makes of himself a scientist objectively. And if, for example, he discovers a feeling of inferiority in Mary or John, he is in a position not only to prevent misconduct, but sometimes to be the possible instrument of preventing insanity.

Just as a feeling of inferiority, if discovered soon enough, can often be cured, so other causes of delinquency are curable. Some can be handled by adjusting the child to his environment, and others by adjusting the child's environment to him. This does not mean that all the causes are curable, and no probation officer should herself develop a feeling of inferiority or a feeling that the work is futile because some of her cases fail.

Where there are examiners, of course, some of the hopeless cases can be weeded out and sent to institutions before they get to the probation officer. The officer then does not have to waste his time on hopeless material. This separating of the hopeless from the hopeful is one of the chief jobs of the court examiner.

There are numberless cases that have passed through the court in the last six years to show that two people committing the same offense may not necessarily be led to it by the same causes or the same motives. One may have developed a disease that, in the present state of medical and psychological science, is still incurable, and one may have been induced by some readily found motive while another may have been induced merely by habit. In the case of repeaters, that is, in the case of children who come back to the court again and again, we are too apt to think that they must be abnormal or feebleminded because they are so chronically bad. Some of the children we handle do fall in these groups, but we are doing an injustice to the others if we regard them in this way. In hunting for the causes of continued delinquency, the most obvious is often overlooked. The first delinquent act may be accidental. Johnny meets Jim, who suggests a burglary; Johnny goes for the adventure of the thing. He is not caught and the result is pleasurable. He enjoys the money he stole, or the machine in which he went joy-riding; the enjoyable result leads to other acts of the same kind; and finally the habit of doing this same thing has made itself a vital part of the boy's mental state. Technically this is called the law of effect. That is, one act that is pleasurable results in a repetition of the same act. Often a child is brought to the probation officer after his enjoyable habits of misconduct have been firmly fixed in this way. I heard someone say one time that the juvenile court is running an old folks home. In one sense of the words this is true. If the parents, instead of trying to shield Johnny and keep his misbehavior from being known, would refer him for examination as soon as they discover that he is becoming a problem they cannot handle, the probation officers would have a better chance.

Every probation officer has had instances where the boy who had promised faithfully not to repeat the act did the same thing again when he was barely out of the shadow of the courthouse. There is a tendency then to say, "This boy is a bad egg; his promises are pie crust; they mean nothing; he is hopeless."

That is not necessarily true. We all have a tendency to feel that someone is hopeless if he continues to be bad after he has given us his promise to change; but if any of you have tried to break a habit of your own-whether it is the habit of playing poker, or the habit of smoking cigarettes; if any of you have married and have found that after marriage your wife or husband wants you to change some of your ways-you will know how difficult a thing it is; so that one or two or three or four slips on the part of a boy, after he has promised to change, do not mean that he is dead timber for probation work. Often we send a boy back to the same companions, the same home, and the same incompetent parents, and then, with all the chemical ingredients the same, wonder why he does not change his conduct immediately. William James has said that in forming a habit the beginning must be explosive, and very often the habits of a boy cannot be changed unless he is fairly exploded out of his past environment into new surroundings. All of us have in ourselves many personalities. Pathological cases of multiple personality prove this and it often depends on one's surroundings which personality is brought out. For this reason successful probation work, in a given instance, often depends on whether it is possible to provide for the child new and desirable surroundings.

When I started to organize this paper I suffered from some grandiose idea of covering the whole subject in thirty sparkling minutes. As you see, it couldn't be done. I had to be content with hitting a few of the high spots. If I have convinced you that an examiner is not a half god who can tell what's the matter with a child by looking at him; if I have convinced you that no examiner can make a diagnosis without depending on the probation officer for a complete social history; and if I have convinced you that the diagnosis is only a small part of the picture unless the child happens to be definitely feebleminded or epileptic or insane, I shall feel richly successful. If I have succeeded in showing that all delinquent children are not feebleminded, and that the high-grade feebleminded can be helped to get along in the community; if I have left you with the feeling that many abnormalities of temperament and conduct are caused by coddling or by criticism, and that, if found soon enough, these causes can be probed and cured by the probation officer; if I have left in your minds the idea that the cause of the misconduct, and not the kind of misconduct, determines whether probation treatment will be helpful and determines what kind of probation treatment must be used; if I have left in your minds the question "why" instead of the question "what," I shall feel that I have accomplished my mission.

Most of the children can be salvaged. They either outgrow their misconduct, or new habits are conditioned by probation work. If most of them were feebleminded or were very abnormal, this couldn't be done. The fact that they can be salvaged is what makes the work an inspiration.

Probation work itself is on probation, but if we are careful, after thorough social and mental examination, not to place a dangerous boy or girl in the community, and if we can educate the public to know that we are not back-patters,

but scientists; if, above all, we can make them realize that we are studying and eradicating causes, and if we can demonstrate to them that most of our children become good citizens, probation will be safe as an established principle, and we shall never have to go back to the medieval idea of revenge and punishment! We shall be allowed to continue our pioneer work, and we shall never have forced upon us the necessity of sending our children to institutions where criminals are formed rather than reformed.

JUVENILES IN REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS

Frank D. Whipp, Superintendent, Illinois School for Boys, St. Charles

Happiness should be the keynote for psychiatric training in our reformatory institutions. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine in which I have had no special training, and the views expressed here are presented from the standpoint of a layman without medical training, who has only had practical experience with the problems of reclaiming delinquent boys in an institution atmosphere. Under the most favorable conditions, the solution of problems relating to juvenile offenders is a difficult undertaking.

My opinion is that, if possible, we should keep boys and girls out of public institutions and encourage the practice of psychiatry in treating them in their home communities before it is necessary to commit them to a reformatory. As a general rule, juveniles in reformatories are "more sinned against than sinning." If one would examine the living conditions of these juveniles previous to their commitment he would find that broken homes brought about by parental troubles, misfortunes such as divorces, separations, desertions, death of one or both parents, poverty, home and community environment, heredity, and ignorance are primarily the contributing causes of such delinquency. An improvement of these conditions in the future will be the greatest contribution toward lessening the number of offenders. The slogan should be "proper habit formation instead of reformation."

Psychiatry in an institution, aside from the medical aspect, means care, education, industry, recreation, and training in the correct habits of living. All this must be carefully studied and mapped out by a trained expert. Every institution should employ a psychiatrist who has actually lived with delinquents in an institution and learned by experience the difficulties of institution administration. The services of such a specialist will not be of much value to the management or the inmates unless he has supplemented his theoretical training with practical experience. In order that psychiatrists may have a clear understanding of internal institution organization and operation, they should be required to serve an interneship with a reformatory before taking up such work.

Scientific methods are being applied to budget-making, accounting, and practically every important phase of business and education. Why, then, should

they not be used in treating delinquents? In many of our institutions old-time methods, practiced for many years, have brought about abuses and customs that must be obliterated before we can reach the ideals sought for in psychiatry. Among such impediments to advancement is the idea of some officers that the institutions are built exclusively for their own special comfort and pleasure, or for their relatives and friends, instead of for the reformation of the offenders. There are those who treat the delinquents almost like peons or serfs. They are required to blacken the officers' shoes, nurse their children, wash and iron personal clothes for both men and women, and do all sorts of menial work that should be done by the officers themselves. This is more of a deterrent to reformation than anything that happens in the institution life of the offender.

In many institutions, officials point with pride to the fine dairy herd which has been purchased for the exclusive benefit of the inmates. In reality, butter is made and cream is skimmed from the milk for the officers while the inmates are furnished with skimmed milk, or "blue jack," to build up their undernourished constitutions. Why not dismantle the cream separators, buy butter for the officers, and give the inmates and officers whole milk? Inmates understand the injustice of giving the officers the best of everything and supplying them with what is left. Offenders often reach the institution with pinched and deeply lined faces just because they are hungry or suffering from malnutrition. Only a plentiful supply of good food, fresh air, healthful surroundings, and correct habits will build the foundation on which to start reclamation and bring about radiant countenances full of hope for the future. Let the low per capita cost of food showing be a minor factor in institution management, and adopt the Salvation Army slogan, "Feed them first and then save them." This should be a special branch of psychiatry not to be overlooked.

Silence at meals is often enforced in institutions. It should be eliminated, because conversation has as many educational advantages in an institution as it has in a modern home. Inmates should be allowed to talk to their hearts' content, but not in a boisterous way. It has been said that the "silent and sullen man is the most dangerous to deal with." Another fallacy in dealing with delinquents is requiring them to march to meals in line, convict fashion, with their hands behind them. This has, in my opinion, detrimental influence on the youth. If it is possible, the inmates should not be institutionalized by such practices, but trained as nearly as possible to the standard required in a modern home.

From my point of view, other ideals for a modern correctional institution should be: To build and mold character, to rehabilitate human wreckage, and in some cases to reconstruct the human machine so that life may be redirected. Furthermore, it should be the purpose of this form of education to awaken in the offender the very best that is in him, and to provide mental, physical, industrial, and moral training which will ultimately make these youths useful members of society.

A modern institution should be built on the cottage plan, well equipped, with small building units, and located in a rural community. Efficient officers and trained teachers who have studied the elements of psychiatry should be employed. Humanized discipline with no solitary confinement, a carefully prepared progressive merit system with a plan of withdrawing privileges for bad conduct, a supervised self-government system, and a complete survey of the inmates showing the mental age of each should be established in such institutions. In order to classify those assigned to school and the industries, intelligence quotients should be important factors in determining what is best.

The bloom of youth should not be tarnished by laborious indoor household duties for the entire time of the sentence. On the other hand, if he prefers it and the physical and mental condition of the offender justify this type of work, it would seem proper to fit him to become a trained chef, houseman, or waiter, if he is to have service in that line of work later on. All of the inmates should have a limited amount of training in household work, for this experience is valuable, after they leave the institution, in helping an invalid mother or father to keep a family together. The best time, in my opinion, for assigning inmates to this indoor duty is on their arrival at the institution, when homesickness is prevalent and when a woman's care and affection is needed. It would, however, not seem for their best interests to break up industrial education by assignment toward the end of their sentences to household duties, when an effort is being made to train these juveniles in the practical and vocational arts.

Home culture is very valuable in dealing with these unfortunates, so we should instruct them in table manners and household etiquette. The moral condition of a family is almost always indicated by the degree of happiness manifested by the inmates. If there is not harmony, it is evidence that there is something radically wrong that needs attention. It is good manners and thoughtful practices that form important transitions in everyday life.

Inmates should be taught to respect and love their parents, for after they return home it is the parents who will probably be the guiding stars for their destiny. Inmates should also be taught that their mothers should be properly cared for and comforted. This alone may be a starting point in improving conditions in homes of bad environment.

Love for animals should be inculcated in all, because if the inmates are kind-hearted they are more apt to succeed in life. A liberal attitude should be maintained in allowing dogs and animal pets at the institution, for this has a good psychological effect. So strong is the affection for pets manifested by inmates that they are often seen with their arms around dogs' necks, hugging them tightly, and calling them affectionate names. Why? It is because many of these unfortunates have been deprived, through no fault of their own, of a mother's and father's love. Many of them have no one in the world to love them or take an interest in them. This is food for thought for psychiatrists and institution administrators.

It is important, in the reclamation of offenders, and should be a basic rule in