment in itself is of divine origin and its application has become well nigh universal and is likely to be continued in the family till the end of time, and is also supported by Holy Writ. “He that spareth the rod,” says Solomon, “hateth his son.” “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.” “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.”
During the past decade crime has increased among the youth of the city—at least fifty per cent.
The cause of all this is found in the criminal and lawless homes and the foolish prejudice that is abroad against the corporal punishment of minors. Every year hundreds of boys from sixteen to twenty years old are locked up in the Tombs for several weeks and afterwards sent to the House of Refuge and Elmira Reformatory where they can be detained all the way from one to twenty years, but they care not for such detention. In fact, when you speak to them of prison life they wear a bravado that is astonishing. But the moment you birch them for their wilful and disobedient conduct these young men quail and promise to do better.
There is so much foolish and unreasonable leniency exercised by magistrates and judges when small boys are before them, that many people begin to feel that parole without some kind of corporal punishment is a mockery and a farce. Only recently a city paper took a Special Session Judge to task for paroling some malicious boys who had committed vandalism in Central Park. There was no punishment in the sentence. Nothing to impress them with the majesty of the law. If these boys had been well spanked till they promised never to do the like again, the paroling would be all right, but not otherwise.
If it is degrading to punish boys for wrong doing, then the best men now living were punished in their youth. And many of the men now believe that it saved them from criminal lives. Foolish sentimentalists tell us that it is degrading to spank or birch a boy, but what is more degrading and damning than crime?
A well known Probation Officer of large experience in the city of Brooklyn, gave me to understand that if he had his way he would erect in every Police Station a whipping post where he would treat to a sound birching, a la Solomon, all the young hoodlums, thieves and law breakers that come before the courts. Most of these young men come from bad homes where they had no training whatever, and where their weak-minded or indulgent parents permitted them to violate the laws of God and men daily. If these young ruffians refuse to keep out of crime or be at home at night by 9:30 o’clock, let them have another dose of the strap, says this Probation Officer and keep it up till they come to their senses!
As soon as they promised faithfully “Never to do it again” I would give them a chance. A good spanking is far better for an unruly boy that breaks the law than sending him to a prison.
If young children are taken from homes and placed in reformative institutions, why should corporal punishment cease when it is vastly more humane than cellular confinement, deprivation of food or what is commonly called “cuffing,” which simply means to be hung up by the wrists to a cell door sometimes for twelve hours at a time. All of which I characterize as extremely brutal. And this is done in many of our reformatories.
At the annual meeting of the National Prison Association in Hartford, Conn., a few years ago the question of corporal punishment in our prisons was thoroughly discussed. Clarence B. Hoyt, Warden of the Colorado State Penitentiary, said that the feeling against corporal punishment was one of mere sentimentality, and advocated the use of paddles for spanking unruly prisoners and also the employment of an electric paddle to secure impartiality and prevent either partial indulgence or prejudiced severity. The warden produced a new version of an old proverb, “Spare the paddle and spoil the con.”
It is worthy of note that the whipping post in Delaware has had an astonishing influence over human brutes in that commonwealth and as an expeller of criminals from the State, surpasses any form of punishment known. All classes, with only few exceptions, are in favor of its maintenance; and even Chief Justice Lore, naturally of a sympathetic temperament, has been so convinced of its value as to commend it heartily and favor its retention.
Henry M. Boise, prison reformer and author, says: “There are found in reformatories, as well as in all other prisons, those who are so entirely devoid of mental and moral sensibility when committed, as to be beyond the reach of any incentive or punishment except physical pain. Their nature is but little above the animal. For such persons, the general experience of wardens of prisons, after trial of bread and water in dungeons, deprivation of all privileges, showers of water, tying up in a standing position, and other ingenious methods of inflicting pain and discomfort humanely, has been found a spanking with a piece of sole leather, softened by soaking in water, the most effective, immediate, certain and humane punishment.”
CHAPTER XVI
CRIME AMONG WOMEN
(1) The Social Evil in New York
The two great causes of crime among girls and women in general are immorality and strong drink. Many others might be enumerated, but that would be entirely unnecessary. Nor is it too much to say that social vice has attained the proportions of a plague in this and many other of our American cities, and thousands of girls, native as well as foreign, whose lives were once promising and full of hope, have been blasted and blighted by this terrible evil.
In a great city like New York there is a reason why this great evil meets us on all the thoroughfares. Within a few miles of Manhattan Island may be found naval and military depots, where large numbers of unmarried men congregate. Added to this we must count the men employed in the shipping interests, as New York is perhaps the greatest sea-faring town on the continent, and besides the many thousands of immigrants that come here every year, and, last of all, the yearly arrival of twenty to thirty thousand young men and women from rural homes, seeking employment in the great city.
But the causes of prostitution or social vice are varied. In the fall of the year large numbers of young girls come to the city in search of employment. This is often the most trying period in their lives. If they happen to find work, all is well; but if not or even after they have been thrown out of employment, or when pinched for money to buy dress or pay living expenses, they go out on the street, it means their ruin. The temptations in the way of friendless girls in a great city are so numerous that unless they are surrounded and even fortified by moral and religious influences, they readily succumb to the forces of evil within six months after their arrival. I have been informed on good authority that certain men are continually on the lookout for such girls, and after the first or second introduction, use a ticket to the playhouse and a late supper, or a piece of money or jewelry to bring about their ruin. Men who have finally landed in prison have boasted of having seduced ten to twenty such girls within a few years.
The modest amount of salary that ordinary girls receive in wages does not admit of their saving anything for a dull season. As a result hundreds of girls yield readily to evil influences and are soon borne down the swift currents of temptation into shame and ruin; and when they find themselves shunned by old friends, many of them end their days by suicide.
In the Tombs and district prisons may be seen almost daily large numbers of women who have been taken from the street or from “dives” and other dens of iniquity after the police have raided such places. After a few years the prostitute becomes a repulsive, degraded and besotted specimen of humanity and sometimes a hardened criminal. Nemesis follows the unfortunate and unhappy female till she ends her days in the Potter’s Field. It is indeed sad to chronicle these things, but they are nevertheless true.
We must not forget that women are naturally of a finer temperament than men, and are therefore more susceptible to the influences of the evil one. Young girls seem kinder, more gentle, more accessible to appeals made by the sterner sex, and as a rule, are more easily caught in the “traps” set for them by human degenerates. Some women love dress and jewelry passionately. And many of them will do anything to secure them. If they are employed in stores, offices or factories, and they appeal to the foreman for an increase of wages, he may inform them that Miss So-and-So gets along on the same salary, but he offers to introduce them to male friends, who will aid them financially, but who often prove to be their ruin.