4. PARENTS' MEETINGS.

Frequent parents' meetings in the schools, especially in those neighborhoods where environment is bad and the people are poor. Parents, whether rich or poor, can stand a good deal of education along the line of their duties and responsibilities toward their children. They should do the work, but in too many cases they can not or will not.

5. DETENTION SCHOOL.

The detention school has already proved so successful that a permanent institution of this kind should be built by the city.

6. JUVENILE BETTERMENT.

The encouragement of every rational boys' club or plan for juvenile betterment proposed by responsible people, with the view of keeping children out of the juvenile court, as one of the longest steps toward the success of the real purpose of the juvenile-court system.

7. ENFORCE LAWS.

A rigid enforcement of those laws holding parents and others responsible for the delinquency of children, in order to compel or assist the home and parents to perform their functions and thus relieve the State of taking their place. The institution is necessary and performs good work, but at best it can only be accounted a necessary evil where it has to supplant the home. The principal purpose of the probation system is to keep the child in the home and keep it out of institutions. No institution is better than a home. It is better than thousands of miserable places of habitation for children, mistakenly called homes. The best institutions are those nearest like the ideal home.

8. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE.

A continued rigid enforcement of the compulsory-education law as the best means of preventing truancy, which leads to deception, disobedience, idleness, and crime. The best economy the school boards can practice in the end is the money it now spends in the compulsoryeducation department for its superintendent and school-attendance officers. I have no hesitancy in saying that even $10,000 a year spent for five years in Denver for this purpose will save the city and State easily a million dollars in the course of twenty years, to say nothing of the moral addition to good citizenship.

9. COOPERATION.

Continued close cooperation amd harmonious work between the schools and the court.

10. POLICE DEPARTMENT.

Closer cooperation and a better understanding between the police department and the sheriff's office and the juvenile court I am

delighted to say that there is already abundant evidence in these departments of greater satisfaction all round in this respect. The police department has been greatly handicapped for lack of help, which, we understand, has necessitated a practice we are strongly opposed to-viz, that of arresting children and detaining them at the city hall until the probation officer can remove them to the detention school. An officer arresting a child should bring it immediately to the probation office or the detention school. It should not be taken to the city hall at all, notwithstanding the greatly improved arrangements there and the excellent care given the children by the splendid matrons in charge. The purpose of the new law was to keep children away from any connection with the jail itself, and however commendatory may be the additional precautions it does not fully comply with the requirements and spirit of the law.

11. WORK BY TEACHERS.

Special and particular interest by school-teachers in delinquent boys, instead of that disposition often manifested to get rid of them as a nuisance and as engendering extra work. This must not be understood as indicating that there has been a lack of proper disposition in this regard in Denver with reference to such cases. On the contrary, the school-teachers of Denver are entitled to the warmest praise and commendation, as already declared in this report, for their cordial cooperation and earnest work in this respect.

12. RECORDS AND ASSISTANCE.

Owing to the greater care given to the children of Denver under the new laws and the elaborate records we are undertaking and the extra work necessarily incurred with the new system, we should have at least one more assistant for clerical help and probation work. No one can appreciate the amount of detail work that is constantly being done by the probation office without a visit to and personal inspection of that office. This work is one that has been absolutely neglected in communities heretofore, but is now being regarded as of sufficient importance in some cities to incur the expense of a separate, exclusive court, with a special judge, clerical force, paid probation officers, and detention house. During the past two years the county court, which is in this State the juvenile court, has performed all of this work and turned over to the county over $10,000 in cash as its earnings from litigants paying fees to the court under our fee system, after paying the salaries of the judge and all the clerks. This surplus has been sufficient to more than pay all of the expense of probation work, even since those offices have been placed upon a salary; and considering the enormous saving in money and morals, as shown by the chapter herein on expense, and considering the hundreds of thousands invested in this city in jails and the tens of thousands paid in salaries

to prosecuting officers, sheriffs, and policemen, all to detect and punish crime, it would be hard to understand the mental caliber or fathom the motive of the man who would object to any and every reasonable expense designed to save children and prevent crime.

13. MUTUAL HELPFULNESS.

The encouragement of a fraternal and helpful spirit between all of those offices and others who have any part in this noble work. Let there be no jealousy, no "knocking," and no complaint until they have been first made to those who may be or should be responsible and every opportunity given to correct faults, mistakes, and errors. No greater calamity could befall the work of the juvenile court than the discord which is the sure result of petty spites, petty selfishness, petty jealousies, and petty complaints and fault-finding. Let the work be the thing, unselfishly and earnestly, into which goes the whole heart and soul.

Disposition of delinquents.

Tried by court from January 1, 1903, to January 1, 1904..

Delinquents charged with offenses not considered serious enough to require them to report.

Dismissals

Committed to State Industrial School at the time of trial during same period...

Placed on probation during same period, without any commitment. Committed to State Industrial School for other offenses after being placed on probation (being 3.2 per cent).

Total number placed on probation.

Total number committed to the Industrial School during the year.

Causes of commitments, January 1, 1903, to January 1, 1904.

Larceny: One 9 years of age, one 10 years of age, three 11 years of age, four

12 years of age, one 13 years of age, one 14 years of age, one 15 years of age. 12 Disorderly conduct: One 11 years of age, one 12 years of age

Truancy (including disorderly conduct): Two 11 years of age
Girls committed during the same period:

Incorrigibility: One 10 years of age, two 16 years of age.

Report system adopted by the court, 1903.

[Part of probation system.]

222

3

Number of boys and girls now on the report list and required to report at the morning session of every juvenile court day (every other Saturday)..

Number of reports from probationers received from school-teachers during the year

Number of reports from other sources.

Total reports received

Each report represents a personal interview between the judge of the court and probationer

Baths given probationers during the year.

Positions secured during the year.

Boys sent to the beet fields for the summer
Needy children relieved

Number of garments supplied (second-hand)

Number of garments supplied (new)

Total garments supplied..

Number placed on probation for the years 1901, 1902, and 1903.

Probationers committed during the three years, all boys (less than 5 per cent), 40.

Most of the commitments made at the time of trial and not subjected to the probation system were cases where the children in question had no home conditions, or where their environments were such as to make it unwise to submit them to the probation system.

VOLUNTARY DELINQENTS AND PROBATIONERS.

There are over 200 boys who have come into the juvenile court within the last three years, termed "voluntary delinquents." These boys have been brought here principally by other boys who have been proceeded against in court. They often belong to some "gang," and have come in voluntarily and admitted various offenses against the law. They have not, as a rule, been tried, but have been assisted in various ways, and the great majority of them have reformed their habits entirely.

Total number of children dealt with in the juvenile court during the years 1901, 1902, and 1903.

Total number of children in the juvenile court in three years..

1,485

To which is occasionally added the Youth's Companion and other healthful publications.

It is gratifying to report that the boys in court are doing as much as any other power to enforce obedience to the law among juveniles, on the theory that the court is for their benefit and assistance and loyalty to it demands in return their assistance, first, in keeping out of mischief themselves, and, second, in discouraging law-breaking among their companions.

A LESSON FROM THE FIGURES.

As showing the "mischievous age" or dangerous age in child life the following chart, showing the ages of 1,000 delinquents covering a period of three years, is instructive. It will be seen that the greatest numbers are at 12 and 14.

H. Doc. 701, 58-2-10