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L'Oeuvre Miss Owens' thesis |
| An American, Miss Chloe Owings, has just received, at the Sorbonne, the degree of doctor from the University of Paris, with the mention "very honorable". His thesis is entitled: Le Tribunal pour enfants, a study on the treatment of delinquent childhood in France. The personality of the author might be enough to draw attention to the book. Born on a farm in Illinois, Miss Owings took to working the land early, battling prairie fires and training wild horses. Coming to New York without resources, she had to work with her hands for six years in order to continue her studies. In 1916, she landed in France and was sent to the army zone, where she took care of the supply of ambulances. In December 1921 only, she was able to return to Paris for the preparation of the thesis which she defended masterfully on March 19th. The book is essentially a monograph on the operation of the Paris juvenile court under the 1912 law. First of all, it provides us with very precise information on the personality of the minors who appear before the court: only 38% of them comes with their fathers and mothers; 62% live with only one of their parents. The vast majority of parents are workers with very low wages. Apprentices are few in number. In families where fathers and mothers live together, 27%, and in broken families 71% of mothers are forced to work outside and cannot properly supervise their children. It should be noted that no child abandoned at the Assistance Publique appeared before the Paris court in 1921. From a special study of 255 cases it results that 13% of delinquent minors are illegitimate children. Finally — and this is not the least disturbing finding — 15% of these young people are completely illiterate, and among the 85% who "know how to read and write" there are many who know no more. .. The offense which outweighs all others among minors is theft. It reaches a proportion of 59% of cases. These are, in general, minor thefts, often thefts of cabbage or chickens. Almost a quarter of the offenders were arrested for vagrancy and railroad policing. Such are the general facts remarkably highlighted by the author. And miss Chloe Owings who has made an in-depth study of the life of the child from his arrest to his judgment and who describes to us the prison of Fresnes, the Petite-Roquette, the Depot, the penal colonies, the patronages and even a convent cloister which receives minors, does not fail to point out the salient imperfections of the "treatment" applied in our country to delinquent childhood. First of all, we do not devote ourselves, before the judgment, to any serious study of the child, of his antecedents, of the conditions in which he lived. The police are investigating the crime, and that's it. One would believe, according to the files, that the life of the accused does not begin until the day of the crime. Furthermore, there is no coordination of the multiple services responsible for caring for the child. A child may have a file in one of these services without the knowledge of all the others. The private works have only distant relations with the administrative machinery, and ignore each other. “One would often be tempted to believe, says the author, that certain patronages consider the child as a piece of furniture that one has delivered on a trial basis; if it is not suitable, it is returned or exchanged for another. No one seems to really think about ways to prevent juvenile crime. We wait until the child has become a delinquent. And then we discuss projects…and we pass laws on how to punish him. On the other hand, laws which could be of prime importance for the prevention of offenses against children, for example those on school attendance, on medical inspection in schools, on improvement classes, remain unapplied. The legal spirit in which the rare measures provided for are applied makes them almost ineffective. Despite the establishment by the law of 1912 of special courts for children, the functioning of these courts differs, in reality, very little from that of the courts for adults. Similarly, the designation of a lawyer ex officio for minors, enacted by law, has no other result than to weigh down the files: the lawyers are appointed, but nothing obliges them to of their young clients. It is rare that they attend the investigation, and in two-thirds of the cases they do not even appear for the defense before the court. As for probation, on which such great hopes were based, the results were practically nil in 1921, of the 261 minors who benefited from this regime, the court received reports on only half of them. The same is true of the control commissions for private patronages, provided for by a decree of June 1917. These commissions do not exist. Thus the law formally requires that a charitable institution, in order to receive children from the courts, be recognized as being of public utility or approved by the prefect; the courts confide the delinquents to these institutions, but the latter, when they see fit, can place them in religious establishments without worrying about whether these have the legal capacity to receive them. The courts are fully aware of this fact, but if the letter of the law is observed and the spirit adic to full satisfaction... What can be done, wonders Miss Chloe Owings, to improve the current, obviously deplorable regime? The author, a woman and an American, points out as one of the most serious shortcomings of our system for dealing with delinquent childhood the almost total absence of women in penitentiary houses, in patronages and in surveillance commissions, even in the departments dealing with minors. Moreover, the Committee for the Defense of Children Brought to Justice in Paris has one woman out of 131 members; the Superior Councils for Mutual Insurance and Child Protection have 143 members, including 16 women. It is the same in the National Committee for Children. Now, points out Miss Chloe Owings, any effort to educate the child morally requires a thorough study of individual cases. And the art of observing, of appreciating individual characters, of applying to each of them the proper treatment, is an essentially feminine art, which men have long considered a weakness. But not all women are capable of disciplining their sympathies and emotions either, an essential quality for a task of this kind. Hence the need for an in-depth study of the social sciences. There already exists in Paris a Practical School of Social Service and a School for Factory Superintendents. But we also need to renew our general ideas about childhood; children must be considered as personalities with a value of their own that must be developed; Works concerning childhood must be appreciated among us as works of high social value. Finally, the French must make social work a true liberal profession which requires serious and specialized preparation. And Miss Chloe Owings gives us the example of the United States, where aspirants to this profession devote long years to studying the appropriate technique and method. Through the new insights it opens into the way of providing certain categories of children with the moral support that society owes them, Miss Chloe Owings' book will not fail to draw attention to this aspect, a little too neglected with us, of the social problem. |
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