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girls referred to by her as runaways and incorrigibles only 4 were non-sex offenders.

4. Others who participated in the informal discussion, which consisted chiefly of questions relating to the leading address, were: RogerN. Baldwin, New York; George B. Newcomb, Bismarck, N. D.; Mrs. Ophelia L. Amigh, Birmingham; Rev. A. J. Haupt, St. Paul; Mrs. T. F. Kinney, Minneapolis; Maude E. Miner, New York; James E. Ewers, Cleveland.

CURRENT TENDENCIES IN ADULT PROBATION

Edwin J. Cooley, Chief Probation Officer, Magistrates' Courts,

New York

For the past decade the probation officers of the country have been making a pilgrimage once a year to this conference of the National Probation Association, to compare notes, to clarify their minds and to measure values and results. It would appear, therefore, that at this, our tenth annual meeting, we might with profit pause a moment to take stock, and turn an introspective eye upon ourselves, our work and the probation service.

Social service is one of the finest developments of the Twentieth Century. The Nineteenth Century saw the inception and birth of this vast movement for the improvement of society. The attitude of people towards their fellow-beings has been changed exceedingly in the past century. At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the insane, the feebleminded and the epileptic, for the most part, were treated as criminals and cruelly punished, and very little family relief work of a scientific character prevailed. People were allowed to go hungry and cold, infants allowed to die, the aged were not cared for, and all the misfits of society were treated with cruelty and contempt. Criminals were punished in the most horrible manner for very slight offences.

A survey of the situation at the present time, in the second decade of the Twentieth Century, reveals a remarkable transformation. Family relief work has become an indispensable function of the municipal government. The state now takes care of its blind, its deaf, its insane, its feeble-minded and epileptic. Penology emphasizes not so much punishment for punishment's sake, as the reformative and educative effects of prison sentence. Foundlings, orphans, and the aged, in fact all types of dependents, are now more than ever being treated humanely and skillfully.

The great industrial establishments of the country are introducing social welfare work in their factories, as an investment in human efficiency. It is not a namby-pamby experiment in emotional expression, but a hard-headed business proposition which pays returns in dollars and cents.

It is only during the past few decades that probation has been born and has stepped into the courts of our country to humanize harsh and rigorous legal procedure, and to act as the gloved hand of the law. It has been demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that probation, entirely aside from its saving of the human and spiritual resources of the community, is a paying investment in terms of dollars and cents. We now all know that it is cheaper to pay probation officers to supervise probationers, than it is for the state to construct and maintain extensive penal institutions.

Probation Requires Testing

Probation has been accepted by the community, and no longer do workers in this field have to fight to retain its standing in the eyes of the law. The community in general has adopted us as a legitimate part in the scheme of social machinery. Our present task, therefore, is that of justifying our continuance in the eyes of the community. When probation was in its infancy, much could be forgiven it, but now that probation has passed into maturity, the community will survey it with a much more critical eye, will place greater demands upon it and will expect definite and permanent results. Our next step, therefore, to facilitate the production of the expected results, is to formulate and work out a definite body of knowledge and a scheme of procedure. Mr. Arthur W. Towne, former secretary of the New York State Probation Commission, has aptly summarized the situation: "The devedopment of probation has reached the state where extension is not as important as are a critical study of the system and refinement of its methods, and the willingness to allow experimentation in certain features of its administration."

Moreover, the sheer volume of work gives us pause. The number of juvenile and adult persons released by our courts during 1917 in New York state, was greater than ever before, totaling 22,518 persons. We must recognize, therefore, that with over twenty-two regiments of juvenile deliquents and adult offenders placed on probation in a single year, the probation system in New York state, taking it as an example, has assumed immense proportions and demands careful, intelligent study and administration.

Probation, in order to reach its highest development and in order to perfect a methodology of its own similar to that of other professions, must sharply define its wants, it problems, and its methods of procedure. The medical profession, for example, as an organized body, fixes its rates of compensation, formulates its own code of ethics in accordance with objective morality, determines in the main the body of its knowledge, criticizing and refining it constantly, and develops its technique. Similarly, probation must work for an improvement of the conditions under which it must labor, and, by means of experiment, analysis and careful planning, must work out a methodology or technique of procedure. In the present discussion let us consider, therefore, in the main:

First: the fundamental working conditions necessary for effective probation work.

Second: the problems of formulating and improving the methodology; that is to say, the technique of the probation method.

/. Fundamental Working Conditions

Let us first consider the problem of the improvement of the probation officers's working conditions. In order that a probation officer may have the opportunity of accomplishing any adequate results, he must not be overburdened with work. No probation officer can properly supervise, for example, two or three hundred cases at one time. Every possible attempt should be made to reduce the quota per officer to fifty probationers under supervision at one time. Again, probation officers should work for an increase of compensation until the proper standards of salaries are obtained, whereby men of the right type of mind and ability will be attracted to the profession and retained in the service.

Furthermore, probation officers should see to it that they are not overburdened by clerical work. An adequate clerical staff must be provided so that time is available for the essential field duties of the probation officer. No probation officer should be compelled to make his preliminary investigation reports in long hand, or do all of his case history work, correspondence and reports in long hand. A sufficient number of typists, record clerks and dictaphones should be provided for these purposes.

Most important of all is the kind of material that the probation officer is given to work upon. Probation officers cannot accomplish the impossible. They must not be given confirmed alcholics, habitual criminals, hardened prostitutes, feebledminded or defective persons, as material to improve and transform into normal, happy human beings. The source of the supply of material must be protected and judges must be led to recognize the importance of the right choice in the kind of persons to be placed on probation.

Let me emphasize again that an improvement of the conditions under which we work is as essential to the highest development of probation, as is the improvement of the methods of the actual, practical details of our work. Hand in hand with our refinement, for example, of the methods of conducting preliminary investigations, must go our fight for a reasonable amount of work, adequate compensation, adequate clerical help, and the proper human material to work upon. Assuming that we are agreed as to the necessity of obtaining the proper conditions under which to work, let us now consider how we can develop a methodology to improve the quality and test the results of our work.

As you all know, preliminary investigations of offenders are absolutely essential to any constructive probation work. It must not be forgotten, however, that preliminary investigation work is only the first step in the process. It occupies the same place in probation as diagnosis does in medicine. It opens up, analyzes the problem and puts its finger on the specific diseased part. As in medicine, very little practical good would result if the physician spent the greater part of his time in the diagnosis of a large number of persons and made but little effort to treat them. So in probation, only a slight advance will be made if probation officers spend practically all of their time conducting investigations and make but little effort to help the offenders placed in their care.

As a means of preventing the work of investigations from interfering unduly with the proper carrying on of the probation work, we are going to try out the interesting experiment in the Magistrates' Courts of New York City, of dividing our probation staff into a corps of investigators and a corps of supervising officers. We hope through this specilization materially to improve our work and to render more constructive suepr- visory care to the large number of delinquents in our charge.

As a general proposition, therefore, we should urge the exercise of care on the part of justices and magistrates throughout the country, lest the making of preliminary investigations require so much of the time of the probation officers as to prevent them from properly performing their principal duty of looking after and aiding persons who are placed on probation.

//. Improving the Technique

One of the current developments in our Probation work is the realization that there is a definite methodology in the making of a comprehensive diagnosis of a delinquent. Miss Mary E. Richmond's book, Social Diagnosis, which, by the way, should be in the hands of every probation officer, is a very definite step in the development of social case technique. We have passed the day in probation work when perfunctory and superficial investigation and supervision of a defendant will suffice. We must go to the root of the trouble and get accurate information as to the structure and functioning of the human mechanism we are trying to repair and rehabilitate. How can we expect to modify temperament and character if we are ignorant or indifferent in regard to the nature of the biological, moral and social forces regulating temperament and character?

In order to accomplish our purpose it is obvious that we must study intensively the lives of the human beings in our care. We must train ourselves to become capable of observing the causes and effects of human conduct, and of recording the manner in which probationers respond to various methods of treatment and of discovering definitely the causes of our failures and successes. We must correlate the results of our experience and discover principles which will serve as compass and chart for future navigation. Diagnosis is the hardest part of medicine, but very often the correct diagnosis of a given problem suggests the proper treatment.

That many delinquents are defective mentally and physically and that this is a contributing, if not the principal cause of their offenses, is a matter of every-day observation in our courts. Not only should the facts of feeble-mindedness, dementia praecox, and other abnormal mental conditions be determined, but the presence of tuberculosis, venereal and other diseases, the effects of alcoholism and other excesses, and the degree of mental and moral responsibility should be, if possible, ascertained. The trained psychologist working in our courts can be of the greatest assistance to the probation officer in his efforts to cope with the problems of the delinquent.

The idea of clearing houses as aids to court work, probation and parole, as a necessary part of the machinery of justice, is an important current tendency in probation work. On May 1, 1918, the state of Ohio established its new Bureau of Juvenile Research. Under the juvenile research law, all wayward and defective youths are to be committed by the courts to the Ohio Board of Administration, instead of directly to the various institutions. After mental and physical examination and social investigation, the bureau will decide whether the children are normal or defective. Defectives will remain in the custody of the state and will be assigned to the proper institutions for treatment. Normal, but delinquent children, whenever possible, will be paroled. Along these lines we have the current administrative problems in our large cities of the possible correlation of probation and parole, and the possible consolidation of the probation systems of the various courts under a commissioner or commission, for consideration and decision.

It has been said of the great Napoleon that he once declared that the best thing he ever did was to decide that he no longer would see things as he wanted to see them but as they really existed. If we would take that position and determine to look at things as they are, could we not make great improvements in our work? One of the commonest weaknesses in Probation work is that many probation officers have more work than they can do well, with the result that they can make but little effort to better the conditions of probationers or improve their associations and habits. They have little opportunity to do other than have the probationers report to them in a perfunctory manner each week or at longer intervals. Such reports if made personally may occupy often only a moment or so, sometimes they are made by mail. Should we not protest vigorously against such conditions and make a determined fight for relief before the proper authorities? Should we not be alive to the danger of our work becoming mechanical and devoid of human warmth and sympathy? If a minute analysis of our work were conducted, in how many cases would it be found that we made an intensive study of each probationer and that under the circumstances we did the best we could for all those who were under our care? These are important and pertinent questions, and must be answered in the light of the facts.

Of course, you are all aware of the various influences that can be brought to bear upon the probationer to effect his reformation. For example, the probation officer should make an adequate number of home visits so as to acquaint himself intimately with the probationer's environ

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