This condition presses on the child life of all the tenement districts of New York City. It is a uniformly operating cause which results in a fairly uniform method of resistance on the part of the children. Not only are the statutory crimes of fighting and stealing regarded as play by the children, but the more innocent kinds of play, like baseball, are in law regarded as crimes and are so punishable. This is not, on the one hand, a defect of child character, nor on the other hand a mere stupidity of law, but is a real condition, inherent in the fact that the street, with its traffic, and the street front, with its stores and windows, are the only playground of 95 per cent. or more of the city’s children. The result is a fundamental schism between the child community and the adult community. The child community is a nuisance. The adult community is a tyrant. Neither is to blame. Our laws, our court procedure and our probation system, imperfect though they be, are not to blame. The blame rests with the city which has not provided play space and which does not intelligently use even the little play space that is provided. Juvenile crime is a play problem not only in the sense that play is an alternative to crime--a cure for crime: but in a more specific sense, namely, in the streets of New York, under present conditions, play is crime and crime is play. And play is crime all over New York, not merely in the middle west side. The city’s total juvenile crime rate is growing. What is to be done about it? Provide outlets. Consider specifically that west side district. The remedies are at hand. For instance: Public school buildings in the middle west side are used to as small an extent of their capacity as is the case in the city at large. This means a 40 per cent. non-use or more. There is a large recreation pier at West Fiftieth Street, where the activities could be multiplied. The DeWitt Clinton Park, at Fifty-ninth Street and the North River, is unused during the evenings and very inadequately used during the day. It is one of the finest playgrounds in the world. There are at least ten city blocks in the middle west side which could if the city government desired it, be devoted to playground uses for at least several hours of every day. Apparatus would not be needed, and the only supervision required would be police supervision. SHOULD JUDGES GO TO JAIL? [The idea is not so revolutionary as it might be. Recently Mr. T. M. Osborne tried a week’s self-incarceration at Auburn Prison, New York. As a result the general public, reading of his experiences, has a knowledge to-day of the more common methods of prison administration than it would have learned, or have been willing to learn in any other way. Now the Boston (Mass.) Globe comes along with a more radical suggestion, which we herewith summarize.]