quate remedy. We believe that the stumbling-blocks of misunderstanding, professional bias, and certain innate provincialisms on both sides must be removed. We believe that the specific tasks that confront us may be listed under the following headings: first, the problem of establishing legal aid machinery wherever it is needed; second, the problem of coordinating it with existing legal and social institutions, so that it may function completely yet without overlapping; third, the problem of a constantly growing personnel to handle the work, which must be drawn from lawyers, social workers, and other groups in the community, and trained adequately.

All this means a fascinating study of the philosophy of the law, of social work, and of legal aid work in relation to each other. The prospect of working in such a field is fascinating indeed. If one will but start without prejudices and work honestly and earnestly toward a full understanding of the facts and the deductions to be drawn therefrom there is nothing in it impossible of achievement. But we must pave the way. We may make this study only with adequate machinery for the purpose. If we have not the vision to establish such machinery we can go but a little way along the road.

In conclusion, let me urge upon you the value of providing a means of study of this problem. May I suggest a round table discussion each year at the meeting of the National Conference. Then those of us who are engaged in making studies may bring these studies, with our hopes and fears, an to open forum. Before a critical, intelligent group we may discuss and weigh the merits of each of our propositions. We may rub off the corners and polish up our points of view. May I urge that this meeting refer to the proper officers of the National Conference its conviction that a study of legal-social relations be made, and that it may be made through such a round table meeting. The ultimate consequences we may only guess at. But it is inspiring to think that we can thus jointly inaugurate an investigation into a field which is so closely related to the work that both of us do.

THE DELINQUENT ADOLESCENT: WHAT THE
INSTITUTION CAN DO FOR HIM

Calvin Derrick, Dean, National Training School for Institution
Executives and Workers, Dobbs' Ferry

I think it has been conclusively demonstrated many times over that the most difficult and perplexing problem concerning human society is the proper training, education, and assimilation of the adolescent. Through centuries of practice society has learned a great deal about the process, and so far as that great middle group known as "average" is concerned, society has quite a body of pretty accurate information and is fairly well-defined technique for accomplishing with average success satisfactory training. The majority of people do

manage to acquire a fairly adequate preperation for life. They succeed in making self-adjustments, taking up their chosen spheres of activity, usually becoming helpful to others to a greater or less degree, assuming their proportioned amount of community and civic responsibility, and, in turn, rearing their own children in a fairly acceptable manner. The problem is not with this successful two-thirds, but with the unadjusted, and in too many cases unadjustable, onethird which is scattered at either side of the big group. It is out of this latter group that our institution population is, in the main, drawn, and it is to the manner in which the institutions attempt to meet the problem of adjustment that this paper means to direct attention. Let us first consider how society has progressed in its understanding of the problem.

Institutional care for people is a relatively modern idea. The juvenile institutions are the outgrowths of the prisons; the prison system in this country is only a little over a century old. Our first juvenile institutions were created primarily to prevent the youth under twenty-one going to prison. The juvenile institutions were closely modeled after the prisons, both in type of construction and in methods of discipline and control; they developed many of the same errors and created for themselves the same problems which had grown up in the prison field, namely, that of housing in the same institution youth of all ages, so that the very young boys were subjected to just as much contamination as were the older adolescents in the prison population. A repressive, unintelligent plan of discipline and labor killed initiative and fostered slyness, deceit, and laziness. The application of the prison types of punishments to the adolescent offender developed defiance, sullenness, and a contempt for authority. We did not understand in those days the significance that emotional and mental instability play in the behavior problems presented by individuals. We had not grasped the fact that the mind may reach its full development some years before the body ceases to grow. The adolescent of eighteen or twenty looked like a man, and we demanded a corresponding degree of conduct, and placed upon him the full responsibility of measuring up to our imposed ideal. Rules and regulations were exacting and rigid, and still are, demanding a higher standard of conduct and a type of response rarely attained by the best of people at large. We still seek to force, rather than to persuade, the delinquent adolescent to adopt these desirable standards.

However, we do progress. Now we have the conception that the older and younger adolescents should be separated, that the methods of discipline should be ameliorated and made more constructive; that trades should be taught, not merely followed; that training, as well as discipline and punishment, is desirable. But practically all of our improvement has been on the physical side, the plant. Yes, we have improved instruction, both in kind and quantity; we have improved personnel; but we do not seem to have quite grasped the idea that the thing we need to understand is the individual himself, and generally speaking, little advancement has been made in this direction.

As a rule we have not made a study of the problems to be met before planning and constructing our institution. The legislature and a board or commission decide that a reformatory for adolescent offenders is needed; that it shall be large enough to care for a certain population; that it shall be built after a certain plan, representing a school of thought or opinion; whether it shall consist of cells, with workshops and agricultural facilities; whether it shall be on the cottage plan; whether there shall be dormitories or single rooms; or whether it shall be a combination of these plans. It is decided that there shall be a certain type of service for the physical care of the population, that is, a central kitchen and dining-room, or a central kitchen with several dining-rooms, and in a very general way these major problems of caring for the population are decided and the institution built and equipped accordingly. This kind of procedure has kept us from emerging into a better and broader field of endeavor, because the management of the institution and the traditions which it shall establish are almost certain to be fixed beyond alteration by the conceptions represented in the construction of the plant.

The proper way to approach the building and equipment of an institution is just the reverse of the process usually followed. In place of first appointing a committee to visit existing institutions for ideas, there should be appointed a very carefully selected committee to study the type of individuals it is intended to care for, and the whole process of reception, classification, training, control, and release should be broadly and scientifically conceived and planned before any move is made to build and equip a plant. It will be contended by many that the former process may result in just as good after-care as the latter; it may be pointed out that, having all of equipment, its use and the general program of training will go forward. This is an error. The creation of a big public building is always regarded as a monument by the people concerned with the construction. Great personal pride is developed on the part of those immediately concerned. The psychological influence of this factor is not to be discounted. A deep interest and pride in plant and equipment which has been built up by the activities of the group of promoters over a period, possibly, of several years is not easily dispelled. It almost universally follows that the people selected to carry out the building and equipment plans carry over into the administration. They become members of the board; possibly, quite unconsciously, their major interest and pride is in the institution as a plant rather than in the refinement that may be later worked out in the program of care.

But since we have a lot of old and badly constructed institutions which we must continue to use we must plan so to utilize them as to result in the best possible advantages to our wards. I shall be regarded as cynical when I say that very few superintendents or wardens know how to use the plant and equipment at their disposal to the best advantage of their wards. We find a young man with gifted intelligence washing dishes and scrubbing floors, and a low-grade moron trying to learn the printing trade or assigned to the machine shop. Neither can

properly adjust himself. The result is poor work, bad discipline, and lost opportunity for both the institution and the wards.

But what may an institution, even an old, badly planned, and poorly equipped institution, do for the unadjusted adolescent? Two things are required and are equally fundamental: First, there must be secured a careful and scientific job analysis of every assignment to work and training which the plant offers. This means that the psychologist must be a very important factor in making the analysis, for it is important that the minimum mental ability required to succeed at any given assignment be determined. Second, the most careful consideration must be given to the reception, study, and assignment of wards.

We may assume that our job is to start with the individual as we find him, and in the course of our studies we will secure and utilize all possible information which may have been gleaned by other agencies prior to the boy's coming to us. When the offender is received at the institution he should be delivered to an individual whose function it is to conduct an interview with as great a degree of comfortable informality as possible. The offender is not to be subjected to a third-degree examination for the purpose of securing his record, nor at this moment should there be any attempt made to take his record; moreover, the individual detailed to conduct the interview should be one whose whole duty in the institution frees him from the taint of disciplinary control. He is, in other words, to establish himself in the very first hour as a friendly adviser and counselor for the offender; his sole desire-he representing the viewpoint of the management is to find out from the offender what his greatest difficulties probably are and what his best desires may lead to. There should be no misconception about this interview. It is not a question of five minutes or ten minutes; it is a question of establishing a relationship, and in doing this, time should not be a pressing factor. This interview must be free from every tinge of sentimentality. It should be an intensely practical interview, because the young offender comes into the situation with his mind quite firmly fixed on the subject of friends and enemies; he is not likely to regard this official as a friend; he is going to be very reserved and guarded, and will receive with a good deal of suspicion, possibly, any overtures which appear to him to be a veiled attempt to pry into his past or to bid for his confidence.

Following this interview the record clerk should be sent for, and the questions which it is necessary for the boy to answer personally to the record clerk should be given at this time, in the presence of the friendly adviser. I know that many of my colleagues will say this is sentimentality. I am so thoroughly familiar with the machinery of the prison and the reformatory that I know just what the record clerk looks like, and what the record clerk's office looks like, and the dead level of indifference that exists between the offender and the record clerk, separated by an iron wicket, and the offender standing beside a guard while the clerk, his eyes intent on the blank form before him, records the dis

agreeable facts required. This is strictly a police method of making a record. We must have this information, but we are not any longer interested in police methods with this boy; he has been through this before he came to us. Our major interest now must be to understand the boy. My reasons for wishing the record to be secured in the presence of the friendly counselor is that the boy shall not feel the arm of the law still stretching out in plans for recapture, identification, and that sort of thing, as is the case if the work is done in the record office. We want the friendly attitude established by the initial interview to carry over a little farther into the administrative field and thus help to establish in the mind of the boy, and in no mean degree in the mind of the record clerk, the importance of the human elements. The record clerk himself, in most institutions, needs a great deal of humanizing. He rarely regards his work as in any way connected with the offender. He has no vital interest except in statistics. The plan suggested will tend to put some humanity into the statistics; and when the record clerk, at any time after the initial entry is made, has occasion to go through the boy's record, he will have in his mind's eye a picture of the boy, the friendly counselor, and himself on the day the record was made. It may be argued that this is unimportant, because after all the record clerk merely keeps a record, does not enter into the training of the boy, does not direct any of his activities, nor come in contact with him: true, but he comes in contact with a great many officers, and if we can change by even a little the point of view of every officer in the place, the institution gradually grows out of its old prison shell toward its new conception of a true reformatory agency.

The next crucial step is quarantine. Just the term itself is unpleasant, and the conditions under which it is usually carried out are desolate and more or less forbidding. I know superintendents and wardens who are quite firm in their conviction that quarantine is a period during which the new arrival should be made to realize the rigors of discipline. The quarters for carrying out quarantine, as a rule, are isolated, as they should be. The furnishings are very meager, with practically no provisions for recreation, regular work, reading, or anything else except the application of the routine of the institution. By this practice the institution loses a golden opportunity. The group in quarantine is usually small. They have not yet been mingled with the general population; they have a great deal of prejudice and a great deal of misinformation. I would use the quarantine period in adjusting the individual to his new environment, in giving careful instruction in the rules and regulations, pointing out the necessities and advantages. Nothing can be made to pay the management greater dividends than the time of a wise adviser, probably the same one who conducted the first interview, with the quarantine group an hour or two morning and afternoon. I would have virtually a school of civics with the quarantine group, and in place of trying to impress the group with the rigidity of the discipline and the dire results which are sure to befall them for their failures or infractions, I would make a great effort to show them how they may live with the greatest degree of freedom and