Administration Of American Juvenile Reform Schools

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Contents

T!

f. Introduction.

Scope of juvenile reform school work. Its educational significance. (Aim of the present study. Character of materials available 7

CHAPTER I Introduction

There are in the United States at the present time about 96 institutions engaged in the education of children who are technically known as delinquents. The Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1903 reports that these institutions had, during that year, a total of 34,422 inmates, taught by 644 teachers and cared for by a force of 2,275 ^^^ ^^^ women as matrons, guards, teachers of trades, parole officers, etc. More than four-fifths of these children are boys. The value of the land, buildings, and other kinds of plant is given at $23,362,543 which is probably a decided under-estimate, as many institutions fail to report the value of plant. For that year the running expenses were reported at $3,788,127 or an average of $110 per capita. Notwithstanding that there are few of these schools in the Southern States, those reporting the race of their inmates give 26,576 as white, and 4,755 as colored. The Report further indicates that of the inmates 21,603 are learning trades/

The above figures give roughly a measure of one system of education in America which has evolved during the last 80 years. The juvenile reform school has not sprung from our public school system but has grown partly in connection with charity and philanthropy, and partly in connection with the departments of justice and penology. In a very true sense the work undertaken by these institutions has represented more fully the idea of state education than has the work of any other part of the educational system. For in these schools the entire round of educational effort must be compassed. That

1 Rep. of Com, of Education, 1903 : 2288.

which in a normal society is done by home and church and shop to supplement the work of schools must here be performed by the one institution. And more: it has been the mission of these schools to take, not the normal child, but the abnormal, the neglected, the perverted; and, by educative efforts to measurably reshape the warped character and mind with which they have had to deal.

The educational work of juvenile reform schools has had few points of contact with the general system of public and private education of this country. The problems to be worked out have been so special and peculiar, as to make it impossible for the workers to find in the public school system much of suggestion. Likewise, the public schools have failed largely to co-operate with and learn from juvenile reform schools. The result is that we find in the history and present development of education for juvenile delinquents an evolution of ideals, traditions, and methods having a fairly unique character, and much suggestiveness to the educator. Hardly any other system of education is so immediately tested by results as this; for the juvenile delinquent is a marked character in society, and the effects of his contact with the school are visible and much observed. The efforts of philanthropists and the intelligence of our ablest penologists have produced the ideals under which the schools have taken shape. In many instances the supervision of voluntary agencies, as State Boards of Charity, has been superior to the supervision prevailing in public education. Under these conditions, the juvenile reform school has never been able to slight or evade the problems of what is currently termed " integral education " — education that is at once physical, moral, intellectual, and vocational. However imperfectly these schools have accomplished their work, it is nevertheless true that they represent to-day the most persistent, comprehensive, and effective experiment in the domain of education that is available to the student. Hampered by slow public recognition, inadequate and underpaid service, the traditions of the parent prison system, the evils of partisan control, and the absence of a consistent philosophy of education.

INTRODUCTION y

they have nevertheless accomplished much of fruitful woric in their own field and have produced a body of imperfectly organized educational knowledge and method which should be made available.

The aim, then, of the present study, will be to describe as fully as circumstances permit the educational ideals, methods, and results of these institutions with a view to their more popular comprehension and use. The history of the evolution of the schools and also their development in foreign countries will be touched on only so far as these may prove to be helpful in realizing the above aim.

Apart from the reports of the schools themselves and some material contained in reports of various state boards, it is interesting to observe that the great amount of writing on the general subject of juvenile reformatories is in the form of material for propaganda. From the beginning of the movement in the closing years of the i8th century keen-sighted and philanthropic men and women have seen the need and possibilities of educational institutions of this type. In their speculations these people have often anticipated the main lines along which the schools have finally developed. Convinced of the rightness and feasibility of their cause, they have addressed themselves to converting the reluctant public to their point of view ; and the result has been the amassing of books, articles, and proceedings, all designed to heighten interest in the subject but giving, unfortunately, little concrete material upon which the student may rely for actual record of adiieve- ^ ments. The movement has been in the nature of a great missionary enterprise, always looking forward, and taking little account of ground actually covered. But at the present time much more is being done in the way of quantitative record of practice and results, and we may confidently expect these institutions and the educators working in them soon to produce many definite studies of educational value.

CHAPTER II Historical

In the poptrlar mind the juvenile reform school is always as^ sociated with the prison system of the state. This popular conception is justified by the fact that the school is historically an offshoot of the prison system, and has borrowed many of its traditions and methods from the latter, somewhat humanized however by contact with the workers and institutions in the field of charity.

While sporadic efforts at the saving of delinquent children are noted in the work of church and state in many past centuries, it is probably true that the general movement in this direction which has had its development mainly within the last eighty years, traces its concrete origin to the interest in prisons which manifested itself in England in the last years of the 1 8th century. When a movement looking to the reformation of adult criminals was started it was soon found that the work had been begun too late to be of much service. Child criminals, imprisoned with hardened offenders, soon became habituated to their associates and to the vice of the jails. As a result of agitation and the rousing of public conscience there came into existence in London, " The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline and for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents." From England the spirit of this work spread both to continental Europe and to America. Though many years were to elapse, even in England, before any large attempts to meet the problem of the reformation of childcriminals could be made, nevertheless excellent beginnings were made on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1824 the historic House of Refuge was founded in New York City; and

two years later, Philadelphia, through a private organization: 10 of philanthropic citizens, also organized a House of Refuge which is still in active operation. Boston- established the Municipal " House of Reformation for Juvenile Offenders "^ in 1827.

But after this the movement seems to have lagged for about twenty years. Before 1850 there were established in addition to the above only the State Reform School of Massachusetts, in 1848 (now Lyman School) ; the Western House of Refuge at Rxxrhester, New York, in 1846, and a few privately supported homes, mostly for girls. The renewal of interest about 1850 led to the founding of many of the stronges«t of the schools which havecarried their work down to the present time. Among those established between 1850 and i860 were: The Connecticut Reform School, 1854; The New Orleans House of Refuge, 1850; The House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents, Balti-^ more, 1855; The State Industrial School for Girls, Massachusetts, 1856; The Michigan State Reform School, 1856; The Brooklyn Truant Home, 1857; The Cincinnati House of Refuge, 1850; The Ohio State Reform School, 1857; The Providence Reform School, 1850; and others in New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

Another period of interest in the movement lies between the years 1866 and 1873 during which many new schools were founded. As indicated above, the Reports of the Commissioner now show the existence of nearly a hundred of these schools. The newer states have usually founded one for each sex. In many cases the original juvenile reform school has been affected by the establishment of State Reformatories (for the correction of more mature youths and first offenders) and by the development of local agencies working in conjunction with the juvenile court and probation system, the former taking the older boys and the latter more carefully sifting the children committed.

Second in interest only to the movement which resulted in the establishment of juvenile reformatories has been the evolution of ideals and practices bearing on flieir scope, work, and results. It was inevitable that at first they should be only prisons where youthful delinquents might be confined somewhat more humanely and with less danger of contamination than in prisons for adults. In the Seventy-fifth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Philadelphia House of Refuge is shown a cut of their first building — 3l great, low, quadrangular structure, with few and very narrow windows and these evidently heavily barred. But the prison character of the institution was even then being relieved by the better ideals of thos'e directing the work. When the above home was opened, Mr. John Sergeant, the first president of the Board of Managers expressed its purposes thus to the citizens of Philadelphia " We would remind you, in the first place, that the great end and aim of the House of Refuge is, in the strictest sense of the terms, a work of charity and mercy. . . . The Refuge is not a place of punishment; it is not a provision simply, nor even principally, for ^e security of society against offence, by the confinement of culprits, nor for inflicting the vengeance of society upon offenders as a terror to those who may be inclined to do evil. It presents no vindictive or reproachful aspect; it threatens no humiliating recollections of the past; it holds out no degrading denunciations for the future, — but, in the accents of kindness and compassion, invites the children of poverty and ignorance whose wandering and misguided steps are leading them to swift destruction, to come to a home where they will be sheltered from temptation, and led into the ways of usefulness and virtue ".^ And from one of the rules of the Board : " That the former <x>nduct of delinquents be no further regarded in their treatment in the House than as furnishing an index to their character and of the discipline necessary in their respective cases, the design of the House being discipline, instruction, and reformation, not the punishment of the delinquent ".*

In the same connection it is interesting to note a judicial opinion delivered unanimously by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in the December term, 1828 in a case involving

^ Quoted in an address by N. Dubois Miller delivered at the House of Refuge, June 25, 1889.

IS the rigfhts of the House of Refuge to stand in "loco parentis " : " The House of Refuge is not a prison, but a school where reformation and not punishment is the end. It may, indeed, be used as a prison for juvenile convicts, who would else be committed to the common jail; and in respect to these, the constitutionality of the act which incorporated it stands clear of controversy. . . The object of the charity is reformation, by training its inmates to industry, imbuing their minds with the principles of morality and religion, by furnishing them with the means to earn a living, and, above all, by separating them from the corrupting influence of improper associates. To this end, may not the natural parents, when unequal to the task of education, or unworthy of it, be superseded by the parens patriae , or common guardians of the community?" ^

But these institutions were bom of the prisons, and many years were to elapse before it was generally felt that prison traditions and practices could be dispensed with. Says Supt. Nibecker, who has given the subject careful study : " The first efforts (in the treatment of juvenile offenders) were primarily to save them' fromi the demoralizing effect of association with older criminals in jails and prisons. The earliest institutions for juvenile delinquents were organized under the dominance of the prison idea. It may be true that such was not the conscious intention on the part of the pioneers of the work, who took it up long before the states were sufficiently alive to its importance to enter into it. But nevertheless the fact remains that when looked upon as history, there were present in the earlier provisions for the detention and care of children committed for violation of the law most of the characteristics of the prison treatment of adults, and few characteristics belonging property to a regimen of education and development.

In all regards this was true; the establishments were distinctively prison enclosures; the dormitories were blocks of cells; the dining-rooms were chambers of silence, with only

1 Quoted in the 34th and 35th annual reports of the Conn. School for Girls, for 1904, p. 6.

the meag-erest provision of the rudest table furniture; the earning capacity of those confined was exploited to the highest I)ossible figure, and education in letters was only provided for during such hours as could not be profitably employed in work ; and the greatest ambition and strongest claim for popular approval was a low per capita cost of maintenance." ^

At the risk of unduly multiplying quotation, it seems necessary to the add the following, for it is an expression growing out of long experience with actual conditions and it undoubtedly pictures with considerable fidelity a situation which was common enough in the earlier stages of the development of juvenile reform schools : " These institutions were generally known as Houses of Refuge. In the refuge of early date (he alludes to the time from 1850 to 1870) and in some of them of recent times, prison and penitentiary methods were used and are still in use. The youth was confined at contract labor. Only the most meagre educational advantages were afforded him. His superior officers' first thought was the amount of money to be gained from his labor. When boys entered the institution, no matter what they had been committed for, they received the same treatment, and, according as they were big or little, the same classification. So, into^ one of two great divisions the boy was herded with several hundred other boys, without respect to their power for good or bad, and without regard to their want of training.

When bed time came he was taken to a large cell-hall, for decency's sake called a dormitory; in each hall were from 150 to 200 narrow cells, 5x8x6, tier on tier, with a single barred slit in one wall called a window and in the other a grated iron door fitted with a padlock or brake. To such a cell, whether used to a bed at home or a shakedown in a dry-goods box, the boy was taken. Behind the bars of his prison-cell the boy often gave way to his feelings in an agony of remorse and fear; and thus, amidst the shouted taunts of his companions he fell asleep. In the morning, awakened by the bell, he

^Annals of Am. Acad, of Pol. and Social Science, 23:483* hurried on his clothes, unless he had followed a general custom of sleeping in them, and, amid disorder, formed in line outside his cell. With the earthenware utensil used to receive excrement at night, he marched, in a slovenly line, to the slop sink and back, when he formed in line again for breakfast, down to the bathroom', where he washed or not as he pleased, and wiped upon roller towels used in common, by which nastiness and disease were often carried. He then went to the dining-room- — a great, long, low, dull, dirty room, in which, before the dirty tables without cloths, or, when with them, foodstained, ragged and dirty, he sat upon greasy chairs to partake of his food. The food was usually sufficient in quantity, often bad in quality, and prepared and served as if it were food for swine or fowl. As it was cooked and served, so was it eaten. Unless assigned to permanent kitchen vassalage, washing dishes, sweeping, making beds, scrubbing floors, or other

duties that pertained to the care of the institution, he was taken to the shop and there taught to cane chairs, to make

shoes or clothes, under the joint watchfulness of an overseer for the institution and an overseer for the contractor. By these men he was assigned to a task; and woe be unto him if he did not soon learn to complete it. If a good boy, he tried to do his best. Perhaps some envious fellow inmate, whose feelings had been deadened by much institutionizing, sought to place obstacles in his way so that the boy who set out with a determination to do his best soon found his way beset by hindrances that his untrained faculties had not the power to overcome. Thus, if he were not a rare boy, he soon found himself " pegged," or on the overseer's list, to go to the finishing room where the strap man came around at the appointed hour each day. The boy was thus placed between- the fryingpan of hard labor and the fire of severe corporal punishment. Upon the yard at play he met the same opposition and was assailed on all sides, until, ui^ess a most exceptional boy or a dullard, he, in despair, added one more to the ranks of his tormenters, and became either a covert or open schemer against the government of the institution.

When work was slack or wanting, long hours of idleness were his in which to morally degrade himself and his fellows and to plan all kinds of villiany.

In school he fared no better. The rote system of teachings tiien in vogue, did not attract his Umited powers of attention.

I do not know how the ofikers were appointed or selected but I do know that of one set of men, more than fifty per cent were disdiarged for cruelty, misconduct, drunkenness, and gross inmiorality witfi the boys. Yet the institution was called a reformatory. But it did not leave the boys entrusted ta its care in as good condition as when they were received. It forced them to bow under the lash, under long confinement in dark cells, on bread and water, and other punishments. It did not teach them to obey. By herding boys of all ages,, sizes, and impressionability into two great divisicms, it taught vice alike to the innocent and the vile. It did not sedc to provide occupation alike for hand and brain, but it taught a trade or part of a trade in which the boy did not find the mental interest and empk>3rment that should serve to keep his mind from vicious thoughts, that should train him to higher and better things. The old institution marred the boy ; it did not make him. To the old institution we owe it that at one time refuge boys furnished a little less than one-fourth of the prison population and 29 per cent of the lu^itual criminals in prison." *

Fr<xn these conditions the evolution of the modem juvenile refarm-school at its best has been a marked, but by no means a uniform process. Here and there individual schools, under the leader^p of some unusually keen and syn^>atheti€ men or women, have readied high standards of excellence. A long and patiently fought local campaign has usually been necessary to secure the establishment of such schools ; and it is still true that many states have as yet no juvenile reform schools. The state-controlled schools have passed through discouraging periods when they were used by the poUticians.

for patronage. Nevertheless, as one compares the conditions of one decade with those of another, the general progress noted can hardly be said to be less than that found in the best of the other institutions of the republic.

The following are the more notable features in the development: (a) The physical welfare of the children committed to the institution has come to be more carefully attended to. Generally speaking, it would seem that to-day in the average school the pupils are well off in the matters of food, shelter, clothing, cleanliness, health, and exercise. In other words, nurture as a factor in the general education of these boys and girls has been fairly well realized in recent years. Not that conditions are ideal; the necessities of economy, the location of some of the institutions, the ignorance and inattention of many officials, prevent as full a development of the side of physical nurture as is desirable in many instances; but results attained are favorable when contrasted with the previous conditions of the institutions and frequently with the home conditions of the children themselves.

(b) Again, the change in discipline has been very nmrked. Relics of prison discipline have largely disappeared in the modern school and there is a tendency to approximate the conditions of the better boarding schools. Corporal punishn>ent, solitary confinement, and various devices for humiliation and torture, while not wholly discarded, have been largely replaced by other means of procuring not only control, but also moral development. The history of the rise of the more humane spirit in the practice of these institutions is part of the larger history of the decline of severity in church, home, school, and prison.

(c) The gradual rise of the cottage system, in the estimation of the students of the subject, is also important. Very early the ideal had developed that the reform school should, as nearly as practicaible, reproduce the conditions of the good home. Attempts to realize this end were difficult on accoimt of the greater expense in land, buildings, and service required; and on account of the supposed increased difficulty of control.

"But after much experiment and effort the cottage system has came to prevail in various forms, and institutions not so organized are striving in that direction/

^ Miss Mary Carpenter, one of the great apostles of juvenile reform work in England, visited America in 1873, and her frank discussion of re-, suits as she found them here undoubtedly contributed much to the cottage movement. In her address to the National Prison Association she says: " The duty of educating young delinquents, not punishing them, was recognized in Philadelphia, New York, and other places and carried into effect long before the principle was accepted by the mother country. But, the circumstances of the country considered, better principles than those which were first adopted in those early reformatories have now been introduced into Europe (1873), and are generally adopted in the Old World.

" In all cases it appears to me (and this view is generally adopted in Great Britain) that up to the age of fourteen the child who has not such a home as will prepare him to take his place in society and is deprived, whether by the course of nature or by human laws, of parental control^ should be placed by the state, representing society, in a condition as nearly as possible resembling a good home. Hence, in all cases, I object to large institutions for children where individuality is destroyed and where there cannot be any home influence. The surroundings of the young persons thus brought into the artificial atmosphere should correspond with the natural mode of life so far as is compatible with sanitary conditions, order, and propriety; while the education and industrial training should be such as to prepare them to discharge well the duties of the condition of life which they may be expected to fill.

" The older reformatory schools of New York and Philadelphia were established on the congregate plan. That at Westboro (Mass.) was established later, but the family system was never fully adopted in it and the various serious catastrophes indicate an entire want of the family spirit From all I heard, it was a juvenile gaol. I carefully visited the New York Reform School on Randall's Island. It is a splendid institution and managed with great care and effort; but it is carried on, it appears to me, on a false principle. There is no natural life or freedom; young men of an age to have large experience with vice are associated with young boys ; all arrangements are artificial ; instead of the cultivation of the land which would prepare the youth to seek a sphere afar from the dangers of large cities, the boys and young men were being taught trades which would confine them to the great centers of an overcrowded population. The girls were being carefully taught, and even too much attention was being paid to their personal comfort; but they were prisoners; they were not being prepared for a home life, which is the best life for a woman, and could not be so under existing circumstances.

" In Philadelphia the same remarks must be applied to the large, prisonlike building for boys and for girls. Hundreds of youths were there congregated under lock and key. However good were the arrangements, they

(d) With the development of the cottage system there have grown up various systems of classifying the inmates. This classification has been sometimes along lines of age and physical development, sometimes on the basis of the offence for which the child is committed, and sometimes on the basis of moral or intellectual development after entering the institution. Each system has had its defenders and is still more or less on trial; but in a general way, the system of extensive classification has greatly improved the morale and effectiveness of the institution.

(e) Another feature of the reform school which has undergone marked development is that of industrial education. The earlier institutions were workhouses, but the work was slavish, the child was conscious of no advantage to himself, and the trade learned was not one that could be followed afterwards. The manual training movement which began in this country with the Exposition of 1876 gave the schools new ideals and since then there has been a marked tendency to substitute for the old productive forms of labor those which, while making the institution more expensive to its supporters, would nevertheless give the child a better industrial education.

(f) It has always been recognized that the children committed to the reform schools were far behind the normal child in point of intellectual attainments. A notable part of the work of these schools has been the development of a system of education usually called literary which should put the inmates somewhat on an equality with children outside. In the better schools a decided attempt is made to apply the courses of study used in the public schools, but it has taken long and patient effort to reach this standard, in view of the variety of other work which the institution has been expected to perform.

entirely failed to convince me that the principle was good on which the institution was formed.

"The State Reform School at West Meriden in Connecticut formed an admirable exception and was worthy of all praise. It was a farm-school and succeeded admirably," (Nat. Conf. of Char, and Cor., Proc. 1875: 66-77.)

(g) The older schools, affected by their prison traditions and lack of facilities, gave little attention to the discharged in^ mate. As a consequence, the work of the institution was frequently undone by the return of the child to a bad home, or to his failure to find a suitable home, if without parental care. Individual schools did what was possible to remedy this condition, by improving- and safeguarding the conditions of indenture, by co-operating with the home, and by keeping in touch with the boy or girl after leaving. The wisdom of this ix>licy has finally developed the general parole system which is now recognized as an indispensable part of the work of reform schools.

(h) The establishment, in quite recent years, of juvenile courts and probation has led to a more careful screening of offending" or neglected children, and the present result is that the reform schools, where juvenile courts exist, get a somewhat more incorrigible class of children, and in fact the schools tend to become institutions for that residue of delinquent children who cannot be handled by the co-operation of home and probation officers.

(i) Other special devices for improving the work of the schools are the introduction of a partial wage system, and selfgovernment. These are still in an experimental stage.