IS THE JUVENILE COURT BEING TOO SEVERE?
Yes, says Mr. Paul Kahn.
But President Aubry defends himself.

A few days ago, a remarkable incident was reported here: a seventeen-year-old boy, on a whim so common at that troubled and troubled age, was arrested in Paris for vagrancy. Out of fear or remorse, he escaped from the foster home where he had been placed and returned to his parents in Montpellier. The lesson paid off. The prodigal son is well-behaved now, he's in care, he's working. Yet, despite the desolate protests of the good father of five children, the juvenile court is calling for him. Despite the distance and expense, he must return to Paris. He doesn't; he is sentenced, in absentia, to remain locked up in a reformatory until the age of twenty-one. Four years in prison for this peccadillo, when an adult would get away with it, and even with a fortnight, is that possible?

The juvenile court... We imagined it to be a haven of peace, of paternal indulgence; we saw a grandfather's face with white hair, gently leaning towards a young blond head. Firmness, certainly, is needed for children of that age, but kindness above all, a kindness that understands and absolves while punishing, and that punishes only to amend.

That was indeed the goal of the juvenile courts, and until last October, we more or less adhered to it, Mr. Paul Kahn, a lawyer at the court and general secretary of the Youth Association, told me. But since then, the judges have changed, and with it, the attitude. Now there is excessive repression, blind beatings. Cases similar to the one that surprises you are multiplying. Here's a figure that speaks volumes: in the last five months, there have been one hundred appeals to the judgments, and the Court of Appeal has found more lenient solutions for seventy sentences... Isn't that clear...
Yet, the principle of these courts seems excellent.
Certainly. But several reforms are necessary: ​​the premises must be changed first. Have you seen them? It's at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, a shameful slum. In July, at noon, electricity is needed, and the acoustics are deplorable. There is no dignity in the setting; therefore, children and parents disdainfully call this court "the little court." To avoid its being considered inferior, it must be moved back to the Palais de Justice.
The hearings must also be made public; it was believed that revealing the child's name and offense would harm them, exposing them to the temptation of hamming it up. He has been deprived of protection and guarantees. He has the right to explain himself in public. His parents, his friends have the right to attend the sessions. There, as elsewhere, secret justice is bad justice. Finally, magistrates should be fathers, specialized men, with love and experience of children, concerned for their recovery. In Belgium, juvenile magistrates are aces, they take precedence over all others. Are they not entrusted with the most delicate, the noblest of tasks?... Indeed, in a country lacking men and women, the magistrate who can turn a child into a useful citizen, a desperate man, or a rebel is certainly more important than the one who judges the heroine of a drama of passion or an old horse returning from swindling. For it is for the future that he works.

"A cellar," I was told of the juvenile court. It's true that upon leaving the Quai des Orfèvres, where the young sun leaps across the blue asphalt and skitters across the Seine, one seems to be plunged underground or underwater: a damp corridor smelling of saltpeter and grime, worm-eaten doors, a room with leprous walls, a green table where a few electric bulbs struggle weakly with the meager light falling from a thin air vent. Is this the atmosphere of joyful peace and beauty that should always surround childhood, even and especially guilty childhood?
But I must say that, very tall, very thin, with an austere beard, and a sharp gaze beneath his glasses, while he can inspire fear, Mr. Aubry, the presiding judge, nevertheless does not have the air of a bogeyman. He seems deeply moved by the reproach of excessive severity leveled against him. And first of all, he told me, the facts are distorted. The kid from Montpellier in question had never appeared before us. We didn't know he had returned to his family. We first sent the summons for the January 25th hearing to the local police station where he should have been. The case was then postponed for four weeks, with a summons to the father's home and a note adding that if the child didn't appear, he would be sent to a reformatory until he came of age. Which was done, by default. It was cut and dried.
I objected: But since the kid had changed his ways, since he was working?
How could we have known that? The father's letter, addressed to the central service, didn't reach us until the day after the hearing...
So, thanks to this delay, here, for a spur of the moment moment, is this boy, who repented, in prison for four years? He can appeal...
This is apparently what has happened since October to a hundred children sentenced too harshly, seventy of whom were said to have had their sentences reduced?
Exaggeration! exclaimed Mr. Aubry briskly. About half of the judgments were upheld, the other half overturned. It is true, however, that we have had to be more severe lately: I was overwhelmed with complaints from youth centers about the conduct of the children entrusted to them: 268 incidents of probation, as we say. Since this system had failed, something stricter was needed, that is, the reformatory...
Is this ideal? And don't children, too often, become more corrupted there. Also, in the last three months, I have returned 233 children to their families, while I have only placed a hundred in youth centers. This is what some of your younger members cannot forgive me for... But that's another story... As for the publicity of the proceedings, concluded Mr. Aubry, I am a firm believer in it. The more people come to our court, the more interest there will be in children, the more goodwill there will be to help their recovery. Who, for example, will create asylums for abnormal children? Because most often they are not guilty, but sick people...
After all, is Mr. Aubry so harsh? Who likes...

Andrée Viollis.