Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/667

 REFORMATION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS 647

satisfactory that the superintendent continued to urge the erec- tion of other cottages, so that the smaller and more innocent boys might be separated from the older and more vicious.

The boys were employed in shoemaking, tailoring, knitting, carpentry, gardening, and all sorts of housework. The "ticket of leave" was adopted, with excellent results. These tickets were renewed each month, where the boy was doing well, and the necessity of this periodical renewal of his parole served is an incentive to good conduct. The per capita cost for the year

1862 was $99.31, which included all expenditures for the 181 boys in the school. More family buildings were gradually erected, and the "confidential system" was continued. In 1861 the legis- lature passed a law authorizing the mayor of Chicago to appoint annually a commissioner before whom boys between the ages of six and seventeen should be brought, when accused of petty offenses ; and he often discharged them on probation. This change in the method of commitment proved very beneficial to the boy and to the school. But in 1867 the law was again changed and the duty of commitment was assigned to the judges of the superior or circuit courts of Chicago.

The board of guardians was given the power to bind out boys, to grant "tickets of leave," and to discharge boys for cause, but the boys while on parole were subject to the control of the guardi- ans. The school continued to do good work until 1871. During its existence it cared for 1,284 children, about 70 per cent, of whom we are justified in concluding were reformed at a cost of about $343 each.

In 1870 the supreme "court of Illinois declared the acts of

1863 and 1867, under which the school had been organized, unconstitutional, because they did not provide for the trial of the child by a jury, but gave to a commissioner or a judge the power of commitment. This decision assumed that the school was a prison, and that the inmates were criminals an allegation strenuously denied by its defenders. The court went to extremes in upholding the rights of parents over their children, and a later decision of the same court practically nullified this opinion.

As the city had never purchased the land upon which the