* Holtzendorff u. Jagemann: Handbuch des Gefangnisswesens. Vol. ii, p.
* Die Behandlung der verwahrlosten und verbrecherischen Jugend und Vor- schlage zur Reform P. F, Aschrott. Berlin, 1892.
^ Die Behandlung verwahrloster Kinder und jugendlicher Verbrecher. Bremen.
39^ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE Appelius ^ has drawn up a rather elaborately motivated scheme of a new law for the punishment of juvenile criminals, according to which the local administration may transfer any child up to the age of sixteen to some educational establishment or to a family, and there compulsory education may be contin- ued up to eighteen. Decision in this important matter must be based upon a careful examination, made by experts, and at which also the father or guardian must be heard. Imprison- ment for less than a year must be severely solitary. Those sentenced for more than a year may be released provisionally under certain conditions. When imprisonment and education are combined, the first may be reduced one-half at discretion. Actual crime need not have been done to cause committal to these institutions.
Krohne ^ lays down the following principles: Reform schools should never be connected with youthful prisons. The former should be collective and patterned as far as possible after the family. In such schools, not only the sexes, but the different confessions should, if possible, be separated. The life, food, etc., should be plain and severe, but not actually without enjoyment to which children have a right. Both hand-work and field-work should be provided, and the preponderance of one over the other should be an individual problem. Very care- ful personal records, measurements, and observations should be kept for each child, special attention should be given to health, and all should be in an atmosphere of religion. Music and drawing should predominate, and communication with outside friends should be determined by individual considerations. The officers of these schools should first of all be good teachers, and all those connected with female institutions should be women.
Hartmann ^ insists upon brief sentences to very strict super- vision, labor, or study, as the case may be, for juveniles, and would go to any extent to prevent the contagion of crime from contact with older criminals. He devised, in juvenile houses of detention, the following stages of discipline: re- ^ Die bedingte Verurtheilung und die anderen Ersatzmittel fiir kurzzeitige Frei- heitsstrafen. Cassel, 1891. See also Die Behandlung jugendlicher Verbrecher und verwahrloster Kinder. Berlin, 1892.
' Lehrbuch des Gefangnisskunde. Stuttgart, 1889.
^ Carl C. Hartmann: Der jugendliche Verbrecher im Strafhause. Hamburg, JUVENILE FAULTS, IMMORALITIES, AND CRIMES 399 proof; refusal of the free hour in the court; refusal of the right to converse upon walks; removal, in whole or in part, of the disposition of products of their own industry in overtime work; forbidding the latter; forbidding letter-writing; no re- ception of visits; forcing to sleep on a hard board; refusal of light; isolation; arrest; dark cell; and fetters.
In England " there appears to be a very general conclusion that, both on grounds of mercy and expediency, the short and sharp punishment of a whipping with a birch rod may in many cases be even preferable." ^ This is said to conform to " the double characteristic of all good repression of crime — the mini- mum of punishment with the maximum of intimidation." Hu- manity especially requires, this report claims, a vigorous and uncompromising suppression of the cruel and ruffian class of young scuttlers, who have increased in English cities, and who are intolerable nuisances, known in Australia as larrikins, in the United States as hoodlums, and in Sweden as young leaguers. No trifling is suitable for this class, who require either flogging, a cell, or prolonged industrial discipline. These young men are intrusive in public places of recreation, and their language is often exceedingly offensive, particularly to women and to children. Vigorous exercise and games are also recom- mended. Probation officers can do little with these juvenile ruffians.
In England, reformatories are for older youth who have actually committed felony and undergone brief preliminary imprisonment, and are distinguished from industrial schools for younger offenders mostly under twelve, who have not been imprisoned. To the former, children under sixteen may be sentenced, at the magistrate's option, from two to six years, after they have been imprisoned ten days or longer.^ On entering the school the superintendent has a serious talk, tell- ing the young culprit that the prison has punished his fault, and that now he has a chance to reform, learn a trade, etc. To the industrial school, children who beg, as well as criminals, may also be sent, but only by order of a judge. In France, parents who wilfully neglect their children or whose bad con- ^ Juvenile Offenders. A Report based on an inquiry by the Committee of the Howard Association, 1898. London, p. 8.
•The State and its Children, by Gertrude M. Tuckwell. London, 1894.
400 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE duct causes them to be taken in charge by the state, thereby for- feit all right and control, and can not even visit their children, whom the state has taken for its v^ards, unless their character shows improvement.^ This principle is in successful operation in many States in this country. When children, trained in these institutions or by the boarding-out principle, complete their stay, their instructors seek to find for each one a patron or special friend in the neighborhood, who may be willing to find him employment and give him some kindly oversight, and be- come a not merely nominal godfather or godmother. In the day feeding-school system, four hours of lessons, five of manual industry, and three good meals constitute each day's routine, but if the child does not attend the forenoon school, dinner is forfeited, and if the afternoon work is missed he has no supper. This has the advantage of helping without breaking up the family life. Some religious instruction is insisted on in almost all English reformatory institutions. In 1896 there were in Great Britain 30,104 boys and 24,845 girls in her 48 reforma- tory and 144 industrial schools.^ The Massachusetts probation system is as follows: It was developed by citizens who visited the police court to seek out offenders who could be released, for whom they became sureties to the court, and whom they endeavored to reclaim. After some years of experiment, in 1878 a law was passed requiring the appointment of a probation of^cer. This, in 1891, was made mandatory in every town and by each police and district court. In 1898 the appointment of these officers was given to the Superior Court. It is now proposed to provide a Bureau of Records to coordinate the work of these of^cers and the police, and allow probation for all persons fined, if they need time for payment, which may be in instalments and to these ofificers. This would keep out of prison many who should never go there.^ Upon this plan, a judge is empowered on the request of an agent to commit any person under the age of seventeen, ^ Penological and Preveptive Principles, by William Tallack. London, 1889, ' See Fortieth Report of these institutions in the Parliamentary Blue Book for ' For detailed working of this system, see The Charities Review, April, 1900, JUVENILE FAULTS, IMMORALITIES, AND CRIMES 4^1 convicted before him to the charge of the Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity, until he or she shall attain the age of twenty-one, but with authority to discharge him at any time. The board has great power in such cases. The child may be left with a warning under the supervision of a parent, who is usually fined a small sum; but if there is no improvement in this state of probation, the child is removed from home. More than three-fourths of the children committed are thus returned. The board can remove the child from the parent and commit it to a State school, which is not a criminal institution, and to which no magistrate has the power to commit. The child may be sent to a reformatory or boarded out, with or without payment, in carefully selected homes; orphans may be placed for adoption, but only after trial; or the board can appoint a guardian with full parental powers up to twenty-one, nulli- fying the power of the real parents.^ Thus it is sought to lift these youth out of the criminal and pauper class by means of agents, who are unpaid ladies and gentlemen of intelligence, and are thus made the arbiters of the children's fate.
Juvenile criminals, as a class, are inferior in body and mind to normal children, and despite the extravagances of the Lom- broso school, they are no doubt more likely to be defective or abnormal, and their social environment is no less inferior. As to their treatment Morrison ^ thinks them more likely to be un- justly judged by courts than adults, and commends societies for their legal defense, which shall study each case and bring all circumstances before judges. A special office for this pur- pose has been created in Michigan and elsewhere. In England, up to 1847, juvenile crime was punished as severely as when committed by the most hardened criminals. The very severity of the penalties caused judges often to let children go free. The antiquated practise of fixing a minimum penalty for each offense should be banished from all penal codes for children and offenders in early adolescence, and the largest discretion given to the court. We must also commend the Belgian sys- tem of conditional sentence, by which the law warns before it strikes, and which often saves youth from the brand of con- * Children of the State, by Florence Davenport- Hill. N. Y., 1899, p. 226.
* Juvenile Offender, p. 189 et seq.
27 402 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE viction. A sentence is conditional, when, if there is no fresh offense within a given time, it is not executed, and statistics show that such an impending sentence is more deterrent than actual imprisonment. Fining, too, is for many cases of juvenile delinquency one of the best of legal penalties. It is unique in that it can be made good if error is discovered. Moreover, it is economical to the state and is more and more taking the place of imprisonment. Of course it chiefly falls on the parent, but may be paid in instalments. The alternative sentence of, e. g., ten dollars for ten days should be so modified that five days and five dollars can be accepted, instead of as now requiring the whole fine to escape a single day of confinentent. Fining in work to be done for the city is found wise in some places, and industrial schools, for day work only, in others.
There is very much to be said in favor of corporal punish- ment for young offenders. Although gradually passing into disuse with capital and other severe forms of punishment, flog- ging is still a part of the criminal law in England, Scotland, Norway, Denmark, and several colonies.* Flogging usually has special safeguards in the form of medical examiners, laws regulating the form and size of the rod, etc., the number of strokes, the presence of friends and parents. Save in Great Britain the prevailing sentiment is probably against it, but there is much to be said in favor of it for certain offenses among boys in the early teens and younger. Dermal pain is far from being the pitiful evil that sentimental and neurasthenic adults regard it, and to flog wisely should not become a lost art, whether with criminals or in normal families, although of course other very different influences should supplement it. Im- prisonment is, as a rule, the severest penalty for the young. To be deprived of liberty of motion and contact with the social and material world is bad enough, but such isolation at this age brings temptation to a special form of vice, while the contagion of crime among prison associates and the stigma almost inef- faceable, which may actually compel the young convict after his release to revert to companionship where imprisonment is no disgrace, are worse yet. Slavery, banishment, prohibition to live in certain places or permission to reside only in others, interdicting residence in large cities for the young, all kinds JUVENILE FAULTS, IMMORALITIES, AND CRIMES 4^3 of individualization of punishment, sumptuary preceptors, mu- tilation, all preceded the modern prison, which seems to have been evolved from the monastic rule of sequestering recalci- trant monks in a cell, as early as the sixth century.* Perpetual solitude and silence by day and night is a crime against the soul for adults; but is still worse for the immature. Amelio- rating the severities of life and shortening the term of detention for good conduct is one of the best of modern developments, and the increasing tendency to return to crime and to the bar of justice, which seems to bear some direct proportion to the com- fort of prison life, is one of the worst. As Morrison well urges, the prisoner has all his needs provided for as if he were a child, but generally he has become a criminal simply because he could not satisfy these needs; hence the danger that a good prisoner will make a bad citizen because the personal, industrial, and social discipline is not such as to adjust him to life in society, and imprisonment is less effective for social security than it should be, and for adolescents is very inefficacious. All authorities agree that the age of responsibility and liability should be as late as is compatible with social welfare, and that even while awaiting trial great care should be exercised and special places provided for this detention.
For children all offenses are simply forbidden things, and the distinction between what is wrong or forbidden and what is criminal, and the perspective that differentiates between different crimes comes late, but moral comes even later than in- tellectual maturity. Again, if children are imprisoned young enough, so that they can return to school later, the fascination of their schoolmates and the imitation impulses endanger others. Young offenders, too, need exceptional care that their / physical system should not deteriorate and become still more unfit to bear the strain of life than when they entered. As a class they are badly nourished and weakly, and this is a potent factor in recidivism. They should come out not only able, but disposed to do a regular day's work. Habits of industry are rare in this class, and regularity is an irksome yoke, and houses of detention of all kinds for the young should strive to develop habits of regular labor. Lack of occupation makes the mind as dead and apathetic as the surroundings are dull, and active and «^ ' Morrison, p. 230.
404 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE stated effort is the only surety against this sad result. The closest relations with outside friends should be cultivated; especially the first hours and days of confinement are the golden time for reconciliations, when self-respect is dejected, and when, besides, memories of friends are most natural. The trouble is that prisons were made for adults, and all the institutions are primarily adapted for them, but as Morrison again wisely says, while the guardians of mature criminals need a disciplinary at- titude, those of the young should cultivate an educative temper, and officers should, if possible, be parents, and of children of similar age. Hence on every ground differentiation of build- ings, regimen, occupation, and supervision are needed. Ad- ministration should be tested not by conduct within, but its effects upon restoration to society. To minimize the great and never entirely avoidable dangers of the first period of liberty, gradual and conditional liberation has already proven its beneficence.
Professor Yoder^ insists that there are no children in- capable of being amended. He found that the age of most fre- quent commitments to reform schools in 10,000 cases was fifteen, and that the age did not differ for boys and girls. He was unable to determine whether incorrigibles leave school be- cause of their own condition or that of the school, but deems it unfortunate that the age of transition from grammar to high school comes at the stress of adolescence. He is inclined to agree with Swift,^ that a period of semicriminality is normal for all healthy boys; that those whose surroundings are bad will continue it, but others will grow away from it as they ap- proach maturity. The incorrigible often seeks the society of younger children, whom he dominates, because he has a new passion for leadership which the teacher should give better di- rection. The instinct to be an initiative power needs apprecia- tion and direction. The spiritual soil in which such have been trained is exhausted and they need transplanting. It is never so irksome to do over and over again things familiar. In many a schoolroom, a boy's incorrigibility saves him; the fussy mar- tinet and the red tape of school are objects that provoke revolt *The Incorrigibles. Journal of Childhood and Adolescence, Jan., 1902, pp.
'Ped. Bern., March, 1901.
JUVENILE FAULTS, IMMORALITIES, AND CRIMES 405 in the healthy soul. It is significant that sixteen is the age when children are most influenced by their teacher.^ The boy feels that his day has come; he is becoming a man and the girl a woman. Just as gregarious animals are easiest tamed, so the very gang instinct itself is almost a cry of the soul to be in- fluenced, and this instinct can be made to lead to the good as well as to the bad.
Adolescence is the best key to the nature of crime. It is essentially antisocial, selfishness, refusing to submit to. the laws of altruism. As the social demand for a larger mutual helpfulness increases, prohibitions multiply. Hence the in- crease of juvenile crime, so deplored, is not entirely due to city life or growing youthful depravity, but also to the increasing ethical demands of society.^ De Fleury,^ in his interesting discussion of fatigue, indo- lence, melancholy, anger, etc., believes that many of the dis- tempers of youth are especially susceptible to the douche at different temperatures, to static electricity, to friction with the hair glove, massage, and sun and air cures, and that mechanical stimulation has great power in neurasthenic subjects to awaken vitality, especially when they are downcast and irritable and in the later stages of digestion. He pleads for a new kind of med- ical morals, and holds that pessimism or the sense that the sum of evil surpasses the sum of good is found in civilized man " in direct proportion to the learned notions or to the sensations of art accumulated in his brain, and in inverse proportion to the intellectual labor expended." The latter only expands self in a healthful way. Thus laziness tends to moral decay, and all weakness brings misery, and neuropathic symptoms need to be met by toning up the muscles. He believes it is possible, in ways hitherto unrealized, to supply new sources of human energy and to strengthen feeble minds to live with intensity, for morality does not consist in qualitative changes of states of mind, but in ardor and energy of living, and thus he holds to a higher hygiene that is to be the morals of the future, give a better normal tone, bring out latent qualities, and cure many moral perversities.
' Medicine and the Mind. London, 1900.
M 406 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE The causation of crime, which the cure seeks to remove, is a problem comparable with the origin of sin and evil. First, of course, comes heredity, bad antenatal conditions, bad homes, unhealthful infancy and childhood, overcrowded slums with their promiscuity and squalor, which are always near the border of lawlessness, and perhaps are the chief cause of crime. A large per cent of juvenile offenders, variously estimated but probably one-tenth of all, are vagrants or without homes, and divorce of parents and illegitimacy seem to be nearly equal as causative agencies. If whatever is physiologically wrong is morally wrong, and whatever is physiologically right is morally right, we have an important ethical suggestion from somatic conditions. There is no doubt that conscious intelligence dur- ing a certain early stage of its development tends to deteriorate the strength and infallibility of instinctive processes, so that education is always beset with the danger of interfering with ancestral and congenital tendencies. Its prime object ought to be moralization, but it can not be denied that in conquering ignorance we do not thereby conquer poverty or vice. After the free schools in London were opened there was an increase of juvenile offenders. New kinds of crime, such as forgery, grand larceny, intricate swindling schemes, were doubled, while sneak thieves, drunkards, and pickpockets decreased, and the proportion of educated criminals was greatly augmented.^ To collect masses of children and cram them with the same unas- similated facts is not education in this sense, and we ought to confess that youthful crime is an expression of educational failure. Illiterate criminals are more likely to be detected, and also to be condemned, than are educated criminals. Every an- thropologist knows that the deepest poverty and ignorance among primitive people are in nowise incompatible with honesty, integrity, and virtue. Indeed there is much reason to suspect that the extremes of wealth and poverty are more pro- ductive of crime than ignorance, or even intemperance. Edu- cators have no doubt vastly overestimated the moral efficiency of the three R's and forgotten that character in infancy is all instinct; that in childhood it is slowly made over into habits; while at adolescence more than at any other period of life, it can be cultivated through ideals. The dawn of puberty, al- * North American Review, May, 1899.
JUVENILE FAULTS, IMMORALITIES, AND CRIMES 40?
though perhaps marked by a certain moral hebetude, is soon followed by a stormy period of great agitation, when the very worst and best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other for its possession, and when there is peculiar prone- ness to be either very good or very bad. As the agitation slowly subsides, it is found that there has been a renaissance of either the best or the worst elements of the soul, if not indeed of both.
Although pedagogues make vast claims for the moralizing * effect of schooling, I can not find a single criminologist who is satisfied with the modern school, while most bring the severest indictments against it for the blind and ignorant assumption that the three R's or any merely intellectual training can moral- ize. By nature, children are more or less morally blind, and statistics show that between thirteen and sixteen incorrigibility i& between two and three times as great as at any other age. It is almost impossible for adults to realize the irresponsibility and even moral neurasthenia incidental to this stage of develop- ment. If we reflect what a girl would be if dressed like a boy and leading his life and exposed to the same moral contagion, or what a boy would be if corseted and compelled to live like a girl, perhaps we can realize that whatever role heredity plays, the youth who go wrong are, in the vast majority of cases, victims of circumstances or of immaturity, and deserving of both pity and hope. It was this sentiment that impelled Zarna- delli to reconstruct the criminal law of Italy, in this respect, and it was this sympathy that made Rollet a self-constituted advo- cate, pleading each morning for the twenty or thirty boys and eight or ten girls arrested every day in Paris.
Those smitten with the institution craze or with any extreme correctionalist views will never solve the problem of criminal youths. First of all, they must be carefully and objectively studied, lived with, and understood as in this country Gulick, Johnson, Forbush, and Yoder are doing in different ways, but each with success. Criminaloid youth is more sharply individ- ualized than the common good child, who is less differentiated. Virtue is more uniform and monotonous than sin. There is one right and many wrong ways, hence they need to be individ- ually studied by every paidological method, physical and psychic. Keepers, attendants, and even sponsors who have to 408 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE do with these children should be educators with souls full of fatherhood and motherhood, and they should understand that the darkest criminal propensities are frequently offset by the very best qualities; that juvenile murderers are often very tender-hearted to parents, sisters, children, or pets; ^ they should understand that in the criminal constitution there are precisely the same ingredients, although perhaps differently compounded, accentuated, mutually controlled, etc., by the en- vironment, as in themselves, so that to know all would, in the great majority of cases, be to pardon all; that the home senti- ments need emphasis; that a little less stress of misery to over- come the effects of economic malaise and, above all, a friend, mentor, adviser are needed.