origin from which it arose, we consider that its immediate aim is to extend suitable assistance to every individual within the sphere in which it operates—here, the sphere of the juvenile court. This method is known in America by the name (Cas work), the expression rendered in French as Méthode des cas individuels, that is, the method of studying individual cases. This system appeared for the first time in the United States, in the city of Chicago, in 1899, where the first juvenile courts were established. The system then developed greatly thereafter in that country, thanks to the efforts of Benjamin Lindsey, juvenile court judge in the city of Denver. The system afterward passed to all countries concerned with the realization of social justice; and the protection of childhood is considered the important element among the elements of that justice.
Social justice is regarded today as a veritable revolution against the antiquated notion that revolved around the idea of charity and good works. Its first manifestation was almsgiving; it then developed into the founding of asylums; and it passed, finally, to the formation of charitable associations.
As for the juvenile courts, the role of social service with respect to the case brought before the court is to present to the judge a study, which will be described later.
The method usually followed in these cases rests on the preparation of a general registry system (in the form of index cards), in which complete daily lists are recorded of the persons receiving assistance, with their names and addresses, as well as the names and addresses of the establishments that have intervened on their behalf. This system is completed by a table containing
the names of the charitable establishments. The purpose of this
system is the exchange of information in complete confidentiality.
The distant aim of social service
If social service plays the role of guiding the judge to the circumstances that worked to steer the young person toward crime, bringing him in the end to stand before the court, it does not consider its work complete if it neglects the reform of this small criminal and turns away from the task of preparing him for a sound life in the social milieu in which he lives. It is in this field that its productive function is concentrated, and that it finds the grounds of its loftiness and greatness; for its task is not confined to trying the juvenile, but extends to his reform and his treatment. Nor is this confined to bestowing care
on the juvenile himself; it goes beyond him also to his family and to those who have charge of him. True sympathy—one of whose manifestations may at times be the extension of material aid, but which aims, more than that, at extending first assistance—is what helps social service to arrive at protecting a given family from falling into crime. This moral assistance helps to create a close and firm bond between social service, which takes the form of social aid, and the family in need of that assistance—a bond that turns into a friendship which in most cases lasts many years, until that family attains its economic and moral independence. This specialization in treatment, this attention to each case by itself, these individual material aids and particular forms of assistance, are what distinguish modern social service, in its essence, from the charitable establishments that preceded it by common consent.
During the last war a housewife engaged a new cook, and the first thing she said to her was:
— Listen, Marie. Soldiers are forbidden to enter this kitchen. I dismissed my old cook because I never once walked in on her without running into a soldier.
— Madam may set her mind at rest, for I do not like soldiers.
A week passed, and the lady came into the kitchen to look over matters of cleanliness; and when she opened a large cupboard she saw a handsome soldier of the lancers, holding his breath, flattened against the wall.
And the "virtuous" cook cried out:
— Oh, madam! The poor lancer! If you ask me, the old cook forgot him here!