Juvenile Delinquent (3 page)

S
ARA
C
HESTERTON
only made me wait about five minutes. She came hurrying back out into the lobby, not even waiting for Hannegan, but calling back over her shoulder, “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

As she joined me she glanced at her watch and said, “After one-thirty. And my lunch hour’s supposed to be twelve-thirty to one-thirty. I should be at the office now.”

I didn’t say anything until we were in the car. Then I said, “You don’t punch a time clock, do you?”

“No. Our evaluation reports are based mainly on the number of cases we reinvestigate each month. It’s about the only way the office can judge whether or not we’re actually putting in full days, because half our work is in the field. I visit every morning and do my office work in the afternoons. Some workers do it the other way. We’re pretty free to set our own schedules so long as we produce an adequate amount of work. Nobody says anything if I walk in late, but my phone hour is one-thirty to two-thirty. That is, I’m supposed to be available for calls from clients then. We have to set a definite period, or we’d do nothing but answer the phone.”

“You get that many calls?”

“A dozen to two dozen daily. My caseload runs over two hundred, and they’re always requesting special services in addition to their relief checks. Things like coal, or clothing or carfare to go to the clinic.”

It was only a ten-minute drive from police headquarters to the building housing Public Welfare, and with Sara chattering about her job, we didn’t even get to the subject of the briefing she had proposed. When I stopped in front, she looked at me in consternation.

“I forgot completely why I’d suggested you run me over here, Manny. I’m a complete dolt!”

“It doesn’t matter, Sara.”

“But it does. I really know that neighborhood thoroughly. I’ve been working in the district for eight years. I’m sure I could give you a lot of helpful information.” Her smooth forehead furrowed in a frown. “Listen, I have to get in to my phone, but why don’t you come in too? I can never get any other work done during my phone hour anyway. Between calls we can talk.”

This seemed a reasonable suggestion, so I climbed out of the car too. Quickly she led me through a broad front entrance into a wide but plain lobby. Benches along the walls contained a number of waiting people whose shabby dress indicated they were probably relief clients. Behind a long counter to one side of the room three women workers were helping clients fill out forms.

As we went by this counter Sara gestured toward it and said, “Intake. I get stuck for a week there every summer when the regular Intake girls go on vacation. Not that I mind too much. It’s kind of dull, but it’s a change from my usual routine.”

We stopped before the elevator and Sara pushed the signal button.

I asked, “What’s Intake?”

“Where they accept original relief applications. After Intake takes down the basic data, applications are sent upstairs to Records, where the information is carded. Then Records sorts them according to geographical districts and sends them to the proper casework supervisors. They in turn sort them according to areas and assign them to caseworkers for investigation. It sounds complicated, but it really works quite smoothly. For instance, when an applicant who lives in the area I cover comes in to ask for relief, I get the application the next day and am supposed to make at least a preliminary investigation within twenty-four hours of the time I get it. So within forty-eight hours of the time an applicant walks in we can grant temporary emergency aid, if necessary. Later a more thorough investigation has to be made, of course.”

The elevator doors opened, we stepped in and Sara punched the button marked “Two.” The ancient cab started with a shake and crept upward.

I said, “Then you’re the one who decides whether an applicant is eligible for relief or not, eh?” I didn’t particularly care, but thought I ought to show at least polite interest in what she had been saying.

“I make an investigation, write it up and recommend either approval or denial. My casework supervisor makes the actual decision based on my report, but almost never does a supervisor reverse a worker’s recommendation. She will sometimes send the case back for further information, though. Her main function is to check that all resources such as old insurance policies, convertible assets and so on have been properly looked into, that relatives, if any, have been contacted by the worker to see if they’ll contribute support, that references have been checked and that the financial budget has been figured correctly.”

The slow-moving elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. We stepped out into a huge room containing dozens of desks, about half of which were occupied. Sara hurried toward a desk situated in the center of the room.

As she seated herself and pointed to a chair next to her desk for me, a woman at a nearby desk called, “You had two clients phone in, Miss Chesterton. I wrote the numbers on your desk pad.”

“Thanks,” Sara said.

She quickly went through her in box, made a face when she found two new relief applications among the letters, then shoved everything back in the in box and picked up the phone. I waited patiently as she dialed both clients who had left messages, listened to each for a moment and announced crisply that she would send one a coal oil voucher and mail the other an authorization for car tokens.

When she hung up the second time, she said, “There! Now let’s get down to business before the phone rings again.”

The phone buzzed softly.

With an apologetic smile she picked it up and settled another client problem. No more had she hung up than what I gathered from the conversation was a worker from some private agency phoned and tied her up for five minutes as they discussed a case Sara apparently had referred to the other agency for marital counseling.

Then two more clients phoned in rapid order.

By now I was fidgeting. While it was enlightening to see a social worker in operation, I had other things I could do.

When she hung up the final time, I said, “Looks like we’re not going to get in much conversation.”

“There should be a lull now,” she said confidently. “Just what is it you want to know about Joe’s neighborhood?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Joe seems to think this Gravediggers gang killed young Meyers and framed him. So I’d like whatever you know about both the Purple Pelicans and the Gravediggers. Then there’s the possibility that whatever illegal activities Joe’s gang has been dabbling in brought about the murder. Maybe a little dope traffic is involved, since they found marijuana cigarettes in the dead boy’s pocket. Or maybe neither of the two gangs nor whatever rackets they were engaged in have any bearing, and it was just a grudge kill. There’s so many possibilities, I think we’d better start just with background. Give me a thumbnail picture of the area.”

“You mean geographically?”

“I know its geography pretty well. Tell me about the people.”

“Well, it’s a typical slum area,” Sara said with a reflective look on her face. “Cramped housing, low incomes, low educational level. A large foreign-born element. Very little parental control over the children of high-school age. Not that the parents aren’t strict. Most of them are quick to use a strap and the children jump when their parents speak. But homes are too crowded for much family life, and most parents down there are just as glad to have their offspring out from underfoot. That puts them out on the streets, and roaming the streets without much to do, the kids tend to get out of control.”

“What’s caused so many of these juvenile gangs to form since the last war?” I asked. “I worked down in that district about fourteen years ago, and they had juvenile gangs then. But nothing like this. They were small, usually just kids who lived along a single block, and about the worst trouble they ever got into was an occasional bit of vandalism. These modern gangs are huge. Joe says the Purple Pelicans has sixty members. And they’re not just mischievous kids. They’re actually criminal. You read about comic books and TV crime programs being a major cause of juvenile delinquency, but I can’t accept that as an explanation.”

Sara emitted a small snort. “Even the public officials who blame the rise in delinquency on the comics and TV don’t really believe it. It’s just a cover for their own inadequacy. For one thing there’s been a national breakdown in morality since the war. There’s been so many exposés of political and police tie-ins with criminal elements, you can’t expect kids to have much respect for law and order. Then too, the population has increased far faster than housing accommodations. There’s nothing like a two or three-room flat with eight kids in it to breed juvenile criminals.”

“But there’s always been crooked politicians,” I said. “And slum areas.”

“Not on today’s scale.”

“Maybe not,” I admitted. “What you say may explain the increase in the size of juvenile gangs. But it doesn’t explain their change in philosophy. The kid gangs I knew were tough, but they weren’t criminal. How does a group such as the Purple Pelicans develop?”

“Probably through a mixture of reasons,” Sara said. “First there’s the primitive instinct to band together for mutual protection. When you’ve got a whole gang behind you, you don’t have to be afraid of living in a neighborhood where violence is common. Then there’s the human need to be accepted socially. These teenage clubs are the élite of the slum areas. Being asked to join is equivalent to a college boy being tapped by a fraternity, or a businessman getting an invitation to join the country club.”

The phone buzzed and she had to settle another client problem. While she was talking a plump gray-haired woman came from the door of a private office across the room and stopped before the desk.

Finishing her conversation, Sara hung up the phone and said to the woman, “Hi, Mrs. Forshay.”

I rose from my chair and Sara introduced the woman as her casework supervisor.

“How do you do?” I said.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Moon.” Then she turned back to Sara. “Tomorrow’s the end of the month. Are all your cases in?”

For some reason Sara looked a little embarrassed. “I’m afraid I got a little behind in dictation this month, Mrs. Forshay. I’ve got a whole dozen to write up yet. I planned to type them at home tonight myself and not bother the stenographers at the last minute.”

Mrs. Forshay looked pained in a good-natured way. “You girls always think of the stenographers, but you never think of your poor old supervisor. Always a last-minute influx at the end of the month to keep me up half the night. Can’t you hold some of them over until next month?”

“Ten of them are closings,” Sara said apologetically. “If I hold them over, another check will go out of the state office.”

Mrs. Forshay made a gesture of resignation. “Give me those ten then, and save the other two. How many reinvestigations will that make you this month?”

“Forty-two.”

The supervisor looked surprised. “So many? You’ll be top of the production list this month.”

Then she looked at me again, said she was glad to have met me and went back into her office.

Sara said, “Where was I?”

I resumed my seat and said, “In the middle of a sociological treatise on why juvenile gangs form.”

“Oh yes. I’d covered why they form and why they get so many members. Now for the reasons they so often turn criminal.” She started ticking off on her fingers. “First, there’s simply the matter of boredom. You throw sixty youngsters ranging from fourteen to eighteen together with no adult supervision, and there’s bound to be a release of animal energy. That’s why they have so-called ‘rumbles’, when two gangs meet by prearrangement and fight each other with clubs and knives and zip guns. The YMCA has been trying to divert some of this competitive energy into healthier channels by attempting to get the clubs to form baseball teams and basketball teams and so on, but it hasn’t been too successful because the neighborhoods the Y is trying to work in don’t have facilities for sports. The youngsters have to go clear across town to the Y gym to play basketball, and it’s just too much trouble. And there isn’t a baseball diamond within five miles of my district. If some organization would move into the area and build a gym and a baseball diamond right in the neighborhood, you’d probably see an end to rumbles. But there’s no healthy release for their excess energy, so they devise their own release. The wild parties they sometimes have in their club rooms result from the same boredom. There’s nothing else to do, so they dabble with alcohol and marijuana and even heroin. If there were properly supervised teenage centers down there, I doubt that you’d ever hear of drunken brawls or reefer parties among the teenagers.”

She ticked off a second finger. “Next, there’s the human habit of emulation. The big heroes who come out of the slum areas are the successful racketeers. And youngsters have a natural endency to model themselves after neighborhood heroes.” She opened another finger. “Allied with this is the third factor : the desire to feel important. The club member who’s toughest and most daring in criminal activity is most respected by the others, because he’s closest to being like the adult heroes they admire.”

She raised a fourth finger, using up everything but the thumb on that hand. “Last, there’s the age-old desire to conform. Even those who have no particular toughness or daring in their natures will pretend a façade of both in order to be indistinguishable from others in their social group. Humans are peculiarly sheep-like, and teenagers are nothing but young humans. They don’t go so far as to analyze what they are doing in their own minds, of course, but what causes many of the youngsters who are basically law-abiding to perform outright criminal acts is that they have made a deliberate choice between social acceptance and conscience. They would literally prefer to face a possible life in prison than risk being regarded by their own social set as ‘different.’“

I said, “You have this subject thought through. That was practically a speech.”

Sara smiled a little shamefacedly. “It was a speech,” she confessed. “I spoke at Rotary Club on juvenile delinquency a couple of weeks ago. I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of quoting myself.”