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Monday, January 7, 2019

State Report on Public Welfare Offers Recommendations on Children, Schools, Prisons, Jan. 7, 1919

From the editorial page of The Monroe Journal, January 7, 1919

The Report of the Commissioner of Public Welfare

The report of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare to the Governor and General Assembly just completed by Mr. R.F. Beasley, Commissioner of Public Welfare, under the board, discusses at length the important subject of child welfare, prison and chain gang conditions, care of the insane and feeble-minded, county homes, and social ideals and tendencies generally, with specific recommendations. The fact that the North Carolina idea of State and county board of public welfare, closely associated and linked up in a unified system, is spreading over the country and is being adopted by the other States, is brought out. The Commissioner of Public Welfare joined ex-State Superintendent Joyner in recommending strengthening the compulsory attendance law and providing means for every child to attend school during the entire six months’ period.

Insisting that the war has brought into question many former standards or lack of standards, Mr. Beasley cites the percentage of mental and physical defects shown in the draft, and defects shown in medical examination of school children as indications of a need for far reaching plans to prevent such conditions in the future. He would have the State committed firmly to a program which, sometimes, will measurably accomplish easier economic conditions, conservation of physical health, a more perfect fulfillment of educational requirements, a better conservation of child life, a more just distribution of work and play throughout the whole population, a better are of dependent and unfortunate classes and improvement in the handling of prisoners and persons charged with offenses.

In carrying out this program he declared a unified system of State and local agencies absolutely essential, and he recommended that the State Board of Public Welfare be given power to appoint county boards whose members will serve without pay, and leave the power of appointing County Superintendents of Public Welfare to the local authorities but make the appointment mandatory. This county superintendent, he plans, should be chief probation officer and charged with the special duty of child welfare. He should be paid jointly by the county commissioners and county board of education since a part of his work will relate directly to children and school attendance.

“In the matter of child welfare, we shall have a directing head in our office whose duty it will be to study the whole problem, to direct and assist in the enforcement of the juvenile laws, to find and provide for neglected children, to visit and co-operate with the 20 orphanages and other institutions for children, to assist in every way in finding the facts and suggesting the remedy for delinquency, neglect, truancy and other evils affecting child life. In the development of the work, which is earnestly insisted upon by the orphanages, which realize they cannot meet the demand, we must be ready to find a home for every child in need of one.”

Declaring that child welfare is the largest subject before the people of the State, Mr. Beasley insists that the State must provide means of putting the hand of protection upon every child in the State who is now without it. He thereupon outlines the necessary steps, in a general way, which may accomplish the result without revolutionary changes and without great expense. His recommendations are these:
1.       An active juvenile court in every county to whom the chief county attendance officer may bring the case of every dependent, neglected, truant, delinquent, or child needing protection for any cause, and have that case heard in an intelligent and sympathetic manner and disposed of for the best interest and welfare of the child solely. The Superior Court sits in every county and all that is needed is to make the clerk of the court the active trial judge or referee whose decisions may be reviewed if necessary by the judge when he comes around. But children’s cases cannot wait for the judge on his regular circuit. They must be heard and disposed of at one, hence the clerk is the local officer. We now have a juvenile court law but it is largely of no effect for lack of enforcement. All our laws relating to children as they now stand should be rewritten and place in a separate chapter with the clerk of the court and the county attendance officer charged with their administration. The necessity for intelligent, sympathetic, and immediate disposition of children’s cases, with subsequent oversight is the nucleus around which the legislation on the subject must swing.

2.       Make the compulsory attendance law apply to the full time that the public school is in session and start with the assumption that every child between the ages of 8 and 14 must attend, except for the sole cause of physical or mental incapacity. When the teacher reports non-attendance to the chief attendance officer, he must find the reason in every case and eliminate it. If it is neglect of the father, apply the law for non-support. If it is bona fide poverty, let the case be brought before the juvenile court and be disposed of, either by an order on the public funds to help the family or by placing the child in better hands, if circumstances require it. The place of the child is in the school. If he is not there it is the duty of the State to remove the hindrance which keeps him away, no matter what it is.
3.       In case the child has a mother who is qualified to have passion of it and train it, but cannot do so for lack of financial ability, let the court investigate the facts and take the case under supervision, with some aid from the county, whereby the mother would be enabled to keep the child. She is the natural protector. She can take care of the child much more cheaply and better than any other agency, and no child should be separated from its mother for any reason except the moral unworthiness of the mother to care for it. A law of this kind would relieve the pressure upon the orphanages which are now unable to meet the demand.

4.       Give the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare the co-operating agencies in the counties which it asks for and a contingent appropriation to be expended when necessary in finding homes or otherwise disposing of neglected and dependent children.

5.       Increased capacity of the Jackson Training School for delinquent boys. Only half the actual demand for admission to this school can now be granted. Increase the capacity of the Caswell Training School for the case of subnormal children. This is one of the most important of all demands. “If there is one lesson above all others that we must heed, it is that the Commonwealth cannot go backward in its efforts to control and prevent the increase of feeble-mindedness unless it intends to completely surrender to the forces of decay and racial deterioration. North Carolina has made a beginning and we do not hesitate to say, it would be next to criminal folly to fail to prosecute its beginning. It will cost money, but will be money well spent. There is no sentimentality in this subject. Its dictates arise from the sternest demands of race protection.” Ninety per cent of the cases of the white insane hospitals, he adds, are chronic and 85 per cent of those in the colored hospitals.“Unless we can do more to catch in time incipient mental disorder and treat it promptly as physical illness is treated, we may expect an ever increasing number of mere custodial cases.”

Prison Conditions

Discussing prison conditions, Mr. Beasley reports that there are fewer prisoners held in custody in the State today than at any time in the past 10 years. While the prison statistics are not full and accurate, he says they are enough to show that something is taking place in the State that is not yet fully understood.

“From 1909 to 1915 there was a gradual rise of the number of prisoners at any given date on the county chain gangs, in the jail mostly awaiting trial and in State prisons. Then there was a sudden drop. Notwithstanding the increase in the State’s population in the past 10 years, it is a fact that there are fewer prisoners held in custody in the State today than at any one date before in the past 10 years. The chain gang population present on the days reports were made ran up to nearly 1,900 in 1915. Since then it has dropped violently, especially in 1917 and 1918, when the figures were 1,230 and 851, respectively.

If this goes on, as all men should pray that it may, the chain gang as it has been known will be a thing of the past. Very few of them, if any, are now valuable as they once were, for the work of the prisoners, on account of inability to keep up equipment and management for a decreasing number of men. Very few counties will long desire to keep up their forces if the tendency continues to increase. We shall soon have to send all the long term men to the State’s prison and provide misdemeant farms for the less serious offenders. The right kind of probation in the counties will further lessen the number of men committed for small offenses. The practice of putting men on the chain gang, especially first offenders and youthful ones for inability to pay small fines and cost should cease at once, and probation be substituted whereby they will be allowed to work at their familiar lines of occupation under a probation officer and pay the amount due, as well as be instructed in better ideas of citizenship and duty. Making a half grown boy work on the chain gang with hardened prisoners because he has failed to pay a cost is worse crime on the part of the State than that for which it professes to punish.

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