peculiar qualifications as experts in handling children's cases. This Juvenile Bureau or Section should coöperate actively with the Juvenile Court and make many of the investigations for the court which are now made by court probation officers. It is a police function, and the police department should not be relieved of responsibility for performing it. Juvenile officers should be distributed through the city by assignments to precincts, although general supervision of their work should be carried on by the special service division at headquarters. The work of juvenile officers attached to precincts in Chicago affords an excellent example of the value of such a division. The long-established juvenile bureaus in the Detroit and Los Angeles police departments likewise have proved the value of employing a special unit engaged in crime prevention among children. All of the special activities mentioned above should be consolidated in a single division devoted to the more constructive features of crime prevention. One of the highest ranking officers in the service should be selected by the director of police to head this important division. His duty would be to survey general conditions in the city which indicate opportunity or need for corrective crime prevention measures. He should then see that the various sections of his division are well coordinated. Although the several fields of work are specialized, there is much opportunity for active coöperation. Thus, members of the vice bureau, in the course of their investigation of complaints of gambling and sex delinquencies, run across hangers-on and idlers against whom they may not proceed with formal charges, but who, nevertheless, may properly be investigated. Information regarding these border-line cases of delinquency should be handled by the Police Woman's Section, Welfare Section, or Juvenile Section, as the case may warrant. Similarly, the investigations conducted by the Police Woman's Division or Welfare officers will many times disclose conditions that should be investigated by the vice bureau. It is important that the common factors of a crime prevention program be recognized and that the agencies carrying out such a program be closely knit together. There should be a single head directing the development of a crime prevention program in its several aspects. Members of the special service division who are not engaged on specific assignments should keep in constant touch with the breeding places of crime throughout the city. Insistent police surveillance of pool-rooms, cigar-stores having back rooms, hotels and lodging-houses, and the other places where there is customary idling will do much to prevent the commission of petty crimes on the spot and the hatching of crimes to be committed elsewhere. The young criminal is a gregarious being, and idling with bad associates is the primary requirement for sending him or her on the road to some criminal act. It is not necessary for the police to wield a club or even to proceed with a warrant in many cases. They can, wholly within their legal rights, so interfere with idling that it may be largely broken up in public places. By sending a boy home or questioning an idler or by making many inquiries of the origin and intentions of idlers, the police can make idling uncomfortable instead of interesting and at times profitable. It requires groups of idlers to keep alive the contacts of the underworld, which show the way to traffic in drugs, liquor, and prostitution. Crimes ordinarily produced by these associations cannot flourish when the police are ever questioning and scrutinizing. The importance of having a separate division recognized as the responsible agency in the department for the promotion of facilities for constructive efforts of crime prevention cannot be overestimated. When such a division is established, there will be a logical place for inaugurating new practices and experiments in social service and pre-delinquency activities, thus avoiding haphazard creation of a number of small new units which are likely to be poorly organized and inadequately supervised. Finally, the special service division should become the police department's liaison division between schools, hospitals, and private charitable and correctional institutions. Because of the character of its work, such a division could readily secure a degree of coöperation with other agencies of social service that is not now usually had by any other branch of the police department. It must be admitted that this whole idea is new in police work in America, but its basic idea gives shape to the police work of the future. There is as much room for crime prevention in our communities as for fire prevention or the prevention of disease, and in this endeavor to limit the opportunities of crime and keep it from claiming its victims the police department must take the leading part. CHAPTER X THE SECRETARIAL DIVISION HE work properly belonging to the office of a secretary of the police department is now scattered among several offices and divisions, with almost no coördination. There is a waste in men employed in the various tasks relating to record keeping, filing, and correspondence. Furthermore, the work that is being done is inadequate. Personnel service records, payrolls, equipment, repair, and supply records are prepared and kept in the office of the director of public safety, and certain classes of permits, such as for dances and parades, are issued from that office. A detective and a patrolman are detailed there to care for a portion of the police work. Other clerks devote part of their time to clerical work which pertains to the administration of the fire department as well as police. All the correspondence and stenographic work of the police department is done in the office of the chief of police. One detective, two sergeants, and three patrolmen are detailed to do this work. Personnel records duplicating those kept in the director's office are also filed in the chief's office. The bureau of records cares for the preparation and filing of pawnshop and lost property records, and all records relating to the license, ownership, and identification of automobiles. In this bureau also are filed all criminal complaints and copies of reports made by the various divisions of the department. Six patrolmen are detailed to serve as clerks in this bureau. There is no officer in command, the patrolmen severally assuming responsibility for the management of the bureau during the eight-hour period when they are on duty. The record bureau is cramped in a small room on the first floor of the police headquarters building. It is poorly ventilated and lighted by a single window opening on a court. Records are not protected from fire. The record bureau facilities of the police departments in Detroit, where the whole top floor of the headquarters building is given over to the record bureau, and in St. Louis, where an enormous well-lighted room is used for the record bureau, are in striking contrast to Cleveland's meager facilities. A clear duplication of record keeping is found in an office known as the bureau of information, which has no organic relation to any clerical division and no particular place in the scheme of organization. Toree sergeants and three patrolmen are detailed to this office. Three additional men are attached to a telephone desk on another floor. These desk officers also belong to the bureau of information. A sergeant of police, known as the court sergeant, has an office adjoining the municipal court. This officer keeps a record of cases presented in court and also prepares statistics of daily crime complaints. All of the offices mentioned above should be combined in a single division under the management of a secretary of the department. Civilian clerks and stenographers-most of them girls-should be employed to do the work in the place of policemen. Clerks trained and experienced in clerical duties can do the work better and at far less cost than at present. It is absurd to employ detectives and sergeants of police in activities of this kind. The secretarial office should be organized in several sections, as, for example, the correspondence section, the filing section, the information desk, and the division of statistics. Combined in one bureau, all this work which is now scattered throughout the department could be coordinated in a way that would increase its effectiveness and greatly reduce its cost. |