The New Student's Reference Work/Juvenile Courts

Juvenile Courts. These are the latest means by which we are trying to distinguish between the young offender against the law and the hardened criminal, and in general to fight the great increase of crime which seems to exist among the young, especially in the larger cities of the world. Although for centuries children under seven have not been counted responsible for any criminal act they might commit, children over that age were until comparatively recently tried in the same courts and on the same general principles as those applied to adults. It was felt that this tended to make criminals out of young people who at heart were not vicious. Therefore for many years there have been reformatories to which the younger prisoners were sent, instead of to jail. But it became clear that to send a boy to a reformatory put a brand on him for life. Merely to be tried in open court with adults and hardened prisoners was to put a blot on the life of the child. Hence it has been the custom for many years in New York and in other states and in most European countries to suspend sentence on the young offender and to hand him over, where possible, to some responsible person, who would try to keep him at school or send him to work, according to his age, and would report to the judge how the boy (or girl) was getting on. The well-known George Junior-Republic was and is peopled for the most part by such probationers. But the juvenile-court law of the state of Illinois, passed in 1899, elevated this custom into a law and further required that in the cities of that state the children (boys under 16, girls under 17) should be tried in a separate court and with the purpose rather to reform than to punish. In 1903 Colorado passed a juvenile-court law which causes all under 21 to be regarded as children and includes this most important provision — that those adults, parents or employers or others, who are responsible for the child's "delinquency," are liable to fine and imprisonment. In 1905 this provision was included in the law of Illinois. Since then New York and more than 20 other states, especially those that have large cities, have passed similar laws. In the trial of the children by the children's judge the state takes the position of a parent, not desiring to punish the child for what it has done but rather to help him get on his feet and lead a good and worthy life. Recently in Chicago, New York and other cities much good has been done by volunteer probation officers, men of means and of some leisure, who have each one adopted the position of "big brother" to some young boy brought before the court, and have tried to help him up, especially by finding him work, giving him a change of life now and then, and by showing sympathy and friendship.