OUR REJECTED CHILDREN

Again some aggressive, experienced and effective-reporting in which another sore-spot in our public health system is attacked (Shame of the States, etc.), this is the story of juvenile delinquency in America and our reform (in name only) schools from which an approximate seventy per cent graduate into adult crime. The itinerary here includes most of our state institutions and some private ones, their methods which feature anything from psychology applied with leather to brutal corporal punishment, their conditions which display gregation, regimentation, overcrowding, repression, and only rarely a psychiatric program or recreational facilities. There is also an anatomy of delinquency which shows that there is no one cause or no one cure, -- and that places the responsibility on slum environments, on parents, on juvenile courts and detention cells, on the community, and on our crime centered culture (radio, movies as well as comics). In this indictment there are many indications of the ways in which delinquency can be prevented- and if not prevented later handled as it has been in the minority of the more enlightened training schools. The material, much of which appeared earlier in PM and the Woman's Home Companion is forceful and fascinating.