Success and Failure of Adult Probationers in Wisconsin

Abstract

The practice of probation in this country began in the State of Massachusetts. It was started as the result of the interest of a volunteer in the young men who were being sentenced to prison in the Boston courts. In 1848 a Boston shoemaker named John Augustus became interested in some young men who had got into trouble with the law and asked the court to suspend sentence and place them in his charge. With the death of John Augustus no one else seemed to be sufficiently interested to keep up the practice and therefore it was not until about 1870 that an old gentleman known familiarly as Father Cook, a man of leisure, became interested in the youths who were being brought before the criminal courts of Boston. He regularly attended the criminal courts and when he found young men arraigned there whose offenses were due to circumstances rather than to a depraved character, who were not yet hardened in crime, and who might under proper guidance reform, he asked that the court suspend sentence upon these young people and commit them to his care. He seems to have had a genius for this kind of work and frequently the judges accepted his judgment on the case and placed these young men in his charge. He took pains to investigate each case and was so successful in this work that he made a place for himself with the court as an unofficial adviser. Thus, scores of boys in the course of years were saved from entering prison and through his friendly and understanding influence were restored to self-respect and usefulness. Partly as the result of this voluntary work, the State of Massachusetts in 1878 passed a law requiring the appointment of a probation officer for the City of Boston. Fortunately for probation, the first