The Elements of Child-protection

by Sigmund Engel

(c) In the preliminary proceedings it is necessary to study very thoroughly the family life and social conditions in which the child has grown up. The most satisfactory way is to seek the necessary information from the parents or other persons in authority, or from other adult associates of the child, as from the guardian, the teacher, the clergyman, or from servants.

(d) A child awaiting trial should on no account be sent to prison. If safe custody of the person is essential, some grown person in whom the court has confidence must be made responsible for the care of the child.

(e) The prosecuting authority should have the right to make any proposal which may further the child’s interests, including a proposal to send the accused to a reformatory.

(f) The trial should on no account be a public one. (It is essential, when criminal proceedings are taken against a minor, that no other minors should be admitted to court as idle spectators.) We are concerned, not with the punishment, but with the education of a child, and the matter is not one suitable for the fullest publicity. But for the protection of the child’s interests, it is, of course, necessary that the legal representatives of the accused, and the officials of organisations for child-protection, should attend the proceedings.

(g) Juveniles should never be tried by a jury. This proceeding is too solemn and too elaborate. Moreover, it is not within the competence of a jury to determine whether the child possesses the understanding so frequently mentioned as to the punishable character of the offence. The only reason for which trial by jury might be advantageous, is that a jury is more apt than a judge to take a mild view.

(h) In the first instance, even in the case of graver offences, the matter should come before an individual judge. Whenever possible, he should be one experienced in matters of education and psychology, and one whose specialty it is to deal with juvenile offenders. The majority of criminal judges do not possess to-day the experience and training requisite to the competent handling of juvenile offenders, inasmuch as the majority of criminals brought before them are adults. In every law court there should be one judge whose specialty it is to deal with juvenile offenders; in countries in which the law court is also the Board of Guardianship (see [note on p. 74)], juvenile offenders should be brought before the Children’s Judge (Pupilarrichter), who knows the children better than his professional colleagues. Criminal proceedings against children tend more and more to assume the form simply of the choice of the necessary educational measures. Inasmuch as a coercive reformatory education, when not the outcome of a criminal prosecution, has, in most cases, been prescribed by the Board of Guardianship, it would seem as well that the power to order a coercive reformatory education in the case also of juvenile criminal offenders should be transferred to the law court which works under the authority of the Board of Guardianship.

(i) The prosecuting authority and the law court must keep in close touch with all the associations devoted to the work of child-protection, and with the institutions subserving this purpose, and must avail themselves of the counsel and support of these associations and institutions.

(k) In criminal proceedings against juvenile offenders, defence plays a different part from that which it plays in the criminal prosecution of adults. It should not be the principal aim of the defending counsel to secure an acquittal or a diminution of punishment, but rather to make sure that the juvenile offender shall receive the treatment best adapted to effect his reform.

Penal Methods in the United States of America.—It is in the United States of America that penal methods applicable in the case of juvenile offenders have obtained their highest development. Children’s Courts now exist in about thirty of the States; the first of these Courts came into existence in the year 1899. The Children’s Court is either a special department of an ordinary law court, or else a Children’s Court ad hoc; in either case it deals with all the punishable offences committed by children, with the exception of very serious crime. In many of the States of the American Union the Children’s Courts deal not only with neglected children and truants from school, but also, and very logically, with certain offences committed by adults; for example, the infliction of excessive punishment upon children, the ill-treatment of children, breaches of the laws regulating child-labour, and the like. In this we see a clear manifestation of the tendency to make the Children’s Court responsible for all legal matters wherein juveniles are concerned. The Children’s Court lays the greatest possible stress upon giving the accused an opportunity, after he has received appropriate instruction, to effect his own amendment without the further intervention of the Court. But should the offence be repeated, a sentence will have to be passed, and the matter of recidivity will have to be taken into consideration. The powers of the Court are the widest possible. It can reprimand the child, punish it, postpone sentence, send it to a reformatory, determining where and how the coercive reformatory education shall be effected, can summon the child before the Court at any time, &c. In many of the States, individualisation and classification have been carried so far that the Courts hold special sittings to deal with truancy from school, the case of neglected children, criminal offences, &c.

The judge of the Children’s Court cannot expect to attain any very valuable results in the absence of a staff of assistants possessing the necessary training. But these assistants are not educationalists, nor doctors, nor child-protectors. The right hand of the Children’s Court is the “Probation Officer,” who is appointed by the Court—a thoroughly cultivated person, generally one trained originally as a teacher, who has received theoretical and practical training in a “philanthropical school.” They have no connection with the police, and yet have some of the powers of police officials. It is their duty to make all the investigations needed by the Court; they compile a record of the personal data of all the children who pass through their hands; they furnish reports to the Courts; help the children and their parents by word and deed, both during and after the legal proceedings, in the manner prescribed by the Courts; if necessary, they find suitable foster-parents, and keep under supervision all the children who are placed on probation.