Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

The New York Society for the Improvement of Urban Conditions among Negroes is seeking to train colored men and women for probationary work among their own race. In the past year 464 cases of adult and juvenile delinquency were handled. “The Committee takes special pains to secure thorough follow-up work. Each case is treated as one of special importance in which the worker handling the same considers herself personally responsible.” A class of girls which the magistrates’ court assigned to the Association for care and which other associations have turned over to it is being instructed in gardening by a teacher furnished by the Board of Education. The Society also tries to reinstate discharged employees when mere misunderstandings have led to dismissal and in other deserving cases. It believes in labor organization as an aid to this security.

So many other forms of social effort are working toward the same goal as probation that it is impossible to estimate the number engaged in preventing individuals from becoming public offenders and public charges. Probation officers do use, and are urged to use further, all existing organizations which are established to supply fundamental needs like shelter, food, clothing, employment, medical help, recreation, education and the rest. Indeed probation officers are dependent upon the organized efforts to supply those needs—so dependent that probation work can proceed only in proportion to the effectiveness of those organizations.

Here then we have a condition of a great public service, one of the greatest, being still dependent on private charity and effort. Many elements, like competition, intermittency of help, and incompetency owing to the volunteer nature of the organization, prevent the widest usefulness of these allied agencies upon which success in probationary work so largely depends. For that reason there are probationary as well as other social workers who begin to emphasize the ideal of public concentration of social effort in the city administration with the aim of eliminating waste and securing certainty of support and steadiness of trained effort. All the forces of the community need to be centrally organized, it is argued, to meet the requirements of the probationary system and such central organization must be governmental since the probation function is a governmental one.

Thus probation work leads into social service in the widest sense. Every disclosure of the shortcomings of the system of imprisonment shows this. And it is natural that women who are so keenly concerned in every branch of social service should give attention to the larger aspects of probation: the reformation of the individual wrongdoer and the protection of society. That many women probationary officers are not content with a narrow view of their functions will be discovered by anyone who takes the pains to read the discussions at the Fifth Annual New York Conference of Probation Officers, held in Syracuse, in 1912, at which, for the first time, there was a special meeting for women to consider the special problems of women.

At the Fourth Annual Conference of the State Association of Magistrates in Syracuse, in 1912, Dr. Katharine B. Davis, now commissioner of corrections of New York City, presented a plan, which she had been urging, for a state commission into whose care all women delinquents should be given as soon as convicted and for a more rational use of existing State institutions for women and the establishment of other institutions needed to carry out the work of the commission. Miss Julia O’Connor, a probation officer in the New York Children’s Court, emphasized the need of dealing with defective children and Miss Gertrude Grasse, Secretary of the Juvenile Protective Association, brought out the fact that an inspection of school children for feeble-mindedness would prevent defectives getting into the courts at all.

Women attended the sessions of this conference of magistrates and were present at the dinner which formed one of the features of the occasion. At that dinner the president said: “Ladies and gentlemen: For the first time in the history of our Association, the chairman has to use the word ‘ladies’ in addressing the gathering, which shows that we have joined the ranks of the progressives.” The Association of Magistrates firmly believes in the value of salaried women probation officers in juvenile courts and for women offenders and makes recommendations constantly to the courts with reference to their appointment.

Police Matrons

More difficult than the opening of probation work to women has been the no less obvious task of installing a sufficient number of police matrons. An examination of the records shows that these important officers have been established through the efforts of women in all large western cities and also extensively through the East. The Women’s Prison Association of New York is seeking to secure police matrons in all the stations instead of having women dragged about to different stations to find them. This association was instrumental in getting patrol wagons, moreover, so that women might not be taken through the streets by policemen.

Boston has a street matron, Mrs. Thomas Tyler, an officer employed by the Florence Crittenton Mission, who goes about at night wherever girls are found in streets, parks, theaters, and cafés and gives help to them where it is needed. The shelter of the Mission is a valuable aid to her in her work. Mrs. Tyler is a private policewoman supplementing, not supplanting, other agencies that work with girls.

The employment of women physicians in courts for women is a necessity strongly urged by women’s probation and other associations. In some courts they are already serving in that capacity.