ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to capture in an impressionistic fashion the role of the courts in the minds of those who stand on the other side of the magistrates’ table. The juvenile courts are in a major respect different from schools for maladjusted children, child guidance clinics, and the like, in the eyes of those who come before them. The courts symbolize in the minds of many the punishing gods, the avenging fates, the ‘bad’ parents. The strange social myopia which prevented us until 1948 from setting up a public service for children deprived of a normal home life still prevents us from seeing the necessity for a family and child welfare service. The police are there some time before we appear on the scene, and they may or may not have helped children and their parents to understand the meaning of benign authority.
