Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/665

 JUVENILE

587

JUVENILE

ably at Washington and Denver, jurisdiction is added to try adults charged with contributing in any way to the delinquency or wrongdoing of a child, and hus- bands or fathers who fail to support or who desert their wives and children in destitute or necessitous circumstances. Sometimes, as at Washington, laws regulating child labour are enforced through these courts.

By the common law, a child under the age of seven years was conclusively presumed to be incapable of committing a crime. Between seven and fourteen years of age, criminal intent, without which there can be no crime, must be shown by the prosecution. Mal- ice would supply age, was the maxim. At fourteen, the age of puberty, when the child had all the powers it would ever possess, the law cast upon it full re- sponsibility for its criminal acts. It was sentenced, upon conviction, to the jail or the penitentiary, where enforced association with adult criminals brought about most deplorable results. Society has been slow to awaken to the mistake, nay more, the criminal folly, of this policy, and now, under the operation of juvenile-court laws, all this is being changed. The juvenile court means more than a new forum. It means a new method in dealing with children who commit offences. It is the manifestation of a new and more rational spirit on the part of the State towards children who violate its pul>lic law. The State by its punishment of the adult for crime committed, en- deavours, on the one hand, to reform the criminal and, on the other, to deter by the severity of its punish- ment others from transgressing the law. Now it is recognized that the character of children is yet un- formed, that, instead of reformation, they stand in need of formation of good habits and character, and so the aim of the juvenile court becomes correction rather than punishment.

In some States, the juvenile-court movement has commenced by holding for the trial of children a sepa- rate session of the ordinary criminal court of first instance. In other States, juvenile courts are estab- lished, but jutlges of other tribunals act successively, in turn, as judges of the juvenile court. Elsewhere, as in Colorado, Maryland, Indiana, and the District of Columbia, there are judges appointed as judges of the juvenile court only, and this is claimed to be the best method by those who have given the movement close study. The judge of the juvenile court soon becomes a specialist in his work, but the demands of the im- portant problem of the cliild, which is his, require in himself the combined qualities cif i he jurist, the teacher, the sociologist, and the ]>hilaiitlu-opist. The juvenile courts of the Unitetl States may be grouped under two classes: juvenile courts where the procedure is accortling to that of the English Court of Chancery, and juvenile courts where the procedure approximates that of the ordinary criminal court. The Juvenile Court of Chicago is presided over by one of the judges of the Circuit Court. The proceedings conform as nearly as may be to the practice in Chancery. The pleadings used are simply a petition and an answer, and the process used is a summons. Such proceetlings by the State of Illinois, in dealing with the child who has broken one of its laws, consists of a declaration that the child needs the parental care of the State, which has always been exercised over dependents through the medium of the Court of Chancery, and that it thus re- quires the parental care of the State, which is parens patrice, by reason of the failure of the father and mother, first as they are, in the order both of nature and of time, to fulfil their obligations towards this child. Accordingly the State does not brand the child as a criminal, but deals with him as a delinquent child requiring the parental correction of the State, not its punishment. Chicago had the earliest juvenile court, and this is the furthest advance in the movement. In fact, it smacks strongly of paternalism on the part of

the State; but we should remember that it is pater^ nalism exercised where it is sadly lacking. Practi- cally, the power is invoked not to interfere with the normal family, but to succour the poor little waifs of fortune out of unfit homes, starved and weather- beaten, the companions, oftentimes, of thieves and worse.

To the other class belongs the Juvenile Court of New York City, presided o\er in rotation by the judges of the C^ourt of Special Sessions, which is a criminal court for the trial of misdemeanours without a jury. But even here the court has power and au- thority to extend relief to children who have imfit homes or are otherwise abused by their parent.s — under our system of jurisprudence, an incident of chancery jurisdiction. New York City is the principal gateway of our country, and the problems of this court are made heavy by the presence in its jurisdic- tion of many who are strangers both to our language and our customs, and by the acute conditions accom- panying an enormous population in which are the extremes of wealth and want. The juvenile court at Washington has a criminal procedure. This court was created by the Act of Congress of 19 March, 1900, and is given original and exclusive jurisdiction of all crimes and offences of persons under seventeen years of age, not capital or otherwise infamous and not i)un- ishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary. The court is also given jurisdiction over those adults re- sponsible for the delinquency of any child, and over parents or guardians who fail orrefuse to provide food, clothing, or shelter for their children, the criminal court of the district having concurrent powers in the latter class of cases. Nor can a dependent child be admitted to any institution supported wholly or in part out of public funds, until the fact of dependence is first ascertained and proved in the juvenile court. In this court are tried all cases arising under the child labour law. Provision is made by the Act for a j ury and for appeals in matters of law to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. The juvenile court is empowered to defer sentence, at its discretion, in the case of any j u venile offender under seventeen yeai's of age, antl to place such child on probation, during which it shall be under the jurisdiction of the court.

The probation officers are generally employed by the court to make a preliminary investigation before the child is arraigned. This investigation usuallj' results in helpful data about the parentage and antecedents of the child, its habits and its environment. It is com- paratively easy to affix a statutory punishment in the case of the adult found guilty of crime. It is a far more difficult matter to correct a wayward child ; so that the previous history of the child is most helpful to the judge. Then, too, the services of the physician are often brought into requisition, to cure some phys- ical ill, such as adenoidal growths, which may in a measure account for the delinquency of the child. In both classes of juvenile courts — those whose proce- dure is after the manner of chancery or equity courts, and those whose procedure is more like that of the ordinary criminal courts — the treatment of the child and the attitude of the judge towards the child are the same. In the treatment, the underlying purpose is the saving of the child, not its punishment, nor even its restraint. And the personality of the judge is an element of vast importance in any juvenile court. " I have always felt and endeavoured to act in each case ", said Judge Tuthill, of Chicago, " as I would were it my own son who was before me in my lil)rary at home charged with misconduct". The Supreme Court of Utah, in the case of Mill v. Brown, 88 Pacific Reporter, page 609 (1907) said: " To administer juvenile laws in accordance with their true spirit and intent requires a man of broad mind, of almost infinite patience, and one who is the possessor of great faith in hiunanity and thoroughly imbued with that spirit. The judge