By Thomas Ferguson

“Just before their eighteenth birthday these young people were asked by the Officers of the Children's Department who had been looking after them while in care whether they would be willing to participate in a study designed to shed light on these questions, and all but g of the go5 approached, 1 1 o boys and 95 girls, expressed their willingness to do so. From the official files information was obtained about their home background and early history, the method of dealing with them while they were in care, changes of foster-parent, and so on. Head teachers of the schools which they had attended were invited to comment upon the school performance of the young people their scholastic ability, temperament, recreations, rela­ tions with other children-and to hazard an estimate of their prospects of future success. ”

The Nuffield Foundation, The Oxford Press, 1966, 139p.

By Jesse Kelley

Juvenile public defenders represent youth charged with crimes through the juvenile court system. Each state has a process to provide access to counsel for allegedly delinquent youth who are unable to pay for a hired private defense attorney. Indigent defense provides juveniles with the constitutionally mandated access to counsel, even if they cannot afford it. Court-appointed lawyers who work on delinquency matters in the juvenile justice field can be labeled as juvenile public defenders, indigent criminal defense attorneys, or contract or “panel” attorneys. While often interchanged, the key difference is that public defenders are part of an organized, professional office while contract attorneys are independent practitioners and usually have their own private firm. Enormous responsibility falls on each of these attorneys to diligently represent their young clients, but often these professionals are not adequately supported by the state. Supporting juvenile public defenders is necessary to ensure that justice and equitable outcomes are experienced by all young people in the juvenile court system. This policy study intends to highlight the many perils currently facing juvenile public defenders, how those disadvantages impact youth, what obstacles COVID-19 added and what solutions states can undertake to ensure that young people facing delinquency have the best resources available.

R STREET SHORTS NO. 95 October 2020, 5p.

By Ruth Smiley True.

(Other Titles: The Neglected Girl). “The study of juvenile delinquency, Boyhood and Lawlessness, shows clearly the need of special intimate knowledge of social phenomena if their underlying causes are to be understood. It describes the inadequacies of the present system: the innumerable arrests for petty offenses or for playing in the streets, and the failure of the police to bring the ringleaders into court. All this seems so unreasonable to the neighborhood and has so often aroused its antagonism that the influence of the Children's Court is seriously undermined. In fact, the fathers and mothers of its charges look upon it only as a hostile authority in league with the police, while its real purpose is entirely hidden from them. The evidence is clear, too, that both parents and community have failed to understand and provide for the most elementary physical needs of the boys. The same tragic lack of opportunity and care characterizes the lives of the girls. Ruth S. True's portrayal of these lives in The Neglected Girl rests upon close personal acquaintance with a special group of girls who, though they were not brought up on charges in the Children's Court, yet were without question in grave need of probationary care.

New York: Survey Associates, 1914. 430p.

By Paul Drucker and Maurice Beck Hexter.

“The presentation of social case-histories involves problems different from those of legal cases, a difference in which inhere both a strength and a weakness. In legal cases there is an ultimate decision before a supreme judicial body. In social work authoritative procedure and technique have still to be worked out, and, what is more important, there never issues a final decision as to who is right and who is wrong.”

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923. 421p.