The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
Many students of municipal affairs believe that every large city should
have morals police, of whom a certain number should be women, if it
would properly protect young girls for whose unwary feet so many
pitfalls are spread, and if it would deal adequately with
prostitution—that grave menace to health and morals.
We need women police in the theaters of every city to watch the girls
who attend these entertainments and accept the invitations of young men
offered with disreputable intentions. In the majority of cheap theaters
the moving pictures are shown in a dim light and the danger to young
people has been shifted from the stage to the auditorium. The darkened
room affords opportunity for familiarity, and there should be women
police to see that conventionalities and decencies are observed.
There should be women police in our dance halls—the happy hunting ground
of the white slave trader—to watch the girls and also the boys, to warn
the girls when they are seen taking too much liquor and to watch that if
intoxicated they are not accompanied from the hall by young men who have
plied them with liquor for illicit purposes. They should also see that
young unsophisticated boys are not victimized by professional
prostitutes who take advantage of inexperienced youths who come to the
city for the first time and visit the dance halls to “see the sights.”
Women police should be stationed on pleasure boats and at bathing
beaches and should ever be on the alert for conditions which demoralize
children. We need women police in our amusement parks to mingle with the
crowds at the gates and to save young girls from accepting invitations
from men who hope to be repaid later in the evening. We need women
police in such places to follow girls who are seen going to lonely parts
of the parks accompanied by young men. In fact, we need women police to
“mother” the girls in all public places where the danger to young people
is great.
In our station houses we should have women police in whose charge girls
should be placed. Women police could accompany the girls to trial and be
with them when they are subjected to harassing questions so often put to
them by attorneys, and women police should accompany girls to the
institutions to which they are committed by the court. The work of the
woman police officer would not be very different from that of the woman
probation officer. The Juvenile Court officers investigate homes and
neighborhoods, watch their wards to see that they attend school or are
at work, and take charge of children after they have become delinquent.
It would be only one more step, but one urgently needed, to have women
police who would lessen the work of the probation officers by carefully
watching for those causes which lead children into the courts, by
reporting these conditions to the proper authorities and by carefully
supervising all places of amusement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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