Chapter VI · THE BOY AND THE COURT (continued 2)

The report of this extraordinary gang can fitly be ended by a description of two of its most conspicuous members, Joe and Harry Rafferty. Their home was the scene of continuous brawling. The floors were littered with broken crockery, with ham bones, and glass—with anything that could be used as missiles. The father and mother were drunkards, although both had taken the pledge at times to obtain charitable relief. After the father’s death from typhoid the conditions grew still more serious. Joe “beat up” his mother cruelly whenever there had been beer in the house, and Mrs. Rafferty at last deserted her family for several months in order to go and live on a sympathetic neighbor, leaving the small children to shift for themselves. When she returned home it was to bring back a “boarder” with whom she lived in immoral relations.

The records of the Rafferty boys were, of course, very bad. Joe was taken to the court with John Larrabie at the time of the killing of the Italian organ grinder. The neighborhood reported that Joe, who was over sixteen, “saved his own skin by turning state’s evidence.” The fact that there was no record of Joe Rafferty in the court history of the case does not necessarily contradict this statement. Certain it is that he was credited with having “snitched” by the neighborhood and also by the rest of his gang. The boy fully believed that the latter intended to “do him up” and that his only chance for safety was to leave the city.

Harry Rafferty’s teacher described him as “a little dock rat who is usually dressed in rags and with the skin of his face half torn off because of his many fights.” He had always been a bad truant. In 1908 he was arrested twice, once for stealing boards from a wagon, and once for stealing two loaves of bread. In April, 1909, he and Matthew Rooney, mentioned above as an associate of Patrick Doyle in thieving, ran off with a clock stolen out of a waiting automobile. Harry was committed to the Catholic Protectory for three months. In July he was discharged, and in November he was recommitted for stealing a pair of gloves with Henry and Alexander Riemer. This second commitment was also for a short term, and soon after his release he was once more in court on a minor charge. In October he was sent to the Protectory for his third term.

In the face of these facts it was astonishing to find that these boys were not completely ruined; that, indeed, there was something distinctly worth while in both Joe and Harry. Of course, their records were very bad, and both were growing less sensitive to moral control with the years. But Joe had an instinct of family loyalty and had struggled hard to keep his brothers and sisters together. He had visited and written them when they were sent away to institutions, and had turned up promptly to take charge of them on the day of their release. This affection and protective instinct had been his only anchor, and the necessary breaking up of the family, consequent on the mother’s immorality, had promised to deprive him of his last motive to reform.

The Rafferty family was one in which vice, drunkenness, and squalor had combined to misshape the lives of the children. The law should have proved the salvation of the good qualities that in some miraculous way still existed in that atmosphere. It is obvious, however, that the law’s method in such extreme cases—the frequent commitment—had failed to change the conduct of these boys and to accomplish any reformation in their lives.

Commitment ought to induce a radical alteration of life. But in many of our cases the commitments merely proved interludes in wrongdoing. Even a temporary improvement after discharge was not met with; the dates of the subsequent offenses followed closely upon liberation. In the face of such records a comparatively short commitment, followed by the return of the boy to the same neighborhood without any official supervision and guidance, seems futile indeed. The histories recorded here indicate clearly that with few exceptions neither boy nor family nor community had been benefited by the action of the court.

It must be conceded that this district is exceptionally lawless and gang-ridden and that the gang which we have described was one of the worst in the whole neighborhood. But what is here presented is not a study of average results of commitments in average cases. Such a study would have necessitated establishing close co-operation with the institutions, in order to follow up those children who had not returned to their old environment at all after commitment, but had been placed out in employment, or adopted into new homes. It is from among these children that the institutions claim the greatest number of their successes, and it would have been necessary to include them if a presentation of the whole problem had been attempted.

On the other hand, since commitment is conceded to be an extreme method of dealing with extreme situations, our examination and our conclusions seem all the more pertinent. To examine the results in the most extreme cases seems to be a perfectly fair way of testing the working of the system. If a method particularly planned for helping the worst cases of delinquency does not help them, we must question the use of the method in these cases, at least, and ask what we should substitute for it.

V. SUMMARY

Reviewing our study of the three groups of boys described in the preceding sections—the boy who is let go, the boy who is paroled in the custody of his parents, and the boy that gets sent up—we find that the impression made by the court was rarely a permanent one. One after the other we have seen how the typical boy of each group passes through the hands of the court and returns to his West Side environment scarcely changed by his experience. For the boy who is let go, it means but a ripple in his life. The court again goes further and “paroles” him. At the end, he is still the same boy. The most drastic treatment of all, commitment to an institution for a definite short term usually fails to remake the character of a boy who has been subjected both before and after his sojourn in the institution to the full force of the neighborhood influences. When a boy is so difficult to manage that commitment becomes the only adequate remedy, the term should be indefinite so that release may depend on education, behavior and development of character. And release should be followed by supervision by a representative of the court or of the institution until the boy shows that he can stand morally without such assistance.

A well organized official probation staff without doubt furnishes the most effective method for dealing with most of these cases. This applies to all three classes described in the preceding sections—the boy who is let go, the boy who is paroled in the custody of his parents, and the boy that gets sent up. The use of official probation does not necessarily exclude volunteer probation, but it should make possible careful supervision and co-ordination of volunteer work under the court.

Our study points out the necessity of recognizing both the family unit and the neighborhood unit in handling cases. In order to do efficient probation work, the investigator must be familiar with local conditions. He needs to know, on the one hand, all the influences which have helped to make the boy what he is, and, on the other hand, the neighborhood agencies which are familiar with his individual and family history, and may be enlisted in reforming him.

A thorough physical and mental examination is necessary in many cases before the court can proceed intelligently in its treatment.47 A fundamental need also in the treatment of juvenile delinquency is the conferring of equity powers on the court, in order to avoid the hindrances of purely criminal trials and to reach the child and his family more directly.

Finally, we must not forget, in considering the darker aspects of the extreme cases presented in the section on commitments, that all delinquent boys are not of that type. As a rule, the boy delinquent stands out among the ranks of mishandled West Side youngsters only as one of them who has had the misfortune to be apprehended where others equally guilty have escaped; in most cases he does not differ in any great degree from his mates. Viewed from the standpoint of the district and in the light of what we know of its manner of life, juvenile delinquency is seen to be largely the product of conditions dangerous to youth in the homes and on the streets. To deal with the boy only after he has committed a crime is to deal with the product and not at all with the source of his offending; to allow him to return to his old surroundings without official supervision and control is, except in rare instances, a futile expedient.