trying juveniles

the best means of treating and reforming him.

Yet the social researcher's mission does not stop at this point, for after the child has been sentenced and sent to the reformatory he remains subject to her supervision. She visits him often and makes of herself an intermediary between him and his family and kin, for her counsels and her guidance are necessary for the child himself and for his family. The social researcher is notified when the juvenile's release and his departure from the reformatory draw near, and she then undertakes to look for work for him, since in the reformatory he has learned a trade by means of which he can earn his living lawfully and honorably. Beyond that, she organizes his leisure hours and his amusements, from night classes to useful encounters and contacts, while taking care to make the family environment calm and suitable for the child's growth and advancement. She strives not only to reform the child but to reform his family as well, so as to instill in them the spirit of a feeling of responsibility and of dignity. And this demands of her much tact, intelligence, and respect.

Conclusion:

Thus we see that the role of social service in the field of crime and criminals is a human role before all else. I have already mentioned that engaging in social service demands before all else an innate aptitude, for the lessons of social training, technical knowledge, and academic degrees — all of that avails nothing if the social specialist does not possess the "social spirit" whose warp and woof are justice and love.

If the understanding of the law

is confined to its letter, it is a barren understanding that avails nothing. Social service has begun to appear more and more in our modern legislative institutions, especially with regard to juvenile offenders, and it appears in the form of the spirit of legislation — that spirit which reforms the individual and protects society.

Today we feel a pressing need to multiply the forms of social services in our country. We must all demand a sufficient number of good workers in the social services, and strive to bring about a broader, closer, and more continuous cooperation not only with the courts but also with the reformatories. And since our task is to reintegrate the individual into the social environment, it is our duty to be — with the social specialists at our side — always present, and everywhere, beside the human being who suffers and is in pain. We must work to protect society from evil; and when evil appears and the forbidden thing occurs, we must acknowledge that behind every fault committed by the individual there lies hidden a greater fault committed by the whole, and that in his crime a victim has fallen, atoning for the fault of the social body. We therefore demand, beyond all doubt, a just and effective social protection — and especially a protection of childhood more just and more potent in its effect. To attain this lofty aim, peace at home and security among the nations must be realized for us. Work must be available to all, and to all likewise the ways of education and the blessing of freedom.

We must also have more holiday camps, more reception and observation centers, more specialized judges, and — more than all this — more families that are loving, mutually supporting, and firm of structure.

Our social policy must be a bold, enlightened policy, capable of averting evil at its very root and

of carrying the remedy to the origin of the disease.

It is better for us to work at fighting crime among juveniles than to have to treat these juveniles in the future when they have become criminals. The means of this fight are many, among them supervision of the cinema houses and the censoring of obscene publications.

And if the child should suffer a fall, and it becomes inevitable that the courts take up his case, then it is a duty that the judge's ruling be issued in the juvenile's interest, and that this ruling not be final; for the judge must always be able to modify the penalty he has imposed and to substitute another for it whenever the child's condition calls for that.

Perhaps it is fitting to point here to the title of a recent book by Jean Paulhan, which the children toward whom our efforts are directed today may repeat without any embarrassment: "We did not ask to be given life."

We must direct our efforts toward making life honorable and beautiful in the eyes of children, for this is the task for which we were created and which we strive, to the limit of our powers, to fulfill.