colonies, when definitely indicated, although here it should be emphasized that many feebleminded children, as shown by laboratory findings, can be kept outside of the institution, under supervision. Psychopathic hospitals are absolutely necessary, and to really functionate best, must treat the neurotic child rather than the psychopathic adult. And, finally, for certain cases, schools.

It is the combination of dependent child, the feebleminded child, the psychopathic child, and the normal child that make our reformatories, so-called, the futile institutions that they are. Separate the classes, and you will automatically eliminate the reformatory. There is no relation whatever between the reformatory and the training school for juveniles, and given the really functionating clearing house in constant co-operation with the public school, together with supervised homes, child-placing in private homes, colonies for the feebleminded, hospitals for the psychopathic, and real schools for the educable, and there will be practically no material for the adult reformatory.

Do not dare to say that this is an impractical ideal until it has been given a thorough trial.

Now, about the training school: First, keep it small. The number who may ride in an elevator is regulated by law, and yet so fearful are we of overhead expense that we crowd our training schools for juveniles until they absolutely cease to functionate. The big institution is doomed to fail. Children cannot be educated en masse. Even the best standard treatment of the group must give way to the concept of the individual.

Second, keep the institution a school, and a school only. Insist that the child be given a full public school day, and protest persistently against being a party to permitting a so-called state supported institution to prop itself on the labor of the child as a crutch. It tempts one to ask, in considering the training schools in America, "When is a school not a school?" and to answer, "When it is a school for delinquents" (so-called). Because the child has shown by her anti-social conduct how much she is in need of more education, she is put in a training school where she will get less. There should be the best in equipment and opportunity. A child from a good home may be able to "get by" in a makeshift school, but the child from a makeshift home must have the best. The housing should be in small cottages, of not more than ten girls to a cottage, under a woman possessed of the highest education, culture, and practical Christianity. If there must needs be a choice as to whether or not the housemother or the superintendent of the institution should have education, refinement, and culture, by all means pick the matron for these qualities in preference to the superintendent, as she has more to do with the molding of the children's lives than anyone else connected with the institution.

Each girl should have her own room and keep her possessions in her roomexcept what she has in the back yard! Seriously, I believe the greatest lack in our training schools is the back yard; the back yard, with arbors and shade trees and flowers-not too primly set-chickens and biddies, and a dog house, and an outdoor doll house, and a place to make playhouses out of old bricks and shingles. Oh, we need-how tragically we need-for our children who become wards of the state to leave the "e" off of our accepted method of treatment. We give them humane treatment, as we do our dogs and cats, the while they man treatment. Eliminate the "e" from humane and you have matory. O. Henry's prayer that he might "bring to a child need we have today in our handling of children

institutional heads! What Methuselahs we are expected to be! Dignity must be constantly preserved to maintain discipline! If we could only substitute a flexible realization of the eternal fitness of things, and remember that, as Paul says, "There is a time for all things!" We should all approach this mightiest of human tasks in a spirit of humility. We should once and for all have done with hypocrisy. The best qualification for a worker in a school for juveniles is a good memory of her own childhood. We should have patience, and we should feel constantly the thrill of the job. We should remember that the task is a slow one; that in the words of Dr. Hart, "Five years is a short time in the life of a social worker." We should stick. The institutional head who simply looks upon the position as a stepping stone to one of "more prestige" or better recompense is a traitor to the cause of childhood. If, in the course of human events, one gets "let out," be ready to meet it, and with good grace depart. Pack up your material possessions as best you may, but pack with the utmost pains your ideals; label, "Handle with Care. This Side Up," and go forth joyfully to the next opportunity.

For, so the Ark be borne to Zion, who

Heeds how they perished, or were paid that bore it?
For, so the Shrine abide, what shame-what pride-
If we, the priests, were bound or crowned before it.

CERTAIN STEPS IN THE PREVENTION OF DELINQUENCY

A. ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION NEEDS IN THE
TREATMENT OF DELINQUENTS
(Summary of Address)

O. F. Lewis, Secretary, American Prison Association, New York

1. The treatment of delinquency and crime should be a profession. The lawyer, the minister, the school teacher, are recognized as being of a profession. This means that there should be a group of standards in the profession of social worker, as related to the treatment of crime and law-breaking.

2. One of the important requirements is accountability. What we say and what we do should be checked up, even if only by ourselves. Our profession requires of us intellectual as well as legal and social honesty. Loose talk, remarks, and inferences not based upon fact or truth, easy, slipshod inferences, and the like should be excluded from our profession, and the person indulging in such unwarranted performance should be recognized as not representative of the profession.

3. We need to appreciate that we can contribute to the world's progress. Thi is the best that, consciously or unconsciously, the world places upon our work. Th are any number of persons working in this field who are doing their work in a rout way, not daringly or with imagination. They serve, and they pass away in tim It is the pioneer, the daring, even the insurgent worker in this field who most makes for progress, provided his basic principles are sound. In proportion as we are conscious that we thus contribute to the world's progress shall we sense the nee bigness of the field.

4. There should be civil service in the selection of wardens: of correctional institutions just as much as in the case of lesser offi

tend the

sound civil service-not civil service played as a political game, nor perverted by wretched or inadquate appointments to such important offices-shall we rid ourselves gradually of the blight of politics in connection with the operation of correctional institutions.

5. There should be relatively secure tenure of office. The lawyer knows that his field offers permanency, likewise the minister, the school teacher. But so long as the wardenship, and to a lesser degree the superintendency, of reformatories are of the in-again-out-again, off-again-on-again kind, there will be little inducement to high class persons to risk their success and the welfare of those dependent upon them on such unstable foundations.

6. There should be clinics in courts and in institutions. This has become so obvious as hardly to need even repetition today. The treatment of the criminal must be on the basis of adequate knowledge. Such information cannot be obtained without clinical help in many instances. And the clinical help should not be had only after the one dealt with has arrived at an institution. Indeed, the clinic ought to begin as early as the primary schoolroom.

7. As a corollary, all specialized treatment of the inmate should be on the basis of adequate knowledge of the individual to be treated. It is as unfair to treat an inmate predominantly on the basis of any one kind of specialized knowledge as it is to treat him in mass. For instance, to treat an inmate wholly on the basis of the findings of a physician or a psychologist is as bad as to treat him wholly on the findings of a "P.K." or a warden. What is essential in any institution is treatment on a basis of the joint findings of a qualified group of persons.

8. There should be an end to the existence of a number of different systems of correction within the same state. A State Department of Correction is essential. To continue the system of the county jail, the municipal institutions, reformatories under boards of managers, and prisons under still another body is to perpetuate many of the administrative evils that we seek to get away from. State departments of correction or of public welfare, centralizing control of correctional institutions under one board, should be developed.

9. All preventive and protective measures should be greatly advanced and increased in the communities. It should be better recognized that crime and lawbreaking "start young" and often far remote from the vicinity of a correctional institution. The temptations of youth should be counteracted by equally attractive and pleasurable substitutes for the things that lead youth to delinquency. The organizations that foster healthy childhood and clean living among boys and girls should have large support. Young men and women should have sane and effective help before they are far on the road to crime and delinquency.

Board of State Charities, showed that between 1917 and 1919 the number of prisoners in all kinds of correctional institutions in Indiana had greatly diminished. At the time of last year's Conference the number of prisoners had never been so low in the county jails of Indiana. From 1917 to 1919 there was a reduction of 58 per cent in the jail population of that state and a decrease of 61 per cent in the commitments. The number of empty jails had almost doubled; the commitments to the Correctional Department of the Woman's Prison decreased 72 per cent from 1917 to 1919, while the repeaters sentenced to the State Farm decreased 70 per cent for the same period. Mr. Brown said that while the causes for the decrease may have been numerous, prohibition was the most potent.

Since that report was made to this Conference a year ago, other evidence has been found which seems to indicate that prohibition, even with the difficulty of permanent enforcement, seems to have had decided effect upon criminality. The study of the situation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, published by the Survey in November of last year, showed that during the first year of prohibition in Grand Rapids there was a reduction of 54 per cent in the court cases of that city, and of 45 per cent in the second year, making an average decrease of 49.8 per cent for the two years. It is a well known fact that the excessive use of alcohol is connected with certain crimes more directly than with others. Crimes of violence are more influenced than crimes of cunning. The crimes especially affected in Grand Rapids were assault, felonies, assault and battery, breach of the peace, desertion, habitual drunkenness, indecent liberties, disorderly conduct, intoxication and disorderly conduct, and vagrancy. The jail population decreased two-thirds. The total cases adjusted in police court between 1916-17 and 1919-20, decreased almost one-half, while the crime of intoxication was only a little more than one-fourth what it was in 1916 and 1917.

Further figures are now available for the state of Indiana. In 1920 the average daily number in the state prison was only 909 as compared with 1,209 in 1917. In the Reformatory the number had decreased from 1,276 in 1917 to 709 in 1920; in the Woman's Prison from 55 to 45. The number of women misdemeanants in the Correctional Department of the Woman's Prison had decreased from 111 to 37; the misdemeanants at the State Farm had decreased from 693 to 293. There was a slight decrease in the number in the Boys' School, and a slight increase in the number in the Girls' School for those years. The commitments to the State Farm dropped from 2,322 in 1916 to 993 in 1920; to the Correctional Department of the Woman's Prison from 342 to 91; the number sentenced to jails from 9,896 to 2,192.1

A study reported in the Survey for May 14, made by Mrs. Tyson in Pennsylvania, shows a similar decrease in that state in spite of the fact that in western Pennsylvania large amounts of liquors have been obtained for "medicinal purposes." The number of non-support cases in Pittsburgh dropped from 1,055 in 1919 to 746 in 1920, and in another of the large cities of the state the number of reported cases of cruelty to children due to drink fell from 163 in 1919 to 14 in 1920. The jail population of the state was decreased by half during last year; the Industrial Reformatory for Older Boy Delinquents suffered a decline in its admissions from 731 in 1919 to 355 in 1920. The House of Correction in Philadelphia in 1920 had from 600 to 700 inmates as compared with 1,700 to 1,800 in pre-prohibition days. While other factors doubtless

* Prison Sunday, Board of State Charities of Indiana, Indianapolis, 1920, p. 12; Thirty-first Annual Report, Board of State Charities of Indiana, Indianapolis, 1921, p. 18.

account in some degree for these decreases, the study indicates the probability that even partial prohibition has had a decided effect.

In spite of the increase in arrests and commitments due to the enforcement of the prohibitory law which tends to increase the number of crimes and prisoners, in Ohio the Secretary of the Board of Charities writes me that he is convinced that prohibition has resulted thus far in a decrease of at least 20 per cent in petty and major offenses which were crimes prior to the enactment of the prohibition law. He reports that there was a very notable falling off of petty crime as reflected in the eight workhouses immediately after the enactment of prohibition when the population decreased 60 per cent. Since the so-called crime wave has been spreading over the country and the police have been more active in apprehending vagrants, and the courts in imposing sentences to workhouses, that decrease has not been maintained. Mr. George S. Wilson, secretary of the Board of Charities of the District of Columbia, writes me that the short experience of the district since national prohibition has gone into effect shows a very marked decrease in the number of petty offenders. The actual number of commitments and the daily average population have both shown great reductions, the daily average for the first nine months of the current fiscal year being approximately 193, with no marked increase at present, notwithstanding the unfavorable industrial conditions.

The District had a local prohibition law previous to the constitutional amendment. This went into effect in November, 1917. For several years previous to 1917 the population in the District workhouse averaged slightly over 600. In 1918 there was a decrease of 40 per cent over the previous year; in 1919 a slight increase over 1918, while in 1920 it reached the lowest point in its history, namely, 334. Mr. Wilson does not attribute this influence entirely to prohibition, but says that the first marked decrease came suddenly following the going into effect of the law for the District of Columbia in 1917.1

In Illinois, in the three penal institutions of Joliet, Chester, and Pontiac, the number of inmates showed a decided increase from 1913 to 1917, then a decrease in 1918 and 1919, with another increase in 1920, attributed by the fiscal supervisor of the Department of Public Welfare to the return of paroled men to the institutions and the more rigid enforcement of the law in the cities where the newspapers have been devoting considerable space to the crime wave.

Some figures from Wisconsin have an interest in this connection. While the direct connection between prohibition and commitments to the correctional institutions of the state cannot be made, the facts are given here for what they are worth. Since 1915 the commitments by the courts to the State Prison have been as follows:

The commitments to the State Reformatory show the following figures:

Reports of the Board of Charities of the District of Columbia, 1918, 1919, 1920.