Juvenile probation is no new thing. It has been used in Massachusetts since 1869, or for over thirty years, and for the same length of time in that state a statute has required that children’s cases should be “heard and determined by themselves, separate from the general and ordinary criminal business of said courts.” There is no separate children’s court in Massachusetts, but in some of the courts the session for adults is formally adjourned, and the room is cleared of all except those who have to do with the juvenile cases; in other courts the session for juveniles is held in a separate room or in the judge’s private room. In either case there are evils, as is shown in a letter from Mr. Charles W. Birtwell, secretary of the Massachusetts Children’s Aid Society: “Unfortunately in all the courts juveniles under arrest are apt to be mixed with adults while waiting during the hour or so preceding the trial. If not under arrest but only summoned, they may wait in the outside lobbies, but get more or less mixed with the throng about and in the court room.”
The first juvenile court was opened in Chicago in 1899 and at once had wide notice, largely through the excellent work of the monthly periodical, the Chicago Juvenile Record. It was through this juvenile court that the probation system first became general. Mr. Folks tells us, in his “Care of Delinquent Children,” that “the system did not secure formal adoption, so far as we are aware, in any other state than Massachusetts until the enactment of the juvenile court law in Illinois in 1899.” “In 1901,” he says, “the probation system is in actual operation, or is provided for by statute, in fifteen of the twenty-five largest cities of the United States,” and the number is now rapidly increasing. It is another instance of the contagion of ideas which in this century outstrips the contagion of disease.
On February 26, 1900, the Buffalo Charity Organization Society appointed a committee on probation which held several meetings, but found that nothing could be done without legislation, which it was then too late to procure. A law passed May 1, 1901, through the efforts of this committee, allowed the Buffalo police justice to suspend sentence with juvenile delinquents, and place them under probation for a term not exceeding three months. The act allowed him to appoint five unsalaried probation officers, and provided that when practicable the probation officer should be of the same faith as the child placed in his care. The court opened July 1, 1901. By an amendment passed in February, 1902, the number of probation officers, still unpaid, was increased to ten, and authority was given to extend the probation for additional terms of three months in the discretion of the judge. A state probation law was also passed in 1901, but was so amended that it applied only to those over sixteen years of age. Consequently in New York State, outside of Buffalo, a chance is given to adult delinquents which is denied to little children.
Under the new New York City charter a juvenile court was created for the boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx (excluding Brooklyn), but with no provision for probation. This juvenile court was to open January 1, 1902, but for some reason did not do so.
Judge Murphy, of the Buffalo Police Court, was an active member of the committee of the Charity Organization Society which procured the probation law. Although the law was permissive only, he at once put it into effect, and also on his own motion transferred all his juvenile cases to a separate building, several blocks distant from the police court, where he holds his juvenile court on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. The great success of the court in Buffalo is chiefly due to his interest. Where for any reason a good judge is not available a juvenile court must suffer, for probation gives many opportunities for favoritism to both the judge and the probation officers. It is hardly too much to say that the character of the court will be the same as the character of the judge.
Of the ten probation officers in Buffalo all are unpaid for this special work, but two are truant officers, two are officers of the Charity Organization Society, and one is the head worker of Welcome Hall, a leading settlement. The city is divided into two districts, in each of which there are a Catholic and a Protestant female officer for the girls and the younger boys, and a Catholic and a Protestant male officer for the older boys. There are a Jewish officer and a Polish officer for the city at large.
It is not perhaps desirable to recapitulate here the peculiarities of all the juvenile courts. In Massachusetts and St. Louis the probation officers are paid. In New Jersey the court costs are paid them. In Chicago, Pennsylvania, Milwaukee and Buffalo they are unpaid, or paid from private sources. In Chicago the probation is until the child’s majority. In Boston, as in Buffalo, it is for short terms renewable on their expiration. It seems as if the short term would give the child a goal in sight and so help his striving.
The Buffalo juvenile court has not quite completed its first year, and no definite records have been compiled, but two results are already notable—the decrease in the number of commitments to the truant school and to reformatories, and the increase in the number of children arrested. The first result was expected, for many children are now cared for in their homes under probation who would otherwise have to be sent to the public truant school or to a reformatory. The second result was not anticipated, but is in this way excellent. Much juvenile lawlessness formerly ran riot without arrest because the officers knew that the judge would not send a child away for petty offences, and mere rebuke meant so little that the child fresh from court would jeer at the officer who had arrested him. With probation an arrest is taken more seriously by the children. At a recent session of the court Judge Murphy called attention to this increase in the number of arrests, and recommended legislation which should make convictions in the juvenile court inadmissible as evidence of character in either civil or criminal actions, so that mere juvenile peccadilloes could not constitute a criminal record.
The economy of probation greatly reinforces the support of the system on ethical grounds. It is not often that a measure of social reform makes an immediate appeal to the taxpayer, but probation relieves him from the public maintenance of many delinquents who under this plan are maintained at home at their parents’ charge. In Massachusetts, where probation has been in operation many years, the district attorney has prepared figures showing that it has saved the state much more than the cost of its operation, though it is administered there by salaried probation officers. On the side of morality the saving is still greater, though less definite. If this saving of character could be translated into dollars and cents the cash gain to the state through the diminution of crime would be seen to be even greater than the saving in maintenance.
Again, the presence daily in the court of a group of disinterested men and women of character helps to maintain the moral tone of the court. They sometimes see things which the court unaided might not see. More than once in Buffalo pettifogging lawyers, who have been reaping fees from parents on the pretence that their services caused the judge to put children on probation instead of sending them away, have been excluded from the court on report of the probation officers as to their practices.