cigarettes the disease is in his blood and brain; his moral fiber is gone; he is apathetic, listless, and indifferent in school; he fails to hold a job of work, if he is put to work, for the reason that he has not sufficient strength to do the work that a boy of his age ought to easily do; his vitality has been sapped away and all the vigor that should characterize the normal boy is gone. The probation officer has but small chance to reform and help the cigarette fiend, unless the habit can be broken. It is a fight with the boy's appetite, which, like the burning thirst of the inebriate, rarely listens to moral suasion. When a boy is in this condition he is easily led into offenses against the law. We have found that when a boy is found to be guilty of a grievous offense he is generally found to be a user of cigarettes.

A boy, like all other human beings, has a dual nature. I may shock sociologists somewhat, but I have come to believe that if the better part of him is stunted in its growth the baser side will develop the more rapidly. He is a growing being and must develop along some line, and if his moral and intellectual faculties are dulled or deadened the immoral and vicious elements that exist in us all will come to the surface and will blossom and develop into crime. It is well known that there is the taint of savagery in most of us, and though it is smothered and kept down by civilization, education, and the influence of our blessed Christian religion, yet let these be deadened and how easily we drift into vice and crime. Note how easily the boy, with his immature and growing body, his tender nerves, his undeveloped muscles, and his childish brain, falls a victim to the deadly cigarette. He inhales the smoke; the poison gets into his blood and is carried to his brain. His hungering appetite for cigarettes gets beyond his control, his ambition is gone, and his vitality goes with it, and as all his better self is being destroyed the vicious and baser part of him is being stimulated and developed. Is this picture too highly drawn? I do not think so.

If we can teach the boys to live good lives, to be honest, industrious, truthful, to be sincere, to cultivate manliness, we shall have fulfilled the mission of the juvenile court. We do not hope to make a good citizen out of every boy brought before us; we only propose to do our best.

THE PROBATION SYSTEM OF THE JUVENILE COURT OF INDIANAPOLIS.

Mrs. HELEN W. ROGERS, Indianapolis.

I wish to present not any general abstract theory of the probation system, but a brief description of the actual methods developed in the juvenile court of Indianapolis during the first year of its existence. I shall, therefore, in my use of the term limit it strictly to its application to delinquent children, and that in turn to the preinstitutional rather than the parole period.

In Indianapolis, as elsewhere, the probation system has taken on

two distinct aspects: The first, preliminary and more or less negative in its nature that of investigation. The second, supplementary, but even more vital because more philanthropic and constructive—that of supervision. These two principles represent the accepted law and gospel of the probation system. Their application, however, admits of considerable difference of opinion. I wish, therefore, in this brief description of the characteristics of the system developed by us, to lay special stress on these distinctions in method and to justify, if possible, the conclusions at which we have arrived.

THE WORK OF INVESTIGATION.

In the matter of investigation there are two avenues of approach— one from the point of view that in the case of juvenile delinquency, as in that of adult criminality, all investigations preliminary to the trial should be made through traditional channels, namely, the arresting officer; the other, that this should be done by men and women trained not merely to detect crime, but to discover the causes underlying its manifestation. In Indianapolis, passing, as we have, through three distinct stages of evolution, from the police court régime, through the separate sessions still under police control to the present court, established solely for the hearing of children's cases, we have had special opportunity to compare the two and to draw a few legitimate conclusions. Under the old régime, in which all arrests, preliminary investigations, and presentations to the court were made solely by members of the police department, these are the conclusions we draw: The average patrolman is trained primarily to convict. He is the graduate of the police and criminal courts, in both of which he has dealt with human nature in its maturity, acting with consciousness of motive and fixity of purpose. He has been concerned with single acts in their relation not to other acts, but to technical violation of law, and his position toward this violation has been perforce that of the upholder of traditions, the vindicator of the primitive theory of punishment. Taught to gather his facts with the sole purpose of proving guilt, he has little interest in the complete history of the child, its heredity, its environment; he cares nothing for the causes lying hidden in them, nor for any provisions for their removal; in the majority of instances it is not only easier, but more expedient to remove the child rather than to attempt to remove the cause.

Thus, as we look back over the old order, the child's day in court seems to us to have been pathetically similar to that old English description of the life of man-flitting like a bird into the lighted hall, tarrying for a moment, and vanishing again into the darkness, no one knowing whence he had come or whither he had gone. Under the new order, on the other hand—an order in which the preliminary process is placed in the hands of paid probation officers, whose only object is not the making of a case, but the discovering of every condition surrounding

the life of the child-these facts become in their turn obvious: The student investigator, if I may use the term in contrast to the former, finds it less difficult to realize that the juvenile court was established for the reformation, not the punishment, of delinquent children. Trained, perhaps, in the charity organization society, he enters a familiar field, finding in it material, method, and ends to be obtained similar to those to which he has been accustomed. He is more apt to bring to the task, moreover, the open heart and mind of one who, accepting the misdemeanor of the child as a mere clew-as a mere symptom that a pathological condition exists-seeks to make an impartial diagnosis, keeping always in mind the ultimate cure of the disease.

Under this latter order of things, which the passing of our juvenilecourt law made possible, I do not mean that the investigation is not still dependent on the evidence of the police officer, who still makes the arrest and appears as a witness in court; he does not ignore his value nor underrate his cooperation; he merely begins where the others' work must necessarily end and supplements his partial knowledge with his fuller vision. But the test of every method lies in its practical results. Whatever method of investigation is partial in its scope, is prejudiced in its purpose, and indifferent as to its ultimate ends may be safely characterized as inadequate. Whatever method is thorough in its procedure, consecrated in its purpose, and constructive in its ends, is the only type which is consistent with the spirit of the juvenile court. After a year's experience in each of these two systems we feel that the latter method is the only method by which we have been adequately prepared for the second and more important aspect of the probation system, that of constructive supervision.

No investigating officer, no matter how rapid or thorough, can in one day's effort discover all the conditions surrounding the life of any child, nor can he, with new cases constantly demanding his time and attention, exercise sufficient supervision over children replaced in his care, nor cultivate those personal relationships which make for character development and without which the work of the investigator would be as useless as a medical diagnosis without subsequent treatment of the disease. A small proportion of children arraigned in every juvenile court will, of course, need the rigid discipline of an institution-will call for immediate quarantine, as it were. But the large majority of cases being forms of childish, nonvirulent disorder, will yield to home treatment-will need outdoor rather than indoor relief. It is at this point, I believe, that the new problem euters which I wish to present for your consideration.

THE WORK OF SUPERVISION.

This home treatment takes on two forms-one of mere supervision, the other a positive character development. The first more formal task of merely keeping track of a child during suspended sentence is

important, of course, but the fundamental principle underlying this aspect of the probation system is this: As the violation of social law, whether it takes the form of adult criminality or juvenile delinquency, is produced mainly through association with lawlessness and vice, so regeneration can be wrought only through close and persistent contact with integrity and purity. The question of immediate concern becomes, not whether this principle should be applied, but what form its application shall take. To put it boldly, Shall the supervision of children released from the court on so-called "suspended sentence" be done by paid officials or assigned to volunteer workers? Certainly on the face of it a paid worker has apparent advantages: He can be carefully selected, he has been specially trained in the service, all his time is at the disposal of the court, and his relation to it is, for all practical purposes, permanent. The volunteer, on the other hand, is open to corresponding objections: He is difficult to secure, he is untrained, limited as to time, his relation to the court uncertain, and the task of supervision difficult.

VOLUNTEER PROBATION OFFICERS.

The question certainly invites discussion, and I should perhaps be vindicating another system if necessity had not thrust the answer upon us. With but two probation officers available for the work of investigation, adequate supervision was impracticable, and even more so any close personal relationship with individual children. Such functions must be performed by some other means. In Chicago, with its wealthy clubs, it does not seem to have been a difficult problem; but in Indianapolis appeal could only at first be for a volunteer service. This was done, and during the year nearly 190 busy men and women have offered their services to the court in this task of supervision, 80 of whom have had children assigned to them, leaving 110 still on our reserve list. These 80 volunteers have had weekly supervision over 240 children during the year (with no cost to the county whatsoever), only 42 of whom have been returned to the court for a second offense. In a word, those objections to the volunteer worker which at first seemed to us so serious have proved more apparent than real, and if you will allow me I will put my answers to them in the form of a brief account of our practical experience in securing, training, and supervising our corps of volunteer probation officers, which is, I believe, the characteristic feature of the juvenile court of Indianapolis.

We have never made an indiscriminate appeal for a single volunteer worker. There were in Indianapolis, as elsewhere, societies and organizations standing for social betterment. It was to these that we first presented our need, to the three Young Men's Christian Associations, the Boys' Club, the Three Neighborhood Houses, the Children's

Aid Society, and churches having paid assistants, all of whom generously placed a part of the time of their workers at our disposal. In every case these appeals were individual and personal. Within a short time a monthly meeting for the discussion of topics of common interest was suggested. A committee was formed to take charge of these meetings and to interest other volunteers in the work of the court. It was the chairman of this committee who made the only public presentation of our need for volunteers at the annual meeting of the Charity Organization Society, so that his appeal, made to those especially interested in philanthropic movements, could hardly be called indiscriminate. One of the two gentlemen responding became an undaunted enthusiast. The boy assigned him was so difficult a problem that instead of discouraging it aroused him to the needs of all the boys of Indianapolis. He, with two others whom he inoculated with his enthusiasm, formed themselves voluntarily into a permanent committee for securing volunteer probation officers.

Up to this time the juvenile court had only about 40 active volunteers enrolled, keeping supervision over 125 children. A few weeks after the committee was organized letters sent to nearly every pastor in the city, asking for names and addresses of men and women in their congregations especially fitted for the work, had been received and invitations to a mass meeting under the auspices of the Commercial Club of the city forwarded. At this meeting the work of the court was presented and a movement set on foot for a permanent organization of volunteer probation workers of the juvenile court. The result has been the enrolling of 150 new members, from whom the court now draws its volunteers without any exertion on the part of its officials.

PERSONNEL OF WORKERS.

The personnel of these workers who have come to us in this way has been a constant surprise, representing as it does some of the most substantial men in the city. (I say men because they are so largely in the majority.) We have found in our experience in Indianapolis that this is a form of service which appeals almost without exception to business and professional men as a practical form of philanthropy. The average business or professional man who has at all developed the sense of social obligation regrets, I think, that he has so little time to devote to personal service. He contributes to many charities, lends his name to various enterprises, but to none of these, perhaps, he gives himself. Becoming a brother's keeper for one or two unfortunate boys offers this very opportunity. It requires in most instances but comparatively little time, its duties are definite, and it promises, although it may in some cases fail to fulfill, a greater return for its investment than any other form of human speculation. We are thus finding it less and less difficult to secure