Show STUDENT LIFE lVi know for she always beat him when he went home so he stayed away Now' this judge would have been a juvenile judge today had he lived for although he knew' the vender had been unrighteously robbed he discharged the boy and escorting him from the court room secured for him a position in a private family where he could work and in winter go to school Here is one of perhaps many examples of how the old police judges cast the law' to the winds and started a young fellow' on the road to good citizenship Such cases as this one are the exception rather than the rule but they illustrate how' in later years this quiet agitation wras w'orking a revolution Perhaps the first “Court of Boyville” w'as created in the city of Chicago in 1899 when the Chicago Women's Club reHarvey B Hurd quested to draft a law which w'ould make this distinction betw'een citizenThis ship and genuine crime draft received the endorsement of the Chicago Bar Association and soon after became a law of Illinois In the course of a few years other states fell into line and Colorado is a close first in the establishment of Juvenile Courts The Colorado law' had a valuable addition in the form of a Delinquent Parent Law' by which if a parent contributes to a child’s delinquency he is answ'erable to the Juvenile Court In Illinois the parent is also liable but he must answer to the Police Court and may ex-Jud- ge be hound over for the Grand Jury In Colorado the Grand Jury has been abolished Other states have joined the list until about eighteen have created children courts where children are dealt w'ith on a children’s plane Our own state Utah was the last to join and she possesses a strong and well devised Juvenile Court Law Recent telegraphic dispatches show' that the National Congress will probably' enact a law creating a Juvenile Court in the District of Columbia during this session of Congress This law w’ill have incorporated in it all of the provisions of the present laws with many valuable additions regarding the caretaking of children Let us consider the requirements of these laws For the most part they establish no new courts nor assume any new powers or pri'-ilegThey only make explicit the power that the state always claimed over children that of the principle of “parens patriae” or parenthood of the state It establishes two classes of children who may be treated as wards of the state when circumstances demand dependents and delinquents A dependent child is not only one who is homeless or destitute having no means of support and who is thrown on the world to do the best he can but also one who lacks proper attention from his parents and whose home environments are so vicious cruel or neglectful as to warrant the state taking him from it A delinquent child may be de- es |