There were, in the families investigated, a number of boys who were not themselves arrested, but who were, nevertheless, properly included in our study of delinquency. Their gang relations or other connections with the boys who were arrested made their cases significant. As these boys and the boys concerning whose arrests complete statistical information is lacking numbered, together, 35, the total number of boys dealt with is 294.
Not all the boys were really delinquent. Some were brought into court because of improper guardianship, an offense on the part of the parents rather than on that of the children; and others who were not incorrigible came to the notice of the investigators. The word “delinquent” seems properly to apply to 249 of the 294 boys.
We shall divide the 454 arrests studied into three main groups: (1) The group of 260 cases in which the court did nothing after the child left its doors; namely, those acquitted, discharged, released under suspended sentence, whipped, or fined; (2) the group of 95 paroled cases; (3) the group of 99 cases committed to institutions. Each of these groups will be considered separately in the following sections.
II. THE BOY WHO IS LET GO
The majority of the children who daily passed through the court were dismissed either on the day of the trial or, at the latest, after the rehearing a day or two later.[41] We have recorded 260 of these cases, considered trivial by the court and closed officially as soon as the offender passed out of the door on Eleventh Street. As some children were arrested more than once on these petty charges, the 260 arrests affected 197 individuals and 176 families. In the words of the district, these 197 boys were simply “let go.”
The district phrase does not discriminate between the several verdicts under which this might happen. If evidence was wanting to prove the child guilty of the special act of which he was accused, he was “discharged.” If, on the other hand, he was convicted, he might still be allowed to go free with a “suspended sentence,” under which he might be retried at any time during the ensuing year. However, a retrial practically never occurred unless the boy was rearrested under a new charge. This fundamental distinction, then, between innocence and guilt becomes a mere technical difference and must be gleaned by the stickler for verbal accuracy from the court records and the rulings of the law. It is not to be discovered in the minds of either parents or children. Both verdicts came to the same thing in the end. “Aw, he got out a’ right the next day. They couldn’t do nothin’ to him for a little thing like that.”
Sometimes the boy was let go but a fine was imposed. This was a fact never to be forgotten by his parents. Several years after the event, the mother would recall ruefully: “He cost me two dollars for that fine, he did—an’ him only standin’ and lookin’ on.” When the fine was not forthcoming, the youngster might be held for the day in the court building and then dismissed. Sometimes the record reads “Committed for a day,” which means that the culprit had received a trouncing from an official of the court. But there was very little difference after the lapse of a few months in the effect of these verdicts, whether of discharge or suspended sentence, because none projected themselves very far into the later experience of the boy. There was some additional hectoring at home and the full recital of events to the gang. Then, with a few exceptions, the experience became past history.
Owing to the thousands of petty cases which flood the court the individual case was cursorily handled during the hearing as well as afterward. There was seldom any effort to probe deeper into the affair than appeared from the version given by the little group before the bench, consisting of the officer who made the arrest, the complainant, if there was one, perhaps a friend or witness who was interested and chose to be present, and the boy’s parents. Sometimes the mother did not even reach the bench, so great was the speed with which such cases were reeled off. Very seldom was there any time for patient questioning, without which the truth cannot be obtained from a reluctant and fearful child or from a parent already on the defensive. The disposition of the case, according to the routine procedure, must be based on an inadequate knowledge of the circumstances. On a minor charge the judge would seldom utilize his right to adjourn a hearing, and even this so-called “Remand for Investigation” might be used merely as a light punishment, since the child was kept for several days in the detention rooms of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. It did not necessarily mean that any further inquiry was made.
In so rough a hopper as our system of arrests, boys of all sorts are run in on petty complaints. Of course, many of the tales of needless and mistaken arrests must be taken with a large grain of salt, as the mother is often quite ready to accept the boy’s version. But the evidence of disinterested residents and social workers in the district indicated the casual nature of many of the arrests. An arrest was simply bad luck, like the measles. “I ain’t been in court yet!” said Joey Burns. “I’ve only been in court twice,” said Patrick Coogan.
Nor is the argument entirely against the “cop.” The chances are that, if the boy wasn’t throwing craps then, he had done it often enough before, and the policeman, as the mother bitingly comments, “has got his job to hold down.” In case of a bonfire or a fight, it is humanly impossible to select from a horde of running boys the exact one who threw the can or lit the match. An onlooker is pretty sure to be hauled in and an angry woman to be down around the officer’s ears with, “It’s a foine sight of a strappin’ strong man ye are t’ be takin’ up a poor innicint b’y an’ lettin’ thieves and sluggers get away on yez.”