To the Honorable, the State Board of Control: The following is submitted as my report for the biennial period ending July 31st, 1906. To one having the custodial care and the matter of providing for the shelter, food, education and training of a large number of misguided and unfortunate children of our state the responsibility is great. From us much is expected and we ourselves hope for more than we can accomplish and as we look back over the work for two years our feelings are on the whole gratifying, but necessarily tempered with some regret. It seems impossible to make people understand that this is a school and not a prison. All there is of the nature of a prison is the fact that inmates are committed by the courts under similar proceedings as obtain in ordinary criminal cases, and the further fact that they are detained against their will. Other than that, it is an up-to-date school. It is compulsory education carried to the extreme. It is gratifying to know that we have less trouble to make the inmates themselves understand this than we do with their parents or the general public. COMMITMENTS. I am pleased to report that in the matter of commitments as well as that of judicial inquiry before commitment, there has been a very great improvement in the past two years. With the establishment of Juvenile courts in our larger cities in compliance with a law passed at the last session of the legislature, we feel that a long step has been taken in the right direction. We now feel and know that when boys or girls are sent to us from these courts that the judge has carefully investigated the matter and is in possession of all the facts and circumstances surrounding the child's life. We know too that if the child comes from these courts, in nearly all cases, it is only after repeated failures on its part while on probation from the commiting courts in their own city, where the court through its probation officers has been thoroughly informed of the child's actions and surroundings. When committed by municipal courts, we cannot but feel that in most cases the judicial inquiry is very limited and the wisdom of some commitments by these courts may be seriously questioned. We find that in justice courts, the inquiry is more thorough, this probably for the reason that in the case of trial by such courts, the evidence must be submitted to and commitment approved by a judge of the district court before such commitment is valid. We get the same record of the court proceedings as the reviewing judge so in such cases get a fairly full and accurate history. While commitments have improved, they are still incomplete. When a boy or girl is brought to us even from the juvenile court, the record and history of the case is in some cases lacking. In many we get simply a paper certifying that the court finds the child delinquent. Our work begins with little or no knowledge of what the delinquency consists of, and our source of information is at that time the child itself. If, as is generally the case, he chooses to attempt to deceive us, we cannot, owing to our ignorance, dispute or correct him and he at the start has us at a decided ad vantage, and gets started wrong. If it is necessary to commit children here.. |