Los Angeles herald., 1909-10-04
CHILDREN SAVED
FROM PERDITION
MUST BE HERDED NO LONGER
WITH CRIMINALS
Juvenile Court Legislation Grows in
Popularlty-Judge Lindsays Views
In Accord with All Scien-
tific Thought

In April, 1908 a Brooklyn man, ageO
%. was released from Napanoch re-
formatoory, New York, and presented
with the $40 given to prisoners on
their discharge. He invested this sum
in the purchase of a revolver, went dl-
rectly to his mothers house and shot
her dead He subsequently explained
that he had thought the matter over
carefully and fully decided on his
course, as he had, thanks TO his
mother. passed sixteen of his twenty
two years in various reformatory IN
stitutlons, including the Catholic pro-
tectory, the house of refuge and the
Elmira reformatory.
Last year a New York judge sem
fenced a lad of II to seven years IN
Sing Sing He had served nine terms
in Juvenile reformatories. The article
by Harry Hall. treasurer of the Berk-
shire Industrial farm. in the outlook
of August g. 190S from which we take
these facts, gives another instance or
a bov of 12 years who had been con-
yicted six times of what would De
considered serious crimes In the case
of an adult, the first conviction being
when he was only years old. 1t re-
fers to the case of another lad Who on
being sentenced to state prison, SAID
to the Judge: Il want to say that
when I was first sent to the house OF
refuge was a good boy; when L
came out / was burglar Appar-
emily the reformatory, in many in
stances at any rate fails to reform.
Before us is a somewhat old report,
for it is dated 1890, but an exhaustive
one. on the reformatories and penal
institutions of the United States. 1t
is by Robert T. Devlin, president of
the state board of prison directors or
California 1t deals largely with es-
tablishments for boys. 1t contains
some most edifying reflections, as for
example: THE prison principle Is
more or less hateful to the adult de-
linquent; it is an adherence to the
Youthful offender. The prison prin-
ciple in reform peculiarly outrages the
nature of child life. The shock pen
etrates to the ends of his being, ana
body and soul rise up against 1t in the
fiercest antagonism, for as soon as
born the great law is upon the child
that ne springs toward the develop
ment of a man. To this end his Gre
ator has endowed him with the most
intense activity and restlessness. The
child loves and pants for freedom.
His every contact with nature is but
his communion with second
mother"
Theory and Practice
Thereupon we turned with enthusi-
ssm to the first detailed report, that on
the state industrial school for juvenile
Offenders, at Kearney, Neb. This was
at that time, to all appearances a much
admired institution being organized on
the family or cottage plan, supposed 10
represent the latest and most liberal
idea. For purposes of reward and pun
ishment there is a system of merits
and demerits, anC this we scanned
gracefully, hoping to discover what in
the ewes of the authorities, constitutes
Cd
what we found: 1.-THE furnishing OF
correct information to an officer of an
inmate planning to escape entities the
informer to 100 merits (by far the larg-
est number offered). For an attempt
to escape an inmate forfeits all merits
earned by him, and may receive such
additional punishment as the supertn-
tendent may determine" In other
words, the child, as acknowledged, may,
should and must pant for freedom, but
he had better not try to get it, and
the greatest saint in our calendar is
the informer. Who but prison officials
could have thought out such a moral
ity? And an examination of the rules
of other Juvenile institutions dealt with
in this report discloses the same feature
occurring with sickeningly monotonous
regularity. No wonder the reformatory
has not reformed.
OF late years a change in public opin
ion has begun to make itself manifest;
and, as keepers of menageries will tell
you that the first essential to preserv-
ing the health of their animals is to
provide them with amusement, so it
has dawned on a favored few that this
creature, the cllild-"endowed with the
most intense activity and restlessness'
needs recreation rather than disci-
pline. Hence juvenile courts, juvenile
probation associations, the big Broth
Z %1Ns.Ya
cities, and such establishments as the
Good Will farm in Maine, the Allandale
farm near Chicago, the George Junior
republic in New York and California,
and Boyville, near Cleveland, Ohio. But,
indeed, the last named was but a nat
ural outgrowth of the Cleveland farm
colony a 1900-acre estate on which the
city's workhouse prisoners for years
past have been employed-an extraord-
mary institution in which convicted
adults carry on the industries of farm
ing and quarryig without a guard over
them, with no balls or chains upon their
legs, and without even a stockade to
keep them from escaping; which, by
the way, they hardly ever do.
Fairgrounds Multiply
Hence also the rapid increase of play
grounds so rapid that we find the secre-
tary of the Playground association OF
America reporting last year that with
in the past twelve months the number
of cities maintaining Fairgrounds for
children had grown from Sc to 1856.
But it appears that in this, as in other
matters bearing on the prison question,
the south is still behind the times, the
report stating that this movement
greatly needs extension in southern
cities, in which, with the introduction
of factories, the child problem has be-
come acute
Millions who are blind to the pathetic
figure presented by that large dein-
quent child, the convict, feel deeply
interested in the youthful young, and
probably as subsidiary to the agita-
tion against child labor there has de-
veloped a general sympathy that may
be seen in the greater attention that is
being paid to the treatment of defec-
tive children; the interest shown by
the medical profession in the glandular
diseases to which the children Of the
poor are often subject; the demand that
children shall be fed as we'll as taught.
and so forth. Naturally such an awak-
ening could not overlook the absurdity
Of the laws position in respect to chill
dren found guilty of offending it, ana
In this department, therefore, prison re-
form has made extraordinary strides.
permeated, to a far greater extent than
any other branlh of criminology, with
the scientific thought that is beginning
TO dominate society.
No one can speak with greater au-
thority on this subject than Judge
Ben B. Lindsay, of the juvenile court
nonpar C0Io which he was ra.