ABSTRACT
There is some argument whether it was in Illinois or Colorado that all the features of what was to be a juvenile court were first brought together in one state. While Chicago was developing its juvenile court under the pressures of social agencies, influential women and the local Bar, in Denver, one man, Ben Lindsay, seems to have exerted powerful influence towards the creation of juvenile court system in Colorado. The forces which brought the juvenile court into being and which sustain it today, are essentially ambivalent, but this has only recently been recognised. The doctrine of parens patriae is that the state has an overall parental responsibility towards those of its members who are unable, either temporarily or permanently, to care for and protect themselves. The present disillusionment with juvenile courts and the desire to keep out of them all children who are not seriously delinquent bodes ill for those who do come to court.
