CHILDREN’S COURTS

special tribunals before which may be brought juvenile delinquents. Up to within a very few years ago, in England and other European countries, child offenders against the law were dealt with in the same manner as adult offenders were judged and punished, children of ten years of age often being cast into prisons with hardened criminals. It was in the United States that it was first realized that this method of correction was a profound error, and that different treatment must be accorded children. As far back as 1869 Ma achusetts pa ed laws differentiating between child and adult offenders, and in Chicago, IIl., legislative authority was given for the establishment of departments of the regular lice courts approaching the special venile courts of today, in 1899. The outstanding figure in the movement, however, is Judge Benjamin B. Lindsay, who, since 1901, has been the judge of the children’s court of Denver, Colo., and after whose experience similar institutions in other states have been patterned. In 1922 there were only two states in the Union which had not enacted special legislation in this direction. Broadly speaking, the general features of these courts are that the usual legal proceedings are dispensed with; the judge a umes more the role of a@ parent, basing his final disposal of the case on the psychology or temperament of the child, the character of its home environments and of its parents. This information he acquires le through direct testimony of witne es than from the reports of his special probation officers, who investigate a case before it is brought before him. The punishments meted out vary from a mild reprimand to a@ sentence to a reformatory. Much depends on the personality of the judge who, in such cases, has a wider discretion than in dealing with adults, where he is bound by legal procedure and by the penal code. In many states judges of juvenile courts have the power to deal with the parents of delinquent children as well, as in Indianapolis, where the domestic relations courts and _ the juvenile courts were merged in 1911. In most states a ‘juvenile delinquent’ is defined as an individual under 18 years, and in Denver, Colo., any individual under 21.