Social Agencies as Delinquency’s Foes

● “It is difficult to think of children as burglars, gangsters, drug addicts or murderers. Such has become the reality, however,” said an Associated Press report, January 3, that told of a million children getting into trouble with the police every year. A letter to the New York Times, January 13, commented that this is despite the efforts of the social work agencies, and gave the following illustration of this delinquency: “I live in what was formerly New York’s famous ‘dead end’ neighborhood. One warm evening late in the past summer I was an interested eavesdropper, via my living room window, on a meeting between two gangs of teen-agers who were planning a gang fight for the following night. After all the details of the projected mayhem were ironed out one of the older boys (about 18 years of age) asked that both gangs provide volunteer 11-year-olds so that in the event of police interference the gangs could have on hand expendable members for any arrests. Then came the punch line. In the words of the gang leader—‘All they gotta tell the social worker in court is that they hate their mothers and they’ll be out in a coupla hours.’” The agencies have not succeeded in taking over the job in which the parents failed when they did not exercise the authority that the Book inspired by the Maker of man says they should. It is the rejection of that Book’s instruction that has caused both groups to fail.