Not the least important branch of the Children's Court work is the release on parole of boys and girls under the charge of experts. This year 1479 boys and girls, charged with all sorts of offenses, were given the opportunity which parole means, with very satisfactory results, so far. During the year 169 children, formerly paroled, were brought before the court for recurrent misbehavior and sent to institutions, many of them for short terms, as a warning of the sterner discipline which will follow further misconduct. The average of reformations still stands high, the percentage this year being 89. It is difficult, however, to compute these so-called reformations on this Reference must be made to children year's work. paroled during the first years of the court's operations for anything like conclusive figures and even these must be subject to revision, for who can say that because a boy behaves for a year or two or five, after his first parole, that his "reformation" is complete. Nor can the court work guarantee any results. indeed the percentage of reformations were reduced to one-tenth of what it seems to be, the court could well feel that great good has been done. Parole is not calculated to deaden criminal or wayward tendencies or to undo what it has taken generations to do, nor has the court any ideals to foster, such as surgical operations, to curb boys who are on the downward path. It counts rather on the commonsense application of practical methods by practical

If

men and women, each of the religion of the child in charge, to teach the boy of his errors and to make him see, in his own way, how best to help himself. No "sweet sentiment" dominates, there being none in such work. But enough of real sentiment exists to prompt the workers, most of them trained volunteers, to spend endless hours with their charges.

The result is encouraging. The delicate nature of the work, its intense humanity, so appeal to those who are doing it that it seems ever new and attractive. The committees of ladies representing the three great religions are the most valuable aides the court could hope for in bringing about the results anticipated by the statute, and in aiding this Society in its branch of the work. The time has come for a state board of juvenile probation which should be conducted under the direction of the magistrates and justices, as the most competent to direct so important a work, so successfully executed under this court's direction these five years.

To have attempted or recommended such a departure at an earlier date would have been premature, and this is now done only after careful consideration of the subject from every point of view.

Since the court opened, September 2nd, 1902, there have been paroled 6579 children. Of these, 1031 have been returned before the court for recurrent misbehavior and committed to institutions. The average percentage of reformations for the entire period stands surprisingly high, being 38 per cent. This bodes well for the further success which must follow a continuance of this very delicate work.

(Continued.)

In Jarrard vs. The State, 116 Ind., 98, the court says:

"The legislature had power to enact the statute under examination. The object of the statute is not to punish, but to reform. Boys are sent to the school not as criminals to punishment, but to prevent them from becoming criminals. We do not deem it necessary to enter upon a discussion of this question, for we think it settled in accordance with principle that the legislature has power to provide for the reformation of boys who are entering upon a career of wickedness, by prescribing measures for committing them to a reformatory institution. We do not hold, or mean to hold, that boys can be arbitrarily taken from their parents or guardians and committed to a reformatory school. We sanction no such doctrine. What we here hold is that where parental restraint is not strong enough to prevent boys from becoming evil members of society, the law may interfere and place them where they may be restrained and reformed."

One of the latest and best decisions on this question is Commonwealth vs. Fisher, in the 213th Pennsylvania State, at page 48, decided two years ago, in which the court says:

"In pressing the objection that the appellant was not taken into custody by due process of law, the assumption, running through the entire argument of the appellant, is continued, that the proceedings of the act of 1903 are of a criminal nature for the punishment of offenders for crimes committed, and that the appellant was so punished. But he was not, and he could not have been without due process of law, for the constitutional guaranty is that no one charged with a criminal offence shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. To save a child from becoming a criminal, or from continuing in a career of crime, to end in maturer years in public punishment and disgrace, the legislature surely may provide for the salvation of such a child, if its parents or guardian be unable or unwilling to do so, by bringing it into one of the courts of the state without any process at all, for the purpose of subjecting it to the state's guardianship and protection. The natural parent needs no process to temporarily deprive his child of its liberty by confining it in his own home, to save it and to shield it from the consequences of persistence in a career of waywardness, nor is the state when compelled, as "parens patriae," to take the place of the father for the same purpose, required to adopt any process as a means of placing its hands upon the child to lead it into one of the courts. When the child gets there and the court, with the power to save it, determines on its salvation, and not its punishment, it is immaterial how it got there. The act simply provides how children who ought to be saved may reach the court to be saved. If experience should show that there ought to be other ways for it to get there, the legislature, can, and undoubtedly will, adopt them, and they will never be regarded as undue process for depriving a child of its liberty or property as a penalty for crime committed."

"The action is not for the trial of a child charged with a crime, but is mercifully to save it from such an ordeal, with the prison or penitentiary in its wake, if the child's own good and the best interests of the state justify such salvation. Whether the child deserves to be saved by the state is no more a question for a jury than whether the father, if able to save it, ought to save it. If the latter ought to save, but is powerless to do so, the former, by the act of 1903, undertakes the duty, and the legislature, in directing how that duty is to be performed in a proper case, denies the child no right of a trial by a jury, for the simple reason that, by the act, it is not to be tried for anything. The court passes upon nothing but the propriety of an effort to save it; and if a worthy subject for an effort of salvation, that effort is made in the way directed by the act. The act is but an exercise by the state of its supreme power over the welfare of its children, a power under which it can take a child from its father, and let it go where it will, without committing it to any guardianship or any institution, if the welfare of the child, taking its age into consideration, can be thus best promoted."

"There is no restraint upon the natural liberty of children contemplated by such a law none whatever; but rather the placing of them under the natural restraint, so far as practicable, that should be, but is not exercised by parental authority. It is for their welfare and that of the community at large. The design it not punishment, nor the restraint imprisonment, any more than is the wholesome restraint which a parent exercises over his child. The severity in either case must necessarily be tempered to meet the necessities of the particular situation. There is no probability, in the proper administration of the law, of the child's liberty being unduly invaded. Every statute which is designed to give protection, care and training to children, as a needed substitute for parental authority, and performance of parental duty, is but a recognition of the duty of the state, as the legitimate guardian and protector of children where other guardianship fails. No constitutional' right is violated, but one of the most important duties which organized society owes to its helpless members is performed just in the measure that the law is framed with wisdom and is carefully administered."

In State vs. Home Society, 10 N. D. page 493 where a writ of habeas corpus was issued out of that Court for the purpose of testing the validity of an order authorizing the defendant to hold the custody of the petitioner's children by virtue of an act then in force in said state, the Court says:

"It is also claimed that the statute provides for an involuntary servitude which is not a punishment for a crime, and this without due process of law. Neither contention is sound. The act provides for a judicial investigation of the condition of children of the classes named, after notice, and the custody provided for such children is not servitude, as referred to in the constitution."

Now, how is the law to be carefully administered? As I said in the beginning, the problems involved are problems of philanthropy, and it is therefore abso