Morton v. Hayden

Webber, J.

(Concurring)

I fully concur with the opinion of the Court and the result reached therein. All agree that the statutory law relating to juvenile delinquency has developed by a process of fragmentary amendment which has produced an end product urgently requiring revision and correlation. Bewildering as this legislative morass may appear, I am satisfied that it is by no means impossible to discover underlying legislative intent. Reduced to simplest terms, a municipal court could, at the time this petitioner was before it, “make such other disposition as may seem best for the interests of the child and for the protection of the community,” subject to the limitation that the juvenile delinquent under the age of 17 years could not be sent “to jail or prison.” R, S. 1954, Chap. 148, Sec. 6. Here was a broad and inclusive power of disposition subject to a specific limitation. Prior to 1951 the limitation was broader and forbade also the sending of the juvenile delinquent to a “reformatory.” When by P. L. 1951, Chap. 84, Sec. 4, the Legislature deleted the word “reformatory,” it had a purpose in mind and did not intend a meaningless act. The only purpose it could possibly have had was to permit the disposition previously forbidden. I am satisfied that the effect of this amendment was also to amend by implication the statute which prescribes who may be received at the reformatory for men and which requires that they shall have been “convicted of or have pleaded *18 guilty to crime.” R. S. 1954, Chap. 27, Sec. 66. The necessary implication would require the addition of the words “or juvenile delinquency” after the word “crime.” This is an essential corollary if meaning and purpose are to be given to the act of the Legislature in deleting the word “reformatory.”

In my view the Legislature did no more than recognize that times have changed. When the juvenile delinquency law was first conceived in this state, the term “juvenile delinquent” brought to the average mind a mental picture of a child playing truant, breaking windows, or stealing apples. Today we must reckon with the reality, so painfully apparent in large metropolitan areas, of adolescent hoodlums, organized in gangs, armed with dangerous weapons and bent on crimes of force and violence. Such a youthful offender, truculent and brazen, could easily undermine and destroy the efforts at reform in a state school which is primarily designed to meet the needs of more pliant and less sophisticated children. I am convinced that the Legislature fully intended by its amendments, express and implied, to enlarge the possibilities of disposition available to Municipal Courts in dealing with juvenile delinquents.