July 13, 1959: California, the welfare magnet.

Confidential File

Are Juveniles Really Delinquent?

Let me speak for the record. I'm against juvenile delinquents.

They're a menace. No question about it.

Not only are they constantly getting into trouble themselves, they're setting a very bad example for all the rest of us.

So, I'm against them. I think they should be avoided at every turn.

The trouble is, however, I no longer can be certain whom to avoid.

It
wasn't long ago that "juvenile delinquent" was a badge of dishonor
pinned on kids whose behavior was, clearly, criminally antisocial.

Today, though, we're applying it recklessly to any youngster whose behavior is just mildly annoying.

A teen-ager
doesn't have to swipe hubcaps in order to earn the delinquent label any
more. He can get one for bothering the neighbors by playing ball in the
street.

In the dear, dim, dead days of my youth, I was
frequently smeared by irate neighbors and not just a few relatives as a
"brat" or an "ill-mannered punk."

These are not the softest
terms in the world. But certainly they are less dire and ominous than
being called a "juvenile delinquent."

I think we've developed a kind of hysterical fear about our kids. We interpret much of the natural mischief and experimentation of growing up as a sure sign of criminal tendency.

When
I was a kid, swiping an apple was almost socially acceptable.
(Provided, of course, you took it from a neighbor's tree. Only cops
could snitch them from fruit stands.)

Today, it constitutes petty theft.

Sneaking into the movies was a regular Saturday ritual. If you got caught you got booted out, and that was it.

Now, you'd probably be arrested for breaking and entering.

Perhaps I exaggerate. But not much. Not when I read about a U.S. attorney in Honolulu named Louis Blissard.

He's a gentleman, I think, who clearly portrays the weird way we are misbehaving toward our kids in this enlightened age.

Last week Blissard
became involved in a case concerning two L.A. area girls, ages 13 and
16, who stowed away on the ocean liner Lurline when it embarked for
Hawaii.

With their parents, the girls had gone to bid some
voyager friends good-by, but apparently became so enraptured with the
farewell festivities that they laid low aboard ship until it was safely
away from dock.

Immediately on their discovery, the family's
friends saw to it that the pair became paid-up passengers, with a
stateroom. They were well-chaperoned and, except for their initial sin
of stowing away, well-behaved.

But on arrival in Honolulu they were, according to dispatches, taken into custody by police, fingerprinted and charged with juvenile delinquency by U.S. Atty. Blissard.

Lays Down Law

Blissard
then made it clear that — chaperoned or not, and regardless of their
parents' wishes — the girls would be prosecuted as delinquents if they
weren't sent back home on the first available plane.

Obviously,
there was no malicious intent on the part of the girls. Nobody was
hurt, except their parents — in the pocketbook. And their parents, I'd
guess, are capable of dealing out whatever punishment was necessary on
that score.

However, if those two kids are — as U.S. Atty. Blissard
apparently feels they are — candidates for a juvenile detention home,
then we better get busy right now putting up more barbed wire.

About 90% of today's kids ought to be locked up.

And as for us parents, we should be damned thankful that we were brought up in an era when adults differentiated between mischief and maliciousness, or we'd have prison records instead of happy memories to look back on.