SAVING GIRLS IN NEW YORK CITY
In New York City is Waverly House, a temporary home for young women released on probation by the courts. The principal problem of the New York Probation Association, which maintains the House, is the rehabilitation of the young women convicted or arraigned for prostitution. In the second annual report of the association, Miss Maud Miner, the society’s secretary, writes:
“Among the girls who have been received into Waverly House this year, nine per cent have been pronounced deficient when examined by experts as to their mental condition, and a much larger percentage, approximately one-third, can be said to be borderline cases. They have not, except in three instances, been proper subjects for insane asylums or present institutions for the feeble-minded, yet they are distinctly below par mentally and not entirely responsible for their moral conduct. It is useless for the state and city to spend money for these girls in reformatory institutions, as has been done in several of these cases, only to turn them out after one, two, or at most three years, to be preyed upon in the community. In a custodial institution where they could have permanent care, a happy life would be possible and society would be saved from caring for them in prisons and reformatories, and from having the number of degenerates augmented by their offspring.
“It is important to study the psychology of the individual girls and women, and also to determine how far vice or criminality may be attributed to innate depravity, low grade mentality or a degenerate inheritance. Psychological and psychopathic experts should be appointed to observe those who come in conflict with the law, not only with a view to providing more intelligently for the individuals, but for the purpose of discovering actual causes and conditions, so as to prevent others from entering on a life of vice and to check the increase of numbers in these classes.
“How far immorality and prostitution are the result of work conditions and the inability to live on the wages paid, how far these are a primary or a secondary cause, we do not definitely know. It is true that nearly all the girls have at some time been employed and that many of them have been working under conditions which were not favorable.
“Girls who have worked in kitchens, restaurants, offices, factories, stores, on the stage and in different workshops have many strange stories to tell, and one realizes that girls going out into the world of work are subject to many temptations. Girls crave some fun and amusement, and
it is a very natural, normal thing. They do not seek it in dangerous places, but the truth is that few others are open to them. To an increasing extent vice is being linked with amusement and recreation. The men who procure girls for immoral purposes from city and country, and who send them to the streets to earn money for their own enrichment, are responsible, to a great extent, for the constantly increasing supply of women who enter upon a life of prostitution.”
That the association has work to do is strikingly evidenced by the following table, showing the nature of the dispositions of cases in the night court for women.
“During the year from August 1, 1909, to July 30, 1910, 7,896 complaints were taken against girls and women in the night court, for offenses relating to immorality and prostitution. These included soliciting on the streets for purposes of prostitution, accosting men, associating with dissolute and vicious persons, and violating the tenement house act by carrying on prostitution in a tenement house.
“The disposition of the cases was as follows:
| Discharged | 2,648 |
| Fined $1 to $10 | 3,913 |
| Committed to the Workhouse | 1,071 |
| Placed on probation | 156 |
| Placed under Good Behavior Bond | 71 |
| Committed to N. Y. State Reformatory at Bedford | 6 |
| Committed to N. Y. Magdalen Benevolent Society | 9 |
| Committed to Protestant Episcopal House of Mercy | 3 |
| Committed to Roman Catholic House of the Good Shepherd | 12 |
| Committed to Immigration Authorities | 7 |
| Total | 7,896 |
“Of the total number, 84 per cent were almost at once returned to the streets by being discharged, fined, or placed under a good behavior bond. Fourteen per cent of the remaining 16 per cent were committed to the workhouse, and in only two per cent of the cases was some helpful measure tried—probation or a reformatory.
“The association has during 1910 developed a plan for preventive work to aid more of those girls who are in danger and to seek to understand better the conditions in the different districts tending to bring the girls into trouble. Many of this class have already been referred to the association, and it has been possible to help them by putting them in touch with helpful influences in the neighborhood, or by securing their removal from the district. For the purpose of the preventive and after-care work, the city has been divided into six districts. Some of the work in these districts is being done by volunteer workers who are not able to devote sufficient time in view of the extent and character of the work.”