An account of the court’s equipment is incomplete without a word in regard to the detention quarters set aside in its own building by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The detention home, with dormitories and dining rooms, is given rent free. The total expense of caring for the children temporarily in the care of the society in 1909 amounted to something over $20,000.[30] The total amount spent by the city for court service in handling over 11,000 cases in 1909 was $56,012.15. This averages $5.00 less per capita than any other large city in the country.
The development of a probation system for juvenile delinquents was of very slow growth in New York City. The first probation law in New York state was passed in 1901, but children under sixteen were excluded through the efforts of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.[31] In 1903, a compromise was made which permitted the appointment of an official probation staff. Until the series of adjustments and improvements recommended by the reports of the Page Commission[32] in April, 1910, was begun, the agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the volunteer probation societies did the only work approaching probation in nature.[33] The court process, however, was not probation, but parole, though until recently the words were used as synonymous in the court. “At the end of the period of parole, sentence is suspended if the child has done well,” wrote Mr. Homer Folks. “The term ‘parole’ as used in this court signifies practically an adjournment of the case. The oversight of the children on parole is not clearly separated from the work of the agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”[34]
Very early in the history of the court private efforts were made to help the many children who, it was felt, were not receiving adequate attention. The impulse to reform and save the child, being largely moral, naturally originated in the churches. The result was a division of volunteer probation along church lines which left its impress on the later developments of probation work.
In Manhattan the first to enter the field were the Catholics. The Catholic Probation League, incorporated February 3, 1907, under the auspices of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, was the appropriate sponsor for the movement. The pioneer work had already been done, however, by a small group of women known as the Catholic Ladies’ Committee. After the formation of the Probation League, its parole committee co-operated with the ladies’ committee by taking over the cases of the older boys. The committee took all the girls’ cases and gave them especial attention. The members themselves did the visiting, and at one time maintained a paid worker. Some of them favored the establishment of an official probation staff. They thought that the willingness of volunteer agencies to shoulder the entire burden was delaying this important move.
The Jewish Protectory and Aid Society had for several years engaged in parole and probation work to a certain extent. The society maintained a paid worker who represented its legal authority as guardian of all Jewish juvenile delinquents in the city and who was made a special officer by the police commissioner. Until the recent establishment of the Jewish Big Brother movement he bore the brunt of all the visiting of Jewish cases, and handled as best he could all the cases passing through the court or paroled from the Hawthorne School.
Before the founding of the Big Brother movement, there was no organized effort in behalf of the children of Protestant parents who passed through the court and were not committed to an institution. Ernest K. Coulter, clerk of the court, seeing the need of work similar to that of the other two great religious groups, induced a club of men in the Central Presbyterian Church to promise that each one would act as “Big Brother” to one court boy. The preliminary work was carried on by the club for a couple of years, and the movement aroused considerable interest. Other church clubs also took up the work. In March, 1907, the movement was reorganized, so as to be independent of the churches. For a time the branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association acted as “centers” while neighboring church clubs acted as “locals.” Later the alliance with the Association was severed, the work becoming independent of sponsorship.
The Jewish Big Brother movement, modeled in many respects upon the Big Brother movement of the Protestants, was formally organized in February, 1909. At first, this society took only the boys on parole from the Hawthorne School, but later the work was extended to include parole cases from the House of Refuge.
All these religious agencies,[35] in contrast to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, have not been in any way connected officially with the court.[36]
1. GETTING INTO COURT
Let us follow a boy, accused of violation of the law, through all the possible vicissitudes of a court experience in Manhattan previous to September, 1910. The task may prove tedious but not nearly so meaningless or bewildering for the reader as for the thousands of families who had to go through it every year.