1 EPORE we are able to decide what w a @not the delinquent, the Png offender, the boy or who. has come up against aw or against adult au- Eiity so freauently as to be- Wee a behaviour problem? For ay) years of knowing him 2 well indeed, I think I can you what he is. He is sim- (whatever he may appear) child. He may be daring, =boiled, cock-sure and Ph in his attitude, but that jure defence—or defiance. ally, he is lonely, unloved, ure, hurt, and his offenses a way he has of hitting at his parents or his 1eFS OF society. e unfortunate thine about problem of the young of- sx is that, because of this 2sSive attitude of his, and isé the things he does are -‘ockine: and so annoying it ry difficult to arouse pity um or te secure under- ing treatment. Voluntary ibutions ean be secured ospitals for crippled chil- * or preventoriums or y ums for the sick child, but_ are few voluntary organ- Wns for the child who is ly crippled. If he ve- 3 institutional treatment, s to be maintained at pub- ™ pense in a detention home " industrial school. = THIS child is no more to * «me for his Warped per- ty than is the crippled © for his twisted body. It »» resting to note that there }ommon factor, a striking: jolance, in the circum- ™s of young offenders #= to the attention of au- -'es. wherever they may end, whether it be in Lon- © Eneland: Copenhagen, Sirk; Moscow: New York; have some understanding of who an at least mot understood. Do very unhappy, frightened, J ff : C (Excerpts from a Radio Broadcaét delixer (By ad HIEBEN GORRIE Guest Spea Toronto or Vancouver. You will always find that at least 50 per cent of these children come from broken homes, no matter in what country the home may. be. The breken home and the unhappiness it implies is the clue to the young offenders’ misery. The happiness aud the health particularly the | mental health—of a child axe entirely dependent on the security and love he finds in this home. Quarrelling, neglect, or indif- ferenee between parents, ne- elect of varental responsibility, diyoree, desertion, death, any- thing that lessens the child’s feeling of being wanted, being: loyed and being able to love, is the major cause of “delin- quency. It is fairly safe to ‘say that the child who has a nor- mally happy home life will not succumb to bad influences: whether from the conu¢es, the movies, the radio or bad com- panionship. What we must do for the young offender is to try to se- cure for him a normal happy life, or to put it another way, we must try to discover, and when discovered to remove all those forces and influences Which tend to disrupt and de- stroy home life. There is nothing very origi- nal in this conclusion. Never- theless, it must be repeated and re-examined constantly if we are to treat the young offender carefully, wisely and effective- ly, when he has committed his offense, and if we are to pre- vent other children from be- coming young offenders. pee us take the first situation —the treatment of our young offenders. We have done much in the last 20 years to improve our methods in that re- you know what the juvenile delinquent is? € can do for the young offender, we must first d what he is, because he is very often not known, Or spect, but we must do more. We must not be satisfied with haying children’s aid societies, juvenile courts and specially de- vised legislation to deal with the young offender. We must know for sure—and by ‘we? I mean all adults in the commu- nity. We must know whether or not those agencies and that legislation is properly and ef- fectively and humanely admin- istered. Do you know, for instance, what organizations there are in your community to treat the young offender, and do you know how he is treated. Do you belong to an organization, such as a church group, a service elub, a trade union, parent teachers’ asociation, and if SO, has your organization made any atempt to discover how the services for young offenders are administered in your com- munity ? Do you know how they compare with those in other similar communities ? Is your community doing enough? Is it spending enough on behalf of these young erippled person- ‘alities? Do you know how many young offenders each probation officer attached to the Juvenile Court has to supervise? Can che do a good job for these cehil- dren? Is there a careful study made as to why these young offenders have gotten into dif- ficulties? If there is trouble in the home what effort is made to straighten out the difficulty ? If the court considers him too difficult to be left in the com- munity is he so helped in the industrial school as to give him a good chance of doing better when he comes out? And what is done after he comes out to help him get started on a bet- ter way. Whether or not the answers ® to these auestions are favor- HIP. TORPEDOED NINIE IS ADRIET Sans THAT AMERICAN SHOULD BE A GOOD TARGET FOR Z you! FRE!) BUT —-SUDDENIN--- ! —— SSS ——— = = = EDERATED PRESS 5) April 14, 1945 — Page 13 able or unfavorable will de- pend upon the concern of the adults in the community as to whether or not these of- fenders get the help which they so urgently need. It does - net depend on the politicans, or the administrators or on the social workers—it de pends on the citizens. Even more does it depend on the citizen whether or not the child becomes a young offender. On all hands we hear today that the pazents are to blame for the increase in juvenile delinquen- cy. Jt is perfectly true that parental indifference and neg- leet and the notorious broken home are to blame for the de- linquencies of the children. But whe or what is to blame for cur delincuent and irresponsible parents? There Are many things to blame. All things that tend to undermine home life. The speed of the machine age is blamed for much but there are thousands of happy homes with automobiles and radios. It is something deper than that. Basically of course the great demoralizers of home and family are war and eco- nomic insecurity booms and depressions poverty due to unemployment social and eco- hemice insecurity brought on by death or incapacity of the hbreadwinner—the psychologi- cal effects of all these social disasters on family affection and family relationships. The responsibility for seeing to it that these two scourges ‘shall be removed from our society also rests upon each of us as citizens. If they are removed there will be fewer broken homes and fewer offenders. THERE is another factor con- tributinge not only ‘to the broken home which produces the young offender but even more directly. to juvenile de- linqueney itself and that is the dearth of creative interests in our community life. Even when the war is over and if we suc- ceed in securing a goodly meas- ure of economic security we GOOD SHOOTING MIGUEL! NOW QUICK PEDRD---]- GET THE AMERICANO! N HERE HE IS MILA: IM AFRAID HE IS VERY SicK! HuT, THEN! WE WILL BRING HIM BACK TO Im DEAD AND TVE GONE 1C NOT QUITE! YOU'RE ON A dJAPANESE-HELD j ISLAND--AND 7 AM MILA, LEADER OF A GUERRILLA BAND FiGHTING THEM! SLEEP NOW-- THAT SHERMAN SAID ABOUT Delinquency ed April 4 over CKWX) ker on the LPP Program) shall still have broken homes unless our next generation of parents have more to bring to marriage than has the present generation. = Mass production has driven the domestic skills from the home and these were creative skills—mother no longer spins the cloth and makes the clothes, and father no longer hews the tree and builds the home and makes the furniture. These tasks, hard though they were, brought deep satisfaction. Mass production also provides the amusements which used to be created in the home—the movy- ies and the radio have replaced the home-made music and home-made plays and dialog- ues. Pamily life has been drained of the things that held it together, and which bound it to other families in the com- munity. There is an awareness of this emptiness, and that awareness is indicated in the tremendous demand for com- munity centers. In these cul- tural and recreational centers family and community life may be revitalized. Still another responsibility must be met by parents and by citizens if we are to prevent oux children from becoming young offenders. We must see to 1t that the parents of the next generation réalize the im- portance of their task and we must see to it that in our schools children not only learn the three R’s, the eultural sub- jects, such as art and music, which are also important, but that they learn the art of living as socially cooperative individ- uals in society. Because it is in the years from two to seven that the child sets the pattern for his social behavior, this vitally important teaching; must be provided during those years. At the same time, the parents must understand how the child learns to play and work hap- pily with his young companions, and how this socially desirable behavior may be carried through into his life in the home and in the community. This will mean that the par- ents, as well as the ehild, will have to be trained in this art of living. While IT am generally adverse to compulsion, so important does it seem to me that - this knowledge of the techniques of adjustment ‘between the mem- bers of the family and between members of society is, I would be almost tempted to urge that there should be not only com- pulsory education for children, but compulsory education for parents. . When I was first given the litle for this talk, I misunder- stood it and thought it was to be “What Can We Do With the Young Offender,” and I was going to wise-crack and say: “We can do without him.” That remark would not have been as flippant or foolish as it would seem. We could very easily do without or _ be without the young offender in our commu- nity, if the citizens as a whole were willing to give their time and their thought and pay the necessary taxes to make our communities such that our chil_ dren would be happy and se- cure. For such 4 community would have no young offenders. FP LTA PEGS LEP EE