The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-04-18
WEDNESDAY EVENING. APRIL 49, 1906

these juvenile offenders.
The system provides for juvenile
court where the fixed rules of the
criminal law are laid aside and the
court acts as though it were filling
the place of the parent in it's relation
to the child as we'll as the offense.
The system has many admirable
features, while the principle of re-
forming the child rather than permit
ting it to grow up into hardened
criminal is certainly ideal.
Once the child has committed a
crime. no matter how trivial. the
downward course is commenced which
must lead to prison or the galows if
not checked
The criminal law. while it is prob
ably the greatest system ever devised
both for protecting the innocent and
convictng the guilty, is not based on
human nature.
The man who Stays the despoiler
of his home must pass the same ordeal
as the one who stealthily enters the
victims chamber in the still hours Of
the night and stabs him while he lies
wrapped in slumber. in order that the
murderer may rob the mansion of it's
valuables without detection.
The law knows neither age nor
mental condition. The child who
steals dimes worth of candy is tried
by the same law as the man who
steals horse.
The child who becomes technically
Il criminal is not reformed by the en-
vironment in which he is at once
placed.
He is treated as though he were n
n.alured man. His sensibilities and
the methods of influencing him are
different from that OF the adult GRIM
inal.
In the heart of every child, no mat
ter how depraved, there turks a spark
of childish nature, pure and innocent,
which if properly reached will kindle
into a blaze of noble impulse. The
secret of reforming child criminals is
to fan to life this latent spark and
kindle it into, a flame before he is
aware of the act.
Some OF the juvenile courts have
sought to carry out this plan. They
seek to find out what is wrong in the
boys life and remedy the cause rather
than the effect
The boys are made to understand
that the court is not spy upon their
lives, but a friend who is ready to
give them a helping hand and
square deal at any time.
BY this means perverted natures
are reached and remedied. The GRIM
inals are put upon probation, and their
efforts to live better lives are matters
of praise while the delinquencies are
forgotten.
This method not only holds the child
in check so far as the commission
OF other crimes is concerned, but it
develops in him a strong manhood
that enables him to better live an up
right life. In time this effort to be
manly becomes part of the character
of the individual
If. instead of this method, the boy
had been sentenced to reform school,
deprived of his liberty to certain
degree, and been branded with the
stigma Of the criminal, he would have
brooded over his wrongs until he
came to believe them as real and in
his heart would rankle an enmity
against society and the law that would
have sent him out into the world a
SilulludI DIT NcdIts duu ere long one
in deed.
The boy VINO is good because
physical power compels him to be so
is effected by the goodness thus shown
about the same way as the man who
is compelled to pray in order to es-
cape college hazing is affected by
religion. 1t does not reach the heart
nor drive the evil from the mind.
If these juvenile courts are prac-
ticed in the larger cities, why could
they not be made so in the smaller
communities? Would it not be better
for the states to reform it's boys and
girls with criminal propensities, by
means which are applicable to their
natures rather than by methods which
brand them as criminals? The reform
school to the juvenile mind carries