“It being fairly well conceded by scientific social workers that delinquency of children, divorce, desertion, and adult criminality are inter-related and in great measure originate in the family, it was determined in 1914 in the City of Cincinnati to organize a court that might deal with the family situation as a whole; consequently, in that year the Legislature of the State of Ohio provided such a court for Hamilton County, in which the City of Cincinnati is located.
“Hamilton County has nine Nisi Prius Judges, designated in our State as the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. The law stipulated that at the next election of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas one should be designated on the ballot as Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Division of Domestic Relations, and to the judge so elected, the judges in joint session should assign all divorce and alimony cases, all cases of desertion and all cases arising under the Juvenile Court Act, which includes contributing to delinquency and dependency. As the Juvenile Court administers mothers’ pensions, this also comes under the jurisdiction of the so-called Court of Domestic Relations or, as it is termed in this city, Family Court.
“The purpose of the Court was that of securing more efficient handling of the problems of an anti-social character that arise in the family, and also of ascertaining, if possible, the causes of family dissension and disruption. While the law does not so provide, yet we have been able to organize a psychological and psychiatric clinic in connection with the court. The clinic now has three psychologists and a psychiatrist; in addition thereto, a physician for the purpose of making physical examinations of girls.
“The Juvenile Court procedure has all but disappeared. We do not believe that a court procedure has any therapeutic value in the handling of children afflicted with that which we term the disease of delinquency. It has been found possible for us to prevent the sending of children to the industrial schools, reformatories, or correctional institutes of any character.
“In this State we have an industrial school that now has a population of 1,200 boys. Cincinnati has a population of 500,000 and is the second largest city in the State. Notwithstanding this fact we have but two boys in the industrial school at this time and these two have been committed to that institution only because we have found them to be incurable and there is no other institution in the State that is equipped to handle cases of this kind. We hope to remedy this defect at an early date. We have sent no girls to the State industrial school for three years last past.
“It is a well-established fact that the anti-social behaviour at the basis of divorce is exceedingly injurious to children; therefore we use our probation force in the divorce division and attempt to care for the children involved.
“We have a central record system in which the history of the whole family is recorded. We find that in 30 per cent. of the divorce cases the family has previously appeared in some way in the Juvenile Division. The significance of this fact is apparent.
“We have found, too, that the grounds for divorce mentioned in the petition or complaint are but descriptive of the symptoms of the real causes that are seldom, if ever, mentioned in the petition or appear in the evidence. In fact, so far as the court procedure is concerned, the real causes would never be revealed. We made an intensive pathological investigation and examination in about 1,400 cases. The facts revealed in these examinations are of such a nature as to utterly refute the doctrine that in no instance ought a divorce to be granted or that a party should be prevented from obtaining a legal relief by a restricted divorce law or by making the divorce procedure so costly as to prevent the party from obtaining any relief under it.”
There are also certain other points which may one day be settled in order to give justice to the poor. One of them is the question of costs for an innocent person arrested on a criminal charge. It seems to me only right that if the prosecution fails the prisoner should have a right to obtain costs against the Crown even if he is not allowed the right of suing the Crown for damages for malicious prosecution, which, I think, should exist just as much as in the case of malicious prosecution by a private individual. In regard to murder, the prisoner has the special advantage of being able to give exclusive rights to some particular newspaper in consideration of the newspaper financing his defence; but in so far as this leads to a disproportionate amount of limelight being thrown by the said newspaper on the private life of the family history of the criminal, it tends to have a demoralizing effect. This advantage is at any rate denied to the ordinary poor man who is wrongfully arrested on some minor and scandalous charge, and the situation to-day is enormously aggravated by the employment of narks or decoys in mufti by the police.
I imagine that many of these reforms will be carried out by the Ministry of Justice which was so ardently advocated by the late Mr. Samuel Garrett as a substitute for the overworked Lord Chancellors of our day. But perhaps I need hardly recapitulate here the arguments for such a ministry which are set out in my book Concerning Solicitors.[1]