Increase in Juvenile Delinquency.
There is evidence that the war has brought in its train a decided increase in juvenile delinquency. In New York City, for example, there are 11 per cent more cases of juvenile delinquency this year than last, and this increase has come after many years' decline in the number of delinquency cases coming before the Children's Court. Recently the United States Children's Bureau made a comparison of juvenile court statistics for thirty courts in different part of the country. An increase in juvenile delinquency over the previous year was reported by 22 courts ranging from 2 to 110 per cent. An increase of 20 per cent or more was reported by 11 courts. Many juvenile institutions also report a rise in commitments during 1942. For example, the Training School for Boys at Warwick, N. Y., reports that commitments of delinquents have risen 42 per cent since last year.
One must be cautious, however, in concluding from any series of juvenile delinquency statistics that there has actually been an increase in juvenile crime. Few branches of statistics are as fluid, uncertain and deceptive as statistics of juvenile delinquency. The basic reason is that the precise conduct which will require a child to appear in court differs as between communities and may differ in the same community at different times. Technically, any child under the age specified in the statute is a juvenile delinquent whose conduct is such that in an adult it would be considered a violation of a penal law or a municipal ordinance. But not every child apprehended in such violation, and technically a delinquent, is brought into the Juvenile or Children's Court. The child's conduct may be regarded as mere mischief by his neighbors and left to be dealt with by his parents. It may also be dealt with by his school or church or by some social agency without reference to a court. All these factors influence juvenile delinquency statistics in many different ways.
Yet, despite the vagaries that lurk in juvenile delinquency statistics, it is the considered opinion of many observers that there has been a rise in delinquency in 1942 over previous years. The causes for this rise must be sought in the changed conditions which one year of war has brought to the American scene.
It may be noted that the combination of war and a rising juvenile rate is not confined to this country. England, too, despite its preoccupation with the problems of national survival in the face of Nazi aggression, has also had to cope with increasing juvenile delinquency growing out of war conditions. The English Board of Education, at the end of the first year of war, for example, reported that the number of children under fourteen convicted of offenses was 41 per cent higher than in the previous year. In the 14-17 year age group, the increase was 22 per cent.
Changed Environment Due to War.
The most decisive factor in moulding a child's behavior patterns is the home in which he lives. This of course means more than the material side of the home, its physical environment and the neighborhood in which it is located. Of the utmost importance in a child's development is the psychological relation between the parents as well as the relation between parents and children — i.e., the moral climate of the home. War has brought increasing stresses to the American home in both the material and environmental spheres as well as in the psychological or moral spheres. The war has meant a tremendous boon to industry. Urban centers that felt the dead hand of the depression have been revitalized. Men and women have flocked to these centers, attracted by the possibility of obtaining jobs at good wages and the possibility of participating in the war effort. Unfortunately, many of the centers of defense industry were not equipped to meet the tremendous influx of men and women and their families. There has been insufficient housing to meet the needs of defense workers and their families. Thus, the physical conditions under which many defense workers were compelled to live have not been conducive to a wholesome family life. Congestion, lack of privacy, inadequate plumbing, poor sanitary conditions and poor neighborhoods — all make a healthy family life difficult and create serious problems for the growing child. The war effort has also required the participation of women workers in industry on an ever increasing scale. But a woman cannot be at the factory and in the home at the same time. She is therefore unable to give her children the attention they need. Thus, children of school age are left at home without adequate supervision because mothers are working in defense plants.
The very fact of moving to a new community in many instances upsets the normal functioning of family life. When a family moves, it settles in a strange community, away from friends and neighbors. The people who might be helpful in times of domestic crisis, or who might be able to case domestic trials, are absent. If husband and wife are both busy in war work, it is difficult for them to form new friendships and new community ties. Thus, the help in keeping an eye on Johnny that every home has from friends and neighbors may be lacking in the centers of war industry, for the very families that need it most.
Economic Problems.
While the economic problems which beset families during the depression years have been eased by steady employment at good wages, it must not be overlooked that a war-begotten prosperity brings other problems in its wake. Delinquency may be caused as much by too much money in the home as by too little if parents do not spend their money wisely. The desire for new things, for new adventures and new experiences may be transmitted to the children. Lacking supervision and care, what youth does not have it may take without regard to legal boundaries or legal limitations.
Social Agencies.
The mass migration of families to centers of defense industry has put a tremendous strain upon school facilities. The school systems were not geared to the expansion required to meet the influx of the families of new workers. Nor were other social agencies working with children, such as day nurseries, family case work agencies, recreational centers, boys' clubs, etc., adequate to meet the new problems created by the war. In no large community are there sufficient agencies of this kind to meet normal needs even in peacetime. The activities of these agencies have had to be curtailed rather than expanded during the past year. They have lost members of their staffs to the armed forces and to defense industries. They are not receiving the same amount of money as formerly, since they are now in competition for funds with such war agencies as the USO and the Red Cross. Thus, the social agencies have been found increasingly inadequate to meet the needs of expanding populations in war centers and the increasing demands of youth.
Remedial Suggestions for Juvenile Delinquency.
The things which must be done to meet the rising tide of juvenile delinquency in wartime have been well summarized by Mrs. Sheldon Glueck in a recent article:
'…basically the need appears to be to keep to a minimum the tensions and insecurities of the stressful times in which children are now living. Therefore, any efforts toward improving their home conditions and their environment in work and play must be of concern. Particularly our attention must be directed toward children living in areas of under-privilege, for it is among them that resistance levels will soon be tapped by the added pressures of the wartime situation and will result in social breakdown.
'There can certainly be no question that it is of the utmost importance to preserve all the welfare services that have been built up over the years. We must not permit ourselves (as was done in England at the beginning of the war) to indulge in false economy by restricting those very activities which are necessary to the wholesome development of youth. These include not only recreational services which make possible a richer life for children, — health services, mental hygiene, vocational guidance, services to disintegrating and broken families, adequate relief to those who are unable to earn a minimum for the maintenance of decent homes, housing programs, and all the other social services that are so essential to the maintenance of morale.'
It is highly desirable to canalize the energies of youth into recreational activities which have some relation to the war effort. Youth must be made to feel that it has a stake in this war, and recreational programs should be devised so that they can assist in the successful prosecution of the war. Such programs will instill a greater sense of community responsibility in youth and turn destructive and anti-social activities into channels which will aid us in our struggle for survival against the forces of aggression.
Adult Crime.
Although the trend of juvenile delinquency during our first year of war may have been upward, it is very likely that adult crime during 1942 will show a downward tendency. Less adult crime is to be expected during war years. In the first place, large numbers of young, single men are in the armed forces. It is from these men that adult offenders are largely drawn. Most crimes are attributable to men with previous criminal records. Many of these men, particularly those who in the past have been convicted of minor crimes, are enrolled in the armed forces and make good soldiers and sailors. For the men who stay at home, there is work to be had at good wages. There is less need for the 'easy way' to make money. Crime is frequently the work of men who are at odds with the community, who feel that they have no place in the social organization and whose only refuge is criminal companionship and criminal gangs. But in the total war that we are fighting, there is a place for all in the common effort to beat the enemy. Energies which might be used for criminal objectives in peacetime are enlisted in this common struggle.
Crime Types, New and Old.
While the general trend of crime may be downward, the demands of a war economy tend to create new types of criminality. The introduction of rationing and price control, for example, inevitably brings in its train widespread schemes to beat whatever control systems are set up. Thus, one hears of 'black markets' in which rationed commodities, such as gasoline, coffee and tires, are bootlegged instead of the traditional alcohol; of illicit sales of rationing books, genuine or counterfeit; of merchants who make false declarations concerning stocks of commodities that they have on hand; of profiteers who ignore price control regulations, etc. The scarcity of commodities also tends to give a direction to old forms of criminality. The stealing of gasoline and tires has become popular in recent months. Trucks loaded with coffee are now highjacked where formerly the booty sought was alcohol or silk.
The re-distribution of the country's manpower resulting from the war, together with increasing employment in certain centers, has also given impetus to an ancient plague, namely, prostitution. Prostitutes have tended to concentrate in the neighborhood of army camps and centers of defense industry. Fortunately, the military authorities are aware of the danger that the prostitute represents to the armed forces and have vigorously sought to eliminate prostitution from the neighborhood of military establishments. The May Act, passed last year, also makes it possible to use the power of the Federal criminal law to eliminate prostitution in areas near military establishments when local law enforcement is inadequate to deal with the problem.
The war has ameliorated one of the most pressing problems of prison administrators, that of keeping inmates of penal and correctional institutions employed at useful and productive work. Various provisions of state and Federal laws designed to keep prison-made goods out of competition with free labor have considerably handicapped the development of labor programs in penal and correctional institutions. The result has been enforced idleness on the part of large numbers of prisoners, a situation which distinctly hampered their rehabilitation. The manpower needs of our war production, however, are so great that even prisoners must be used to turn out essential articles of war. Federal legal barriers to the attainment of these objectives were eliminated by the opinion of the Attorney General, who ruled, 'There is no impediment in Federal law to the procurement of war materials by the Federal Government either from Federal or State prisons.'
Methods of Control of Crime and Delinquency.
Considerable progress was made during 1942 in the extension of modern methods of dealing with crime and delinquency. In Pennsylvania, for example, a new parole board went into operation under a statute giving the board exclusive power to parole and re-parole, commit and re-commit, and to discharge from parole all persons sentenced to state or county prisons for more than two years. A new state juvenile court system came into being in Connecticut with the appointment by the Governor of three judges for each of the districts into which the state is divided. Each court will be provided with a director of probation and a probation staff. The Youth Correction Authority began its operation in California, which is the first state to adopt this method of dealing with adolescent offenders. The aim of the Youth Correction Authority project is to entrust the study, care and treatment of young offenders between the ages of 18 and 23 to an expert board. The California Authority has already taken steps to set up an adequately staffed psychiatric clinic for the study of psychopathic offenders. In New York State, too, there is a strong movement toward segregating adolescent offenders from adult criminals. A bill introduced into the legislature proposed to transfer jurisdiction over all young offenders between the ages of 16 and 19 to a new Youth Court, which would be a branch of the Domestic Relations Court, and which would dispose of cases by methods similar to those employed in the Children's Court, rather than the common law procedures of the adult courts.
One technique of controlling crime received a serious set-back at the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States when it declared the Oklahoma sterilization law unconstitutional. This law provided for the sterilization of habitual criminals. Mr. Justice Douglas, speaking for the majority of the Court, may have been influenced in his opinion by the lack of scientific data to support the thesis that criminal traits can be inherited. However, the major reason for his decision is that the distinction between the kinds of crime in which this measure could be employed under the Oklahoma statute and in which it could not was so arbitrary as to violate the constitutional guarantee of the 'equal protection of the laws' contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. If such a classification were accepted, stated the Court, 'the technical common law concept of a 'trespass' based on distinctions which are very largely dependent upon history for explanation could readily become a rule of human genetics.'
No comments:
Post a Comment