The Juvenile Court and Future Citizens

Mr. President and Gentlemen,-

More than words can convey, I appreciate the honour of the invitation extended to me by your president that I should speak this afternoon at your luncheon. I appreciate it because it is from the Empire Club. To me the name is talismanic, and before I conclude I am hoping that you may see the relationship between the juvenile Court and the Empire. I am sure of your sympathy, if for only this reason, that we are ourselves all boys, even if we may call ourselves old ones--some of us. We are only boys stretched a bit and grown up. Besides, I should really shirk from having to ask all of you who during your boyhood never got into mischief, and never swiped anything, either from your parents or anybody else to stand-there would be so few to keep their seats. I want, rather than to offer you a set speech today, to speak to you somewhat in they same way that I do to my boys and, just have a free and easy chat with you, with a view of giving you a clear view, and presenting to you the reason for, and the workings of the juvenile Court in its endeavour to make young delinquents good citizens of the Empire.

Now, Mr. President, in some quarters there is some misapprehension, not to say doubt, by some people that because it has been called a children's court, and has only to do with children, it doesn't amount to much, just a Yankee fad; associated with misdirected, and somewhat modern, sympathy. But, Mr. President, the Juvenile Court recognizes these two principles embodied in the Children's Protection Act of Great Britain. First, that the child should be a ward of the State, and second, that every child should be entitled to the rights of civilization the same as an adult is, and equally with an adult. Now, sir, recognizing those two principles, the object of the Juvenile Court is to prevent our delinquents, becoming criminals, instead of, as we have been doing, punishing them after they have become criminals. Punishment; I grant you, is intended to be a preventive, but I submit that punishment has not been a big success as a preventive. If it were, there would be fewer people in our jails and reformatories every year, (according to the population) than in former years, whereas the contrary is the case. Crime, so our judges and our wardens tell us, is on the increase, and every year simply adds to the inmates in our penal institutions; and statistics, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that that increase in crime has been not only in the United States but in Great Britain, and even in Canada, among the youth of the nation. Because the inception of crime has its cause in the waywardness of undisciplined children, the Juvenile Court by administering justice with thought, with care, with fairness, with humanity, with love, seeks to take these misdirected, misguided boys and girls and transform them into future good citizens. (Applause.) Necessarily therefore we come right back to the undisciplined home.

Back of the undisciplined boy, nine times out of ten, is the undisciplined home. The home, so the Englishman says, is his castle, but under the Children's Protection Act of Great Britain, no Englishman can make his home any longer his castle to do wrong to his boy, (hear, hear), and the same ought to be the case everywhere through Canada. To be sure, the Juvenile Court does not believe in taking a boy away from hi$ home if it prove a decent home, if it be any kind of a decent home. The place for a boy is within his home. But the Juvenile Court does have the power to change the environment of the home, and failing to change the environment of the home has the power to take the boy out of the environment of that home arid put him in another home. Now, those are the underlying principles.

Perhaps I can get at this matter by simply answering two or three questions. The first question is this: Who are the boys with whom we have to deal? Some people will tell you that they are the boys of the lower classes; they are the boys of the submerged; the boys of the slums. I do not care for those phrases. They are not descriptive. Already I have had to do with boys whose parents were dressed in velvets and furs, in purple and fine linen. So I choose rather to characterize them as those future citizens of Canada who are boys of scant opportunities. I characterize them in that way-boys and girls of scant opportunity. Opportunity counts perhaps for three quarters of the influence in this life. If you are different and were different to what my boys are and you have made good as citizens, it was because of your opportunities, your environment, the environment that enabled you to make good and make the most of your opportunities. So I say the least that any of us can do, the least that we ought to do is to see that as many as possible of those boys of scant opportunity shall have a better opportunity to make good in the city of Toronto. (Hear, hear.) Those are the boys and the girls with, whom we have to do, the boys and girls of scant opportunity.

Now, how do we deal with them? Not as criminals. Thank God, that day is over. By the enactment of the Juvenile Delinquents' Act placed upon the Statute Book at the. Session at Ottawa, no boy under sixteen, no girl, .no matter what he or she does, is a criminal, but simply a juvenile delinquent to be treated as a misdirected, misguided boy or girl. We put no brand upon their self-respect---not for a minute. What do we do? Why, we give them hope, and we give them work, and we do it by putting them upon parole, upon approbation. Each boy, when he is put upon approbation, is furnished with a certain card. The card tells him what he is expected to do, and when his time is up he has to come back to be discharged by the Court from his parole. But he is on parole. That is one feature. It is so good a feature that one boy at all events who was put upon parole has brought into the Court seven other boys. He came in one day, and he said: "Mr. Starr, you know some of the fellows, some of the boys around my place, are likely to be pinched by the police; couldn't you keep them' away from the police?" I said perhaps I could. "Suppose you have a talk with them." Those boys walked deliberately into the Court and asked me if I couldn't help them to be good boys, good citizens. We put them upon parole. But we have another feature. We not only put them upon parole, but we have what I call my report day. Every Saturday between twelve and one I have the boys on parole report to me personally, after having reported to the chief approbation officer and having their cards marked to show they have reported. And what then? Then comes the touch of personal contact, comes the endeavour to learn about them, and to show them how to make good. Then comes the endeavour to secure their respect for. the law, for authority, for the rights of citizenship. And how does it work? How has it worked? I have been just about three months, hardly three months, in this work, and in that time I have dealt with upwards of 250 boys and girls, and simply by trusting them and putting then on their honour I have only had one boy in that time go back into the hands of the police, and that was for a previous offence. A week ago last Saturday I had fifty-two boys to report to me. Fifty-one reported, and the fifty-second, finding himself too late, 'phoned. There is Canadian enterprise. I had forty-eight to report last Saturday and they reported, every one of them, to a little man. You can't keep them away. I have a number of boys today who are on parole, and when I told them they were dischargeable they said: "Mr. Starr, can't we ever come back again?" Why, fancy them wanting to come back to the Police Court! "Can't we come back again?" "Sure," I said, "call to see me any time; come back as often as you like." You can't keep them away from the Court. Why, the elevator man can't do it! Does it work? Scarcely three months have I been there, and up to the present I have been compelled to send only one boy to the Mimico Industrial School. (Applause.) One boy in that time. Now, what does that mean gentlemen? I have saved in three months to the city of Toronto the entire expense of my office staff. (Applause.)

Those are the boys with whom we have to deal. But do we deal with anybody else? Now, gentlemen, look out; some of you have been congratulating yourselves that you were outside of my jurisdiction. (Laughter.) Listen! The juvenile Act is perhaps as radical a measure as is today upon the Statute Books of" the world. I can deal with any adult who aids and abets or is contributing to a boy or a girl being a juvenile delinquent in regard to any law in the Criminal Code or any Provincial Statute, or any city by-law. Do I do it? Certainly. Why, I have had a score of men and women come to me, and for what purpose, gentlemen? To unload their children on the institutions of the city, and to get rid of them and their own responsibility. I have listened to their stories about these boys-that they can't help them stealing, that they can't help them doing this; that, and the other thing. But, I say: "Look here my good people, I am put here to see that you do not allow your boys to do that. I am put here to see that you exercise your parental responsibility, and unless you do, you can't unload them on the city; but I will tell you what I can do, I can fine you to the extent of $500 and clap you in jail for twelve months." It is surprising how that talk tunes them up. They don't want their children to go to the Industrial School under those circumstances.

I remember one woman, with whom the police had been trying to deal for two years, and the head of the Associated Charities came to me and said: "Can you do anything with this woman?" "Why," I said, "I think so." I sent for her, and she told me a' pitiful story, and I told her that I hoped her story was true, and I gave the case for investigation to an officer, and in two weeks I found the conditions to be exactly as represented to me by the office&, and I summoned her to Court. I put the witnesses in the stand and I proved that she was sending her children to steal, and I proved that she was sending them out to beg-my officers did, I mean-and that she was a drinking character, and that she had a great many men coming to the house-a very popular woman. When all the evidence was in, I asked her if she had any evidence and she said no. "Well," I said, "my good woman, I don't see anything else for it but to send you to the Mercer for six months." "Oh," she said, "no, you can't do that?" "Oh yes," I said, "I can." "Well," she said, "I want to call character witnesses." "All right," I said, "fair play; I will adjourn this case for a week and you bring your witnesses." When she turned up, she had one man there as a witness, one of the men who, I knew, was frequenting the house, and I put the Bible in his hand and swore him, and he told me she was an excellent woman. I said, "Do you know she sends her children out to beg, and sends them out to steal? Do you know she is a drinking character, and when you are not there are other men about the house?" No, he didn't. I said, "your evidence does not amount to much, does it?" "Well," he said, "I am engaged to her and in three months or so we expect to be married." I thought for a little while, and I said, "you know last week I contemplated sending this woman to the Mercer and taking her children away from her, but I want to be as merciful as I can, and I don't want to break up that engagement. Now, I will tell you what I will do; I will sentence her to thirty days in jail and that will keep her sober until such time as you want to marry her." Then began the weeping and the crying and the pleading,--and I let the idea sink in. Then, I said: "You interrupted me. I said the sentence is thirty days in jail, but I am going to suspend that sentence, And if you change the conditions up there and make a different home and respect the law, and become a decent woman, it is the last you will ever hear of this case." And, gentlemen, she is doing it. I know it, because one of my officers calls there two or three times a week, and she has called to see him. That is what I call tuning up. That is the idea of parental responsibility. I could go on and tell you case after case, but time is getting on, and I want to say something else. While I have been speaking of things being encouraging, do not imagine that: I don't have my troubles. Mr. President, do you know that in all this wealthy Province of Ontario there is not a spot to which I can send a feeble-minded boy? Do you know that I had `eighteen boys before me yesterday, and out of those eighteen three were feeble-minded? Do' you know ten to fifteen percent of those who come before me are feeble-minded, some of them so feeble-minded that they are a menace to the community, and I have absolutely no spot in which I can place them for care and culture? Do you know that a great many of those feeble-minded boys and girls, if they were, taken in early life, taken here and now when they are boys and girls, and subjected to 'examination that would reveal what they were best fitted for in life, I could place them, if we had the place to do it, where they could make good, according to their abilities in life? Do you know that I am telling you today what is true, and do you know one of the greatest needs of the Court in this city is a psychopathic clinic? I don't care how it comes, whether it is through the controllers, or through some man or woman endowing it. In Chicago one woman endowed the psychopathic clinic in connection with the juvenile Court: I want it to come here. Listen! Shortly after I was appointed, a boy who had been convicted three times was seat in by the police, charged with an offence. I put him on probation. He was working in the establishment of a man whose name would be familiar to every one of you, and I didn't want to take him away from his work. His mother was dead, and he was boarding with his father. He came back and reported the following Saturday, and the next Saturday he came to tell me the works had shut down for a while. I got him work, and the man through whom I got him work induced him to leave his boarding house and come to his house. He told me the next morning Bob was there and had a valise half full of electrical instruments that he had' stolen. I said to one of my officers, "Go over and get Bob and get the valise." Bob came over and brought his valise and I opened it, and it was half full of dynamos, electric lights, one of these "shocking" batteries. and a lot of valuable electrical appliances. I looked at him, and I said: "Bob, tell me, is that your property bought with your money, or did you steal it?" "Oh, no, Mr. Starr, I bought it." Now, he had never told me a lie so far. I said, "Bob, I believe you, but how am I going to prove it to the man over there." I said, "suppose you go with the officer where you bought these goods. Where did you buy them? Over at Mr. Rogers R Well, you go to Mr. Rogers and see what he says to my officer." In twenty minutes they were back. :"Oh, he bought them," Mr. Rogers says, "he has been `doing a big business over there." "Good," I said. "Now, take him back and tell the gentleman who has befriended him that he is straight and honest." That man became so interested in the boy that he never stopped until he got him a good position in an electrical business here in Toronto. (Applause.) That is what I did. I trusted him-but I quit for a while. Less than a week after he walked into my office and he laid down on my desk a whole armful of electrical appliances. "Why," I said, "Bob, what does this mean?" "Well," he said, "I saw them lying around and I picked them up, and then I thought perhaps you wouldn't like it and I brought them up to you." "You stole them, Bob?" "Em-em, I"-"Bob, that won't do, you know, you will have to take them back." He took them back, and, to make along story short, in less than ten days he walked in one Saturday morning with a whole load of tools. "Bob, have you been stealing again?" "I saw those through the window last night, and I cut the window out and I got them and took them home, and I thought you wouldn't like me to steal so I brought them down." I looked at him, and I said, "Bob, are you sick?" "No," he, said. "Well," I said, "look, you leave those things here now, but I want you to go and get your father and bring him down here to me this afternoon; I will stay here till three o'clock." That was Saturday, and I knew! the father wasn't working, and when his father came down I told him what the boy had done. "Now," I said, "I want you to take this boy to the psychologist at' the University, Dr. Ernest Jones, and I want you to ask the doctor to examine him. He will perhaps charge you five dollars, and if you can't pay it I will, but I want the boy examined, and I want Bob to bring back the report Monday morning." On Monday morning I got the report. It said the boy is in perfect health but the trouble is he is a kleptomaniac. And the police had been treating him as a criminal! At his age, just at the time of puberty, such a boy is at his worst. A year or so and it will pass. I looked at him and I said, "Bob, don't you think you had better go to the Shelter?" "Yes," he said, "I think I had." And he went to the Shelter himself and stayed there until I could see what I could do for him. He was afraid to go out lest he should pick things up. I got into communication with a friend of his father's in the country, and I wrote and asked whether hen could given Bob a chance out there" and I got, back a delightful letter. The boy had been spending the summer out there a year ago. They said they would pay him $10 a month and give him a plot of land, the profits of which he could have for himself in addition, and that they would do the very best they could for a year. He is out there now, and he is happy and he is contented, and when this thing passes I hope to get him back into where he loves to be, into some big electrical institution where he will make good.

But, gentlemen, if I had had a psychologist in my Court, I could have told six weeks sooner what was the trouble with Bob and what to do with him. There is the need, a psychopathic institute. And yet there is a bigger need, Mr. President. I have a limited staff, of officers and the work has doubled within the last month. I am scarcely able to overtake it, though I have a magnificent staff of officers, and they are working, and the approbation officer, till ten and eleven o'clock at night, night after night. I have the co-operation of all the magistrates. I have the co-operation of the whole police force, including even the Chief Inspector. (Laughter.) And I can say the co-operation of the press. And yet, gentlemen, I cannot hope to succeed as I want to succeed-I cannot hope to succeed as I believe I can succeed, unless I have your co-operation and the cooperation of gentlemen like you. There is no use trying to make boys good in bulk. What is needed is the individual help of some one, when these boys get into trouble, so that they may have a chance to make good. What is needed is an individual to look after them and strengthen them where they are weak, and help them, and enable them to make good. That is what they want, and I appeal to you today, and it will do something for you as well-I appeal to you to volunteer to be a big brother to some one of these little brothers of yours, put on parole by me. That idea originated in New York. My friend, Mr. Coulter, talking one' day before a Club of this kind said, "I would like to have one man volunteer to act as a big brother to one of my paroled little boys," and instead of one man forty men volunteered, some of them the leading business men of New York. So great has been the success of that movement in New York, that today Mr. Coulter has five "hundred of the leading business men of New York city not including Brooklyn, for it has, an independent court, five hundred of the foremost business men of New York each playing big brother to some one little) brother on parole. (Applause.) The movement has spread to other cities.

Cannot we have the same enthusiasm? Think of two hundred men in this city acting as big brothers to two hundred little brothers, interesting themselves in these paroled boys; each taking his paroled brother up a little time to his office or a little time to his home, or out to the base-ball game; interesting himself in the boy's interests, giving him a chance to make good, giving him a chance to improve his opportunities in his environment. Why, gentlemen, you could re-make Toronto.

I have Controller McCarthy here beside me. They first day I was in my office I had four or five boys up. and I was puzzled. I didn't know what to do with them,, and I told him I was puzzled, and McCarthy said, "Let me have that boy, will you?" I have the power to commit a boy to a suitable person, and I thought McCarthy's family was small, and he might as well have an increase, and I gave him that boy, and I venture to say that boy has done him good. In New York City a while ago one of the wealthiest men was kept standing outside of the office door by a railway magnate, and when the door was opened out came a little tow-headed beggar, and the wealthy man said. "What the devil do you mean by keeping me standing here waiting on a tow-headed fellow like that?" "Why," said the railway man, "that is my little brother, I am looking after him, and say, he rests me!" (Applause.) Besides, consider the advantage 'to the boy. Consider the advantage of a boy having the influence and the personal touch of my friend Controller McCarthy every week for fifteen minutes or half an hour. Down in the New York police court only a little while ago one of these little brothers was brought up on a second offence, and they wanted to know how it was. "Well," he said, "my big brother went out of town without telling me he was going." So much do they rely on a bit of help, on a bit of encouragement.

Gentlemen, I appeal to you today. I am not going to ask you for your means. You can send them to me or to your President, but I ask you today, for the boys' sake, for your sake, co-operate with - me in this big brother movement till we extend it all over this city for the boys' sake, for your sake, for the community's sake, for the Empire's sake, for the sake of the Master, who himself was a little child. (Applause.)