"Behave!"
So say we fathers and mothers to our children, as our parents said to us. Most of them do behave sooner or later, as we ourselves did. But there are always some children both in better and worse homes who do not.
"Why don't you behave?" So asks many a teacher of many a boy or girl, most of whom know "why," but some cannot tell. Neither can the teacher. So when her patience is worn out she sends the child for discipline, or to be rid of it, to the principal, and he to a special room or school for the misbehaving.
Then if the misbehaver annoys [someone] with less patience the policeman and the police court judge are called to take a hand. And if the boy repeats his offense his penalty is increased. "Back again," says the jailer or the prison warden; "why this time?" But neither the prison nor the prisoner could tell just why.
"Why can't you behave?" lament the friends of the unfortunate.
He is told by those who aid discharged prisoners to try again with their help. And many a man tries and succeeds, but some fail again and again and to the end.
It was motherly instinct -- the patient, persistent mother love of public-spirited Chicago women -- that led the way for the scientific spirit to aid the home, the school, the court and the church in accounting for misbehavior and in dealing intelligently with offenders. These women instinctively felt the injustice and the folly of treating the child and the adult in court as though there were no difference between their motives and understanding. So the Juvenile court arose in Cook county, which has the honor of having been its founder and the first community to introduce humane and scientific discrimination in dealing with different ages and classes of offenders.
One of the women who watched the experience of this court in dealing with hundreds of boys and girls during the first ten years of its work was convinced that the very obvious defects of a large proportion of these children needed to be scientifically understood and interpreted before their delinquency could be intelligently accounted for or adjusted. So Mrs. William F. Dummer enlisted Dr. William Healy to devote his entire time for five years at her expense to find out what really ailed such children, to answer "why" they did not or, perhaps, could not behave. After his five years of study as director of the privately conducted "juvenile psychopathic institute" he and his scientific methods were taken over by the county as necessary to the functioning of the Juvenile Court.
Meanwhile "criminology" had become a division of the Illinois department of public welfare, under which was placed the management of all the state institutions for the care of the delinquent, dependent and defective classes. Dr. Herman M. Adler, the scientifically trained state criminologist, thus had access to a clinic the number and variety of whose cases far exceed his capacity or that of his staff to investigate. While on call to examine and advise with regard to critical cases of penitentiary and reformatory prisoners their services are more regularly required at the state school for boys at St. Charles, and for girls at Geneva, and still more constantly at the Juvenile Court in Chicago and its detention home and allied schools.
These searches for the causes of crime, delinquency and misbehavior work together in groups or "units," including an expert physician of mental health, a psychologist with teaching experience and a social worker or two trained to observe home conditions and other surroundings. All the way from the state prison back through the reformatory and the schools for delinquent boys and girls to the youngest child under the care of the Juvenile court probation officer these advisors find their cases to consist either of those more or less incapable of self-control or of those who have failed to acquire self-restraint of which they were and still are capable.
Until recently no such discrimination was made. It was, and still is, commonly thought that those who do wrong do so just because they want to, because they do not want to be good and do right, but could if they would. Comparatively few, even among convicted criminals, are found, however, to answer to this description on close observation or acquaintanceship. Many in this class, indeed, could do better, and are deterred from preferring the worst by the discipline of our penal and reformatory institutions.
But the incapables are such because they are more weak than wicked, because they were born with some defect or have acquired it. Some screw is loose and rattles their whole machinery. They are not all there, not entirely sane; are sick, yet do not know it. They need such care as will keep them from doing harm to others and will cure them if curable. Such are the criminal insane, imbeciles and feeble-minded and the higher grade but more dangerous morons.
The far larger class who misbehave so as to become "difficult" at home and school, or become delinquent and criminal, are found to be correctable. Even those who are victims of incipient brain infections which limit or destroy self-control, if discovered and treated soon enough, can be so "re-educated" as to arrest their disease and in some cases develop new nerve cells to take the place of what has been impaired. Disorders of the glands, which also account for disorderly conduct, are likewise curable.
Many more than are discovered to be either partially defective or in any way diseased, are found to misbehave merely because they are misunderstood or misunderstand and because they are out of natural adjustment with their surroundings and with those nearest to them who care most for them and should know them better. These are the "problem children" at home, in [school], on the playground and in the neighborhood. More and more of them are referred to the Institute of Juvenile Research by bewildered parents and teachers, for information as to what ails the child and for advice as to what to do about it.
Here, then, is discovered, close to the home and the school, the largest and most hopeful field where the Institute for Juvenile Research can discover and help eradicate the [taproots] of most delinquency from which much crime directly grows. But the inmates of the state institutions and the wards of the courts have the first claim upon these few state officials. Therefore, Dr. Adler and his associates, together with many citizens who are aware of the importance of such preventive and restorative work, are endeavoring to enable the Institute for Juvenile Research to render this larger public service.
How this may be done by training helpers of parents and teachers, judges and institution officials in the new science of behavior is still another story full of human interest, which will follow in this column next Saturday.
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