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EDITORIAL.

PROBATION FACTS AND FIGURES.

We publish in this issue a report on the system of probation in operation in the Court of Special Sessions in the City of New York, First Division. This is the first report made since the inauguration of the children's probation in the Court in 1902. The report is made by Justices Willard H. Olmsted and Joseph M. Deuel.

The Justices of the Court have so far refrained from expressing any opinion on the probation system until it has been given a fair trial. The report at the end of this period is exceedingly gratifying. In defining probation, the report says:

"It is a test or trial of character; a proving of a convicted offender under a suspension of judgment, in order that the Court may determine if he be fit to retain his place as a helpful member of society, or, being unfit, must be deprived of his liberty as a menace to society."

We do not agree with the definition in its entirety. There is no good and certainly no legal reason, why a child should not be found in a condition of delinquency and therefore needing the care and attention of the Court which will be given in many cases through the aid of the probation officer. We dislike very much the idea of the old criminal terms of a complaint, or an indictment. It is just as effective to have a petition. Instead of a warrant a summons will answer. The child should not be arrested but brought into Court by the parents or a friendly officer.

The report commenting on probation statistics states "that probationary care was extended to six thousand five hundred and seventy-nine cases. This number was selected from forty-five thousand cases considered. In none of these probation cases did the Court delegate any of its powers. Each was treated individually by the Court and therein lies the strength of the system and to that fact must be ascribed chiefly the resulting benefits. *** The five years of experience and the uniform results obtained year by year, are conclusive that this form of judicial remedy as here administered has proven highly efficacious. Its strength and chief virtue lies in its direct control by the Court which has been the directing power and there has been neither a scattering of energy nor wasting of effort through bureaucratic interference. Children and parents have been directly responsible to the Court. Both have realized this with a resultant response obtainable in no other way. *** Outside interference as has some times been proposed would prove a fatal handicap. The Court itself should at all times be allowed to have direct supervision of the probation work. The thrusting in of outside agencies would only lessen the Court's control and gives rise to bewildering and conflucting influences."

We fully agree with this report that no substantial reason can be advanced why strange and in many cases, foreign agencies and persons should be imposed on a family and supersede the power and authority of the parents if these parents are reputable and responsible people.

The Juvenile Court has become a sort of a fad with many people and when a boy or girl becomes involved in any controversy or difficulty in the neighborhood, the suggestion is at once offered to take the child to the Juvenile Court and have him placed on probation. This has resulted in many cases being taken to the Court which should be adjusted by the parents themselves. The Courts throughout the country have become overcrowded with cases and as a consequence, the Court in a great measure, must depend on the work of the probation officer. We do not wish to in any way reflect on the work of the probation officers but we do maintain that it is not the intent or purpose of the Juvenile Court Law or the System itself, that the probation officer should become the real decisive authority of the Court. The Court at all times should direct the work. Much better results will be accomplished when the parent and the child realizes that they are dealing not with a probation officer but with the Court itself which represents the power and authority of the law. If this system could be finally established it would relieve the Court of at least fifty per cent. of the work that is now imposed upon it by the long and continued probation work that is carried on with individual cases. Certainly no one can or will offer any objection to the right and wisdom of the parent exercising at the earliest moment his parental power and authority over his child. The Juvenile Court at best is a substitute for the proper parental care of children. It cannot and never will be able to take the place of the average intelligent, patient and loving parent. It is well for us to consider this question as there is no doubt whatever that the Juvenile Court and the probation system is now undergoing a severe trial. The reaction has already set in. We should take note of the signs that are apparent to the ordinary observer. The enthusiast insists that the Juvenile Court shall and must supplant the parent. The people will never agree with this sentiment and idea.

The home existed long before the establishment of the Juvenile Court and is more sacred and mightier than the government. We should be careful and not make the Juvenile Court system oppressive to the people. If we do, we may except to see an agitation start that will result in the repeal or modification of many of our Juvenile Court Laws.

(Continued from page 9).

New Organizations to Aid Probation.

New York state has participated in the growth of associations to aid probation work which are forming throughout the country. During the past two years four associations and committies, made up of interested citizens, have been organized to advance probation, and also two associations of probation officers have come into existence.

The Brooklyn Juvenile Probation Association was organized in June, 1906, with Hon. Robert J. Wilkin, justice of the court of special sessions of that city, as president, and Mrs. Tunis G. Bergen, a member of the temporary State Probation Commission of 1905-06, as secretary. It is a nonsectarian organization and aims to supply volunteers who will befriend probationers from the Brooklyn juvenile court and also children paroled from institutions. During the same month the Buffalo Juvenile Improvement Association was started under the presidency of Hon. Thomas Murphy, justice of the police and juvenile courts of that city. The association has established a detention home where children awaiting trial may be held instead of being kept in a police department lock-up, and where also, if necessary, refractory probationers may be sent for short confinements. The assocition has also been instrumental in inaugurating the practice of having juveniles, when arrested, transported in the street cars under the custody of non-uniformed officers instead of in the police patrol vehicles.

The Catholic Probation League of New York City was incorporated February 3, 1907, to furnish Catholic probation officers in special cases. Thus far its work has been confined to the court of special sessions, first division.

A General Probation Committee, including representatives from the Yonkers Civic League which fostered the establishment of the system in that city, the Yonkers Board of Education, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Clerical Association, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Queen's Daughters, and two social settlements, was organized in Yonkers December 9, 1907, to secure competent persons for volunteer probation officers, to hold conferences with probation officers for promoting their education and interest in the work, and to extend the system and secure for it the necessary support and co-operation. The committee will work in conjunction with the judge, upon whose approval it was decided to establish the committee. The formation of such local committees in other places would be very helpful in advancing and strengthening probation work.

In each of the divisions of New York City the probation officers in the magistrates' courts have formed associations.

Study of Probation in Yonkers.

Pursuant to the decision of the Commission to make extensive studies of the operations and results of probation in different parts of the state, the secretary spent over two weeks in Yonkers during October and November gathering data regarding the history, method and value of the probation system as conducted in that city. A report of the inquiry has been published and sent, together with letters, to judges, probation officers and other officials throughout the state.

Although one-third of the children convicted of offenses in Yonkers during the year ending September 30, 1907, have been placed on probation, among the 136 children on probation only 13 were sent to institutions because of subsequent misconduct. Many children formerly considered incorrigible have become well-behaved. The offenses for which they had been arrested ranged all the way from

malicious mischief and petit larceny to assault and burglary. Public and parochial school teachers who were interviewed regarding the outcome of probation in 61 individual instances, reported that 44, the equivalent of 72 per cent., had been benefited some to a remarkable degree. Parents also testified to the improvements which probation had effected.

From sixty to eighty or more children each year were formerly committed for various offenses to institutions to be maintained at public expense; but during the past year, contemporaneous with the employment of a paid probation officer, the number of commitments has been reduced to 22. Probation has already saved the local taxpayers from $8,000 to $10,000. The report lays chief emphasis upon the moral advantages, however, and views the financial gains as of incidental importance.

The report points out that the changes in character and conduct have been due not to harsh disciplinary methods, but to intelligent and sympathetic treatment of each individual according to his particular needs. The probation officer advises and encourages his charges, visits their homes, joins in their recreation, helps them in their school work, or if they need employment tries to find suitable positions. Probationers report weekly to the probation officer at a probationers' meeting. Those who attend school bring cards upon which their teachers state whether or not they have been absent or tardy, and describe their conduct and scholarship. Various facts are stated in the report which show that the probationers come to look upon their probation officers as friends.

Success of Probation in Overcoming Truancy.

Probation has been employed extensively and with marked success in the treatment of truancy in Yonkers. Whereas formerly half of the Yonkers truants were committed to institutions, during the last year when the probation system was in operation, among 128 truants only three had to be committed. The appended report of the study of probation in Yonkers describes the striking success probation had when used in School Number 18 with seven boys who had previously been persistent truants, and who under probation were made regular in their attendance as well as proper in their behavior. In New York state during the school year 1906-07, of the 20,830 truants who were arrested, 1,385 were committed to truant schools or other institutions. These figures for the state represent about the average of the last few years. Further observations of the results of probation as employed in correcting habits of truancy are needed, but sufficient is already known to indicate that probation will probably be much used in the future in diminishing this evil. Since so much truancy is due to parental neglect or connivance it is important that probation be used also in enforcing obedience to the compulsory education law on the part of delinquent parents. It is the hope of the Commission to secure the co-operation of school authorities in the more extensive application of probationary methods to this problem.

Other Benefits of Probation.

The inquiries to be made by the Commission during the ensuing year will aim at ascertaining, among other things,. the results of probation among different groups of offenders. Probation has worked especially well when applied to two special classes of adults: namely, occasional drunkards, and men who fail to provide support for their families; and also when used in enforcing payment of fines.

Probation Valuable in Non-Support Cases.

In New York City, Rochester, Syracuse, and elsewhere. probation is used considerably and with satisfying results in dealing with non-support cases. In Rochester the payments which the court orders from men who are convinced of failure to support their families, are made directly to the probation officer. During 1907 Mr. Masters, the male probation officer in the police court of that city, collected $4,419 from probationers in non-support cases, which he in turn gave to their wives. He has also been able by conference and advice to settle many such domestic difficulties without court intervention. In the magistrates' courts, first division, New York City, 395 of the 875 men convicted during 1906 for non-support, 45 per cent. of those convicted on this charge, were placed on probation. It is customary to make weekly payments toward the support of their families through the office of the commissioner of charities, and to regularly show their receipts to the probation officers.

In this connection attention may be called to the fact that according to the 1906 report of the New York Commission of Prisons, 38,564 of the 103,568 persons incarcerated in the penitentiaries, workhouses and jails during that year were reported as married. This did not include the commitments to five New York City district prisons. How many of these prisoners were widowed or divorced is not stated, but in a large proportion of the cases there were undoubtedly families, which, owing to the fact of these imprisonments, had to be supported in one way or another by private or public charity. The proper application of probation to non-supporting husbands could accomplish much economy, as well as improve conduct and prevent suffering on the part of innocent wives and children.

Probation Officers Should make Investigations Before Arraignment.

In the absence of a general system of identification, probation officers by investigating case before arraignment can in most instances ascertain enough of the past history of offenders to enable the court to decide upon the wisest disposition. Section 11-a of the code of criminal procedure includes preliminary investigation as one of the chief duties of probation officers. In some courts, as in the magistrates' courts, second division, New York city, the principal work performed by probation officers is that of investigation; but on the whole there is not enough of this work in the state. In some states probation officers are required by law to investigate each individual case and make a report upon it to the court before arraignment. Were proper preliminary investigations made, many of the habitually offending classes who at present are given suspended sentences, with or without probation, could frequently be shown to need institutional custody; and on the other hand many who would otherwise be committed would be proved fit candidates for probation.

Certain states require police officials to notify probation officers of arrests in order that they may investigate such cases before arraignment. In this state much might be accomplished in this direction by voluntary co-operation between probation officers, working under the direction of the courts, and the police officials. The practice of having the police report arrests to probation officers for purposes of investigation should be extended.

Probation Without Probation Officers an Anomaly.

It is important to have probationary oversight entrusted to officers duly clothed with authority. Persons in this state have been placed on probation, so-called, without any probation officer being designated to exercise the necessary pro

bationary duties. It is the evident implication of sections 483 and 487 of the code of criminal procedure and of section 29e, subdivision 9, of the penal code, that when a defendant is placed on probation it shall be only under the charge and supervision of a probation officer appointed by the court. Probation without probation officer is an anomaly.

Probation Officers Should Receive Written Appointments, and Their Appointments Should be Reported to the Commission.

For the sake of co-ordination and stability all appointments of probation officers, whether of salaried or volunteer officers, should be made in writing, and copies of the same entered on the court records and sent to the State Probation Commission. The Commission has received answers from several persons to the effect that while they have had the oversight of probationers they did not consider themselves probation officers, since to their recollection they had never been so appointed. At present, appointments may be for one particular case, or for some definite period of from a few weeks to perhaps a year, but commonly the appointments continue during the pleasure of the court. Ordinarily after volunteers have finished active probationary oversight, they do not hand in resignations and their appointments are not revoked; in consequence of which there are probation officers in the state who have had no cases for several years, and who probably will never have any more cases; and yet their original appointments still constitute them probation officers. It is desirable that the State Probation Commission may know at any time exactly who are probation officers, and that the Commission may be informed forthwith of any new appointments. The Commission recommends the amendment of section 11-a of the code of criminal procedure so as to require courts to forthwith notify the Commission of new appointments of probation officers.

Compensation for County Probation Officers Should be Permissible.

At present the law allows salaries to be paid to probation officers only by municipal and village authorities. County judges in different counties have expressed the desire to the Commission that section 11-a of the code of criminal proceduce be amended so as to make it permissible for them to appoint paid probation officers. This provision should be enacted by the Legislature.

I think it entirely probable that no other one human being ever did so much practical good to his fellow men as Thomas J. Barnardo, an Irish physician, who died Sept. 19, 1905, after forty arduous years employed exclusively in the rescue of waifs and strays from the streets of London. He was called "the father of nobody's children," "the children's friend," "the children's savior" and by several other affectionate titles that were well deserved. His biography has just been published and it is a book of amazing interest. The London Telegraph, in an editorial reference, says that the volume "is the monument of a great work and it will be in every vigorous mind which is alive to the needs and problems of our time the incentive to great efforts. To Dr. Barnardo we owe it that from the name of England was removed a shameful blot and reproach, and that several army corps of children, as the years passed, were taken from the depths of poverty, saved from careers of suffering and crime, restored to the image of their Maker, filled with the inspiration of true manhood and womanhood, and sent forth beneath the flag to strengthen all that, is best in the empire."

During his lifetime Dr. Barnardo rescued a quarter of a million children, of whom 62,312 were at one time or another inmates of his homes, and were maintained, educated and started in life under his influence and care. Of these 20,000 were sent to Canada and several thousand to Australia, and they are now prospering in those countries. He established ninetyfour orphanages, homes for destitute children, free lodginghouses and seventeen "ever-open doors," as he called his refuges and asylums for homeless children, and expended more than $18,000,000 in charitable work, every cent of which came from private subscriptions.

And, in addition to these, there is an Internationai Congress for the Welfare and Protection of Children, whose biennial meetings are devoted to the study of the broader principles of protection and prevention.

Everybody in London knew Dr. Barnardo, whose individual and personal idiosyncrasies were quite marked, who "dressed like a dandy, and wore his mustache like a Frenchman with long waxed ends," as one writer has described him. Every newsboy, every bootblack, every policeman can tell you where his "homes" are located, and the easiest way to reach them. His headquarters were at Stepney Causeway, down among the docks and shipping centers of the Thames. Every child born at sea under the British flag belongs to Stepney parish, and its birth must be registered there. It is the center of the slums of London and its population is the most depraved, des

perate and dangerous class in the world's metropolis. Among them Dr. Barnardo began his career while he was still studying medicine, and engaged actively in mission work.

"Jim Jarvis," a street arab, is responsible for the beginning of Dr. Barnardo's extraordinary philanthropy, and the story illustrates what great things may grow out of trifling incidents. "For two or three years," said Dr. Barnardo, "so far as my medical studies left me time, I had been conducting a voluntary night school among rough boys and girls, the children of the poorest laboring class in Stepney. I thus had necessarily revealed to me much of the privation and suffering which so often falls at an early age to the lot of the children of the very poor. I had encountered many ragged, hungry, and cruelly ill-used little ones, but never as yet had a genuine arab boy, utterly homeless and friendless, crossed my path. I had a vague notion that homeless children, if such really existed anywhere, for the most part orphans, were eventually taken care of by the parish or workhouse authorities."

After holding a mission school one night in a donkey shed in East End street, having dismissed his scholars, Dr. Barnardo noticed a little ragged lad who showed no signs of leaving the room. So he said: "Come, my lad, it's time to go home." "Please, sir, let me stop. I won't do no 'arm." "I cannot let you stop here, my boy. You ought to go home. Your mother will wonder what keeps. you so late."

"I ain't got no mother." "But your father?

"Ain't got no father."

Where is he?"

"Where are your friends, then? Where do you live?"

"Ain't got no friends. I don't live nowhere."

Dr. Barnardo says that he cross-examined the boy closely and learned that he, with a number of others, "lots of others-'eaps on 'em-more'n I could count," were sleeping in the streets and living upon what food they could pick up. He took the lad to a coffee house, got him something to eat and persuaded him to lead the way to the hiding places of his companions. The journey ended in a network of narrow passages leading from Petticoat in Houndsditch, and there Dr. Barnardo counted eleven boys, "some coiled up, some huddled together, others more apart-a confused group of boys on an open roof all asleep. No covering of any kind was upon them. The rags that most of them wore were mere apologies for clothes, apparently quite as bad as, if not even worse than, Jim's. Their ages were, I should say, from 9 to 14."

"Shall we go to another lay, sir? There's lots more," said Jim.

"But I had seen enough," said Dr. Barnardo. "It was a revelation and a message. I made up my mind that, by God's help, this one lad, Jim himself, who had been my guide, should at all costs be cared for and watched over. But to awaken those eleven other boys, to hear their stories-stories doubtless of misery, of cruelty, of crime perhaps, and of sin-to find in every word an appeal for help which I could not give-was more than I could bear even to think of. So, taking another hurried glance at the wretched. and never-to-be-forgotten group; looking down once more upon the eleven upturned faces, white with cold and hunger, a sight to be burned into my memory, to haunt me until I could find no rest except in action on their behalf, I breathed a silent prayer of compassion and hurried away just as one of the sleepers moved uneasily as if about to awake."

That was the beginning of Dr. Barnardo's work. From that moment he gave his entire time to the rescue of that class of children. That was in 1866, and since then until the time of his death, as I have said, more than a quarter of million of waifs came under his care, an average of seventeen per day for a period of forty-one years. In 1905, which is the last year's work recorded in the biography, there were altogether 17,946 children in his homes, with an average of 7,669 throughout the year. On the 31st of December, 1905, there were 7,809 inmates under 14 years of age-4,149 boys and 3,660 girls. During that year he had 4,357 more boarding outside of the home, chiefly among farmers' families, where they had the advantages of an outdoor life, plenty of wholesome food, and were taught honest labor. During his last year he sent 1,171 boys and girls to permanent homes in Canada.

The health of the children under his care was remarkable, for there were only seventy-three deaths among the 17,946 waifs that he cared for during the year 1905.

During that year 48,782 children took advantage of his seventeen "ever-open doors" in the different cities of England, where they were supplied with lodg ing and free meals; 119,257 children were fed, 33,720 were lodged and 562,884 attended the religious and temperance meetings that were held at Dr. Barnardo's mission centers. He gave away 57,579 suits of clothing, and thousands of other garments and boots and shoes, and the last year of his life he rescued 206 young women from houses of prostitution and placed them in permanent homes out of temptation.

The confidence of the community in Dr. Barnardo's integrity and in the usefulness of his work is indicated by the voluntary contributions of money that were made to him annually, for, as I have already said, he depended entirely upon them to maintain his

homes and carry on his work. During the first two years, 1866-1867, he received and expended only £214, which is equivalent to a little over a thousand dollars. In 1878 he received £29,349 18s 10d, or about $150,000. In 1888 the subscriptions reached nearly $500,000; in 1898, three-quarters of a million, and the last year of his life almost a million dollars was received by him from 94,591 different givers. Of these 62,054 contributors sent less than $5, 25,235 sent between $5 and $10, thirty-seven sent $1,000 each, nine sent $2,000 each, and thirty sent $2,500 or more. The average gift was $10.37.

Dr. Barnardo was born in Dublin in 1845, of mixed Irish and Spanish stock. His father was a physician, his mother was a Quaker. He was educated in Dublin, went to London to study medicine, and, as I have told you, was diverted from his chosen profession by Jim Jarvis. In the meantime, however, he practiced medicine to support himself and his boys, and in October, 1867, distinguished himself during an outbreak of cholera in East London. He died Sept. 19, 1905, and was buried upon the grounds of the Girls' Village Home he had built at Barkinside, near London. He left a family of three boys and a daughter. The latter is the wife of Henry S. Wellcome, a prominent American merchant in London. One of his sons is a planter on the Island of Trinidad; another is a student at Oxford.

Dr. Barnardo's theories of social reform were based upon the conviction that it is necessary to get under a burden in order to uplift it, and that it is always difficult, if not impossible, to reform the habits of an adult. He began at the bottom with the outcast child. His motto was: "To redeem society we must save the children." He often said that reform work among adults is usually a failure, but among children it is alwyas followed by inspiring results; that if all the neglected children of each generation could be gathered for education into such homes as he had founded, pauperism would almost vanish and crime would be reduced to a minimum. He refused aid to thousands of adults because he knew that they were unworthy, and would not encourage pauperism, but he never refused to aid a child.

The children under his care were trained for domestic servants. He had no less than thirty-seven schools, and he believed that it was always better to send a child out of England into Canada and Australia where it could have better opportunities and meet with less temptation than in England. He believed that the mind should be trained so as to develop the intelligence; that the hands should be trained for a trade, and that the heart should be subjected to religious influences in order to make good citizens out of the raw material he picked up in the streets. The rules of life that he wrote for his own son were as follows: