“Of course a juvenile-court system, while under any average circumstance, is bound to be a step in advance of the old methods of the criminal law in dealing with children, yet its permanent and more complete success depends upon the individuals to whom its execution is intrusted. We have heard a great deal about probation officers. Upon the character, tact, skill and intelligence of the judge and his assistants—the probation officers—largely depends the success of the court. Without personal touch, influence, patience, encouragement of the child, and attempt to arouse all the nobler and better impulses, and to subdue and suppress the discords of the soul, complete success is not likely to be attained. The law itself is of small importance compared to these elements. There is no higher or more important position of a public character in the community than that of a probation officer, unless it be the judge of the juvenile court. Perhaps this might illy come from one occupying that position, yet I have no apology to make for the statement. I am sure the statement can be appreciated by few more than by one who occupied so important a position. As this work progresses and its wonderful results are constantly observed, the force of the statement impresses itself more and more upon the mind of the judge of the juvenile court.”
The same authority gives the following résumé of his method of dealing with the boys brought within the jurisdiction of his court: “In my opinion the best way to reform a boy waywardly disposed is first to understand him. You have got to get inside of him and see through his eyes, understand his motives, have sympathy and patience with his faults, just as far as you can, remembering that more can be accomplished through love than by any other method. But I would not have you misunderstand me. It has been well said that love without justice is sentiment and weakness! We must be just. There is no justice without love and yet we can judge in the light of both, forgetting not firmness and the right of others. We cannot be just without the exercise of patience and a plentiful supply of those higher qualities of the soul which must be brought to bear if we are able to call out the noblest impulses and the highest and most energetic forces of a child. The juvenile court and the probation system simply supply the machinery for doing this where heretofore such machinery was not permitted by the law. We pursued the blind, brutal, incongruous methods of recognizing a child as an irresponsible being in dealing with its dollars and cents, and denied it the right of contracting even while it was a minor, whereas when it came to offending against the law, when its moral welfare, its very soul, was involved, we denied its irresponsibility and placed it upon the same plane and in the same category with an adult.”
Supplemental to the juvenile law is the adult delinquency law, now on the statute books of certain states, which makes it a misdemeanor for any parent or other person to encourage, cause, or by any act contribute to the delinquency of a child, punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000 or by imprisonment not to exceed one year or by both such fine and imprisonment; and the juvenile court is given exclusive jurisdiction over such offenders. Such statutes are a complete recognition of parental responsibility for many cases of juvenile wrongdoing, such as visiting saloons to obtain beer for parents; stealing coal from railroad yards; stealing brasses or appliances from cars; breaking open cars and stealing goods, usually edibles, which are taken home and used either with the tacit or express consent of the parents; and many other thefts the fruits of which are shared directly or indirectly by the parents.
From this class of depredations the boy graduates into burglary and highway robbery. The adult delinquency law punishes such parents and drives home the consciousness of their responsibility to their children. Practically all delinquent boys who appear in our juvenile courts have one or both parents delinquent—delinquent either in the active, direct sense stated above, or in the passive, indirect sense of indifference or ignorance whereby their sons do not receive the moral training which is their birthright.
The result of the new method of boy-control now used by children’s courts is to reduce the number of commitments to industrial schools, reform schools, and other similar agencies of detention and correction from seventy-five to approximately ten in each hundred. Where the environment of home life is bad, the court does not hesitate to remove the child from his home to a place in which he will not be handicapped by such influence.
Our juvenile courts are at once a standing reproach to thoughtless, indifferent, ignorant, and wayward parents and a beacon light for the guidance of the unhappy children of such parents to useful citizenship. They inspire the admiration, sympathy, and coöperation of every lover of children who sees in them the future of our great republic.
CHAPTER XVIII
CONCLUSIONS
EVERY boy is endowed “with certain inalienable rights,” not the least of which is the right to be so trained that he will approach the stature of perfect manhood. It is a birthright in the same sense as his right from birth to food, clothing, and shelter. And this right of the child fixes upon the parent the corresponding duty of supplying intelligent training and character-building environment. The basis of all boy-training is parent-training, which I wish to emphasize even at the risk of continued reiteration. And parent-training should be based on a knowledge of boy-psychology and its application to the evolution of the boy, which will throw a flood of light on many of the problems which we formerly attempted to solve in the dark. His physical and moral growth are so dependent upon or intimately related to his mental growth that the solution of his psychological problems will, in most cases, tend to solve the others.
The subject presents no serious difficulties to the parent who possesses a consciousness of its importance to the welfare of his son. All of us have certain preconceived ideas on boy-training which emanate from the adult viewpoint and the adult standard of morals. We realize how, if we were in our son’s place, we would act or ought to act, but too often we forget that this is an application of the adult standard which is psychologically impossible to the boy. Get the boy’s viewpoint.
Patience, tact, and insight; insight, tact, and patience will work wonders with your boy. Insight is but another name for the boy’s viewpoint; it implies acquaintance with his psychology. The adult viewpoint of boy-problems is out of focus. We must re-adjust our psychologic lenses to see and perceive the motives which actuate his conduct, if we are to judge justly and sentence righteously. While the parent is passing judgment on his son’s acts, he should not forget to pass judgment on his own judgment. In training your boy, “you are handling soul-stuff and destiny waits just around the corner.”