It is desirable that the school should eventually supersede the juvenile court and replace other welfare agencies concerned with the child, but in adapting itself to this task and to the task of general education it will be compelled to make provision for the development of the emotional and social life of the child as well as the informational, and in doing this it will inevitably approach the model of El Retiro as described by Doctor van Waters.

CHAPTER VI
THE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE

In the last chapter we have seen the development of definite methods and very positive successes, but everybody who deals with human beings professionally—the educator, the criminologist, the statesman—feels that he has no certain method for the control of behavior, that there are obscure and incalculable elements, that the same procedure does not secure the same results when applied to different individuals, that the successes are often as unintelligible as the failures, and that such successes as there are depend on common sense, personality, and trial and error rather than on any known system of laws.

For example, among the social sciences criminology has a larger amount of concrete material bearing on behavior, more printed and unprinted cases than any of the others. Certainly there is the strongest possible motive for understanding the criminal and reforming him, and preventing crime in general. But a recent appeal to the public by the President of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology for funds to study the effects of criminal procedure indicates how far criminology is from being a science:

... The institute asks that special inquiry be made of the wisdom and success of probation, parole, indeterminate sentence and the entire handling of criminals after conviction; that present acute differences of opinion among equally public-spirited citizens be clarified and sound conclusions reached as to the treatment of convicted criminals, neither in the interests of sentimentality nor of vindictive vengeance, but for the better protection of the public and the promotion of law and order. The public may be shocked to know that no one now has facts to answer the above inquiries.[[108]]

The whole criminal procedure is based on punishment and yet we do not even know that punishment deters from crime. Or rather, we know that it sometimes deters and sometimes stimulates to further crime, but we do not know the conditions under which it acts in the one way or the other.

Similarly the most successful workers with delinquent children report that sometimes their charges reform themselves spontaneously and, so to speak, in spite of the efforts of the institution.

In analyzing the process of our successes among the so-called delinquent girl two types are of special interest—those who “make good” without any special kind of treatment, who get well by themselves, that is to say, those who would have succeeded in any case; and second, those who have succeeded by some accident, some course of the girl’s own that ran counter to our wishes, our routine and our expectation; in short, those who “make good” in spite of us.

The second type, those who unexpectedly make good by their own plan, which is not of our making, is of profound sociological significance. “We possess only that which we set free”, said an old Chinese philosopher. How many of us know girls whom we have not set free, but who have taken the bit in their teeth and run away from us, later to emerge decently clothed, resourceful, industrious, successful and adjusted to life beyond our fondest hopes. Recently I visited some thirty state institutions for the training of delinquent girls. Most of the superintendents reported stories of rebellion, escape, followed by the inexplicable “making good.” Many commented on fortunate marriages contracted because the girl strayed in forbidden paths, dancehalls, piers, rinks, cafés and other loafing places of Prince Charming. We are more familiar with this type of fortuitous success in boys than in girls, boys who flee from us to navy, army or wild west. Many a candid probation officer will tell you that she has met with it in girls.[[109]]

Detective Burns, speaking of the counterfeiter Wilken, says below (document No. 92, p. 236): “I have often wondered whether his talents would have been smothered by convention if he had been kept in the straight and narrow path. The most commonplace man becomes sometimes the most startlingly original crook. The reformed crook, on the other hand, turns to honesty and becomes duller than ditch-water.”