CRIME: Little Accidents

What happens to the small boy caught and convicted in a Federal Court for delivering an adult 'legger's bottles for him?

How fares it with a young runaway nabbed for sneaking across the international boundary in violation of U. S. immigration laws?

What fate awaits the moppet who goes joyriding across State lines in a car that does not belong to him?

What becomes of youngsters convicted under the Mann Act for their interstate sex experiments, of prankish urchins who break open a freight car or filch stamps from a rural post office?

Last week the defunct National (Wickersham) Commission on Law Observance & Enforcement answered these questions in its posthumous Report No. 5 entitled "The Child Offender in the Federal System of Justice." For President Hoover, famed for his warm heart toward children, the answers made sorrowful reading. The Commission found that the U. S. is far behind the States in dealing with juvenile delinquency. Girls and boys caught in the Federal penal system are not reformed: they are herded with veteran criminals, flogged, thrown into solitary confinement, underfed, tortured in body & mind.

To investigate this field the Commission appointed Dr. Miriam Van Waters. No novice, Dr. Van Waters has long served as referee of the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, formerly headed the National Conference of Social Work, is now an expert consultant to the Harvard Law School Crime Survey. She spent months prying into the dark corners of the Federal penal system as it applied to children. Her realistic findings comprised 152 pages of the Commission's 157-page report. What she told the Commission and what the Commission told the President in cluded the following:

Prisoners. During the last six months of last year the Federal Government held in custody 2.066 boys and 177 girls aged 18 or less. Of these 2,243 prisoners, 1,076 were in Federal institutions. The balance were farmed out to local jails and reformatories. At least 13 of these offenders were 12 years old or under.

Offenses. Juvenile convicts under the Prohibition law totaled 990 (44%,) of whom 250 were 16 years old or less. Young violators of immigration laws numbered 492, while 392 were held under the National Motor Vehicle Act (Dyer Act). Declared the report: "The great majority of the juvenile offenders are typical delinquency cases. It is only by accident that they have fallen within the Federal jurisdiction. Joy rides, attempts to elope in the course of which State lines are crossed, may terminate in the Federal Court. Other couples pursuing similar romantic aims but taking a different route may be apprehended by a police officer who sends them home. The type of jurisdiction turns on a territorial position.'