And she is very able. She has a mind adapted to the law, and she could write scenarios. Note how she plans in one letter to have something “up her sleeve” for the trial—to have her friend buy duplicates of the articles stolen on the anniversary of the theft, to change the date of the receipt from “1914” to “1915” on her employer’s typewriter, to put the receipt in the cuff of her wrap and leave it in the toilet room of the court to be found. This would be indeed a dramatic vindication. She is thoroughly cunning and she lies a great deal. But she is in a fight with organized society. She feels that there is a disproportion between her offense and her punishment, and that she is being wronged and defrauded of life. Cunning is one of the forms which intelligence takes in a fight. And in general people become cunning when they are oppressed or do not participate on an equal footing in their society. Esther is a Jew, and the “racial” cunning of the Jew has the same origin as the particular cunning in this case—exclusion from recognition and participation. Any successful scheme of education, reëducation or reformation must recognize the wishes expressed by Esther and will involve an active participation of the subject in the plan. Esther was not bad enough to be committed to the institution to which she was assigned, but once there we note her complete psychic isolation from the officials and from the family in which she was placed. She was directed toward no interesting and creative work, and was not included in any form of society in which she completely participated and in which she could have recognition and the gratification of the other wishes. And this is characteristic both of the penitentiary and of the older type of reformatory for adults and for children.
But some years ago the juvenile courts were established. It had become apparent that numbers of disorderly children, mainly from broken homes, were being brought into the criminal courts for escapades and sexual offenses, placed in jails with hardened criminals and thereby having the possibility of the formation of a normal scheme of life destroyed once and forever. Certain women were the first to protest and to act, and the result was the formation of a court for children which dispensed with lawyers and legal technicalities, and treated the child as far as possible as an unruly member of a family, not as a criminal. The first of these courts was established in Chicago, and in 1908 provision was made for the study of the child by endowing a psychological and medical clinic,—a practice which has been followed by other juvenile courts. During the past decade some of these courts have reached a high degree of elaboration and perfection. Their service has been very great in checking the beginnings of demoralization. The court is wiser than the parents of the children and incidentally does much to influence home life. These courts have also focused attention on the general questions and methods of reform and have begun to influence both penal institutions and general education. There are many successful formulations of influence developed by women of insight and personality connected with the juvenile courts in numerous localities. An important review of these conditions has recently been made by Miriam van Waters.[[96]] But perhaps the highest perfection of procedure has been reached in the juvenile court of Los Angeles where Dr. van Waters is herself the referee.
87. In the treatment of juvenile delinquency that comes before the court and involves change in status there should be an integration of the forces that seek to establish new social relationships.... Some mechanism of passing the threshold from ward of the state to the threshold of normal citizenship should be devised with sufficient strength to endure over the period of crisis.
An attempt to meet the problem of socialization has recently been begun in behalf of the juvenile court of Los Angeles County. For the girl whose normal relation to the family group has been severed by reason of the permanently broken home, parents dead, imprisoned, incurably ill, or defective and the like—a girl whose behavior-difficulties make it impossible for her to be absorbed in the neighborhood group—there is usually no provision but the reformatory institution. A place of adjustment, a link between the court, the detention home and the community is an important phase of diagnosis and treatment. El Retiro, a school for girls of Los Angeles County, is an experiment toward such solution.
The method of adjustment is as follows: Preliminary tests and examinations are made in the detention home and a more or less homogeneous group of girls in their teens are selected for El Retiro. An intensive program of work, study, play and expression has been provided. Student government, that is to say, student participation in the conduct of affairs of group life, not a formal organization based on the least satisfactory elements of our government, the municipality and the police court, but rather a flexible, club-like organization of team work and community responsibility is maintained. After another period of observation at El Retiro a conference is held concerning the girl. At this conference all available sources of information are brought together.
The referee of the court, the probation officer, physician, psychologist, superintendent of El Retiro, the principal of the El Retiro school, the recreation director (who later directs the program of the girl and directs the accomplishment of her project), and one of the girls chosen from the student-body to represent the student-body knowledge and opinion—all these persons with specialized information meet to form a many-angled diagnosis. Traits of personality and the reaction to group life are stressed especially. In this field of research no opinion is more competent than that of the girl who represents the student-body point of view—a mine of information hardly touched as yet by social research. The objective of the conference is the formation of a project or activity-goal for the new student, a task suited to her strength and personality and for which she will be responsible and receive the reward of recognition. On the completion of this project, usually from eight to ten months, the girl is ready to leave El Retiro; that is to say, she has succeeded in some phase of group life and important clues for the adjustment of her personality in the larger community outside have been formed.
Since these results have been attained largely as the result of social relationships formed within the group at El Retiro, and by the use of the project method and student government, the girl is likely to have developed both self-confidence and group loyalty. The next essential was to form some social relationship for the complete passage of the girl into the community.
A Girls’ Club was organized and a club house secured in the city for about eighteen girls and their field secretary. The girls pay their board and work in stores, industries, etc. The housework is done by one girl, who is paid by the others to act as home-maker. It is called the Los Angeles Business Girls’ Club and is sponsored by the Los Angeles Business Women’s Club not as a charity, but as an act of coöperation on the part of the business women with the younger and handicapped working girls of the city. Not all the residents are wards of the court, the chief requirement being that girls be under twenty-one years of age and receiving the minimum wage. The club serves as meeting place for organization of young people, business girls, college girls, etc. Thus any element of isolation, or unlikeness, is at an end for the girl who may be a ward of the court and she is brought into relationship with the normal forces of the community.
The following four cases, selected because they serve to illustrate the integrating processes at work in a socialized court procedure, may be presented.
Evelyn is one. She is an orphan of Canadian extraction. Placed by a children’s aid society in some six temporary homes, she readily drifted into delinquency. For two years for her it was a succession of institutions, tempered by probation, after she came under the court. Then El Retiro was established. Her health was so delicate that she was sent there for observation for anæmia. There her central ability was discovered—leadership, and her chief interest the design and manufacture of clothing. On graduation she became president of the alumnæ group of girls and went to live at the club house. She began earning $22.00 per week as designer and shortly plans to open a shop of her own. As president of the alumnæ organization she has succeeded in doing what no probation officer has done—the voluntary reporting of each girl’s change of work, address, and new friends. If they are out of work through indifference or indolence, her fluent scorn and her own stylish costume act on them as a spur. Her activity has two major outlets, leadership and craftsmanship.