That particular child, in my experience with both adult and juvenile delinquents, represents probably the most dangerous individual in the community.

Senator CLARK. This has happened not once but a number of times in our own experience.

Mr. SHARP. Yes. I have had personal experience with eight of these children over some 30 years of experience. However, there are not enough of them in any one State or community to study, so that this is the sort of thing that would have to be attacked on a nationwide basis.

Take another issue which involves dollars and cents. There has been considerable thought and study recently as to what is the optimum length of stay within an institution, retraining children who have been committed there by courts.

Many of us feel that a short, intensive program with good aftercare supervision provides better results than the traditional long-term stay with a lesser degree of intensity either during institutional treatment or subsequent to it.

That has not been tested, but a test applied to a program of that nature and compared with the traditional program would not only evidence a saving in capital outlay, because in a building housing 500 in which the average length of stay would be 6 months, you could serve twice as many children with the same capital investment, and, in addition, which we are striving for, is the fact that the children themselves. would be the beneficiaries of such a program.

Another factor which again more or less applies to the national program is what type of institution should the disturbed delinquent child be committed to. We have institutions of the traditional type of training school, we have institutions for mentally deficient, we have institutions for the mentally ill. However, the problem that we are running into and it is corroborated by many of our colleagues in the psychiatric field-is that these children are not clearcut cases. They are not definitely diagnosed as being psychotic. When they are placed in the training school structure they are a disruptive influence there. The people in the mentally deficient institutions say they don't belong there, and that is true of the mentally ill. So we must have a study as to what type of institution and what type of program we should have for this child.

Senator CLARK. Do you think this study could be done better by the Federal Government than by either the State or local government agencies or by private agencies?

Mr. SHARP. I think it could be done better by the Federal Government for the reason that your sampling would be broader. I think it should not only be in one locality, but in another, so that you have a maximum control on your variables.

Granted, if you had sufficient funds, say, from a large healthy endowment, that would be fine. But, unfortunately, they have not been forthcoming in the past, and I don't know whether they will be forthcoming in the future.

Senator CLARK. Is there any significant work being done by the foundations in this regard?

Mr. SHARP. The work in the foundations, Senator Clark, to the best of my knowledge—and I don't qualify as an expert in this particular

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area-is of a spotty nature and it has not been primarily related to the overall interrelated administrative problem as well as a treatment problem. In our particular work we have to think of both aspects. We have to think of both the administration and the individual treatment aspects.

Another area which I would just like to mention is this matter of training of personnel; for example, like the Youth Study Center in Philadelphia. There are training schools and institutions for the rehabilitation of delinquent children, and one of the most difficult tasks is training of the persons who work with and live with the children. We have to go out on the street and select them on the basis of personality adjustment and background, and give them a couple of days' orientation and put them to work.

In certain States I know they take 1 full year to train people to be game wardens, to take care of animals.

Senator CLARK. What is the situation throughout the country with respect to the existence of institutions where this type of training is being given?

Mr. SHARP. All of those institutions are being overcrowded, and there is likewise a very difficult problem of recruitment, especially in the area of women employees for institutions handling girls. You might be interested to know that the females today are more difficult to handle than the males.

Senator CLARK. Although there are fewer of them?

Mr. SHARP. Numerically fewer; in terms of problems, they are

more severe.

The oppressions of the culture are showing a higher degree of breakage in the female than in the male. So, again, this intensifies the need for people who have some little background in terms of handling these children, because many studies have been made relative to the experience of children in institutions, and when they refer to the success of their experience they generally refer to the person who lived with them on the firing line as being probably one of the major influences.

Therefore, what we need to do in this field is have at least one or two pilot projects in which there would be a preemployment training program comparable to what you have in hospitals for trained nurses, in which these people would be selected with a high school education, correlated with a college or university for the academic part of their program with the staff of the institution participating in their training, and with an opportunity of practical experience along with it, with the theory in which they would be involved.

Senator CLARK. Mr. Sharp, if you were given control over the expenditure of, say $2 or $3 million of Federal funds for the purpose of training in this field, what would you do with it?

Mr. SHARP. In the first place, I would take this last issue I mentioned to you. No. 2, I would attempt to find out the best methods of utilization of professional staffs in institutions. We must conserve the professional staff and utilize their strength to the maximum because we will never be able to afford a ratio of professional staff to individual children on the basis of the purely individualized approach. We have to get better screening methods.

Then the next thing I would do would be to attempt to give some encouragement for young people to enter this field, because we get

paid, as an average, less than truckdrivers, and, consequently, we have to put a little more encouragement as far as youth is concerned into career potentials within this particular area of activity.

Senator CLARK. Is this not something which needs to be taught in the colleges and universities?

Mr. SHARP. You mean courses in this area?

Senator CLARK. Yes.

Mr. SHARP. Yes; and I will say this, Senator, that there is an increasing interest-probably once a month I receive letters from different colleges or universities throughout the country inquiring as to the need for young people in this particular field.

Senator CLARK. I know about one or two of them, but are there a good number of schools of social work where courses are giver in this field?

Mr. SHARP. There are schools of social work. Unfortunately, not too many of them-and I would again refer to an expert in this fieldhave taken any specialized interest in the area of work with the delinquent child. But the social worker is only one aspect.

You have, of course, the first-level line which would be on your undergraduate level. Then your social work on the graduate level, your psychologists on the graduate level, the sociologists on the graduate level.

So you have three or four different disciplines which are involved in this particular work.

The last thing I would like to stress, so as not to repeat any of the previous testimony and also to have it in the record as a matter of emphasis, is this problem of employment of older youth.

In Philadelphia, at the youth study center, we have a little program going on now in experimenting in counseling, which is nothing more than the normal, familiar dinner-table conversation which these children have not had the benefit of, in which ideals and standards are discussed.

It is in no way group therapy. But in these discussions time after time the youths themselves bring up the need for this matter of employment.

One thing that I think is often overlooked is the need of youth for status, the matter of recognition. In one of our counseling sessions we were discussing the problem of the gang activity and the vicious beating of a victim. They didn't know who the victim was.

The victim was an incidental factor.

What was involved there was the status of the individual gang members in their beatings, so that when they got back together they could emphasize that so-and-so gave him more licks and was more vicious than another member of the gang. In other words, the status within a gang was in terms of the intensity of the violence.

Why is that true?

No. 1, they don't have opportunities for positive expression of status. And, No. 2, the amount of idleness.

So we are not only breeding delinquents but we are breeding parasites because good work records are stimulated through work activities as youths.

Senator CLARK. This is going to be an increasingly difficult problem unless we can solve the overall unemployment situation, is it not?

Because these youths are going to be the last to be hired in a community where there is substantial unemployment of older workers? Is that not true?

Mr. SHARP. That is true, Senator, and I would like to make this observation.

Our culture has hemmed in the youth. We have hemmed them in by automation, in which we even sell newspapers by vending machines and we remove the necessity of newspaper boys. We have the automobiles which go to the store, which removes the opportunity of running errands. Our entire culture has hemmed youth in in terms of earning, by odd jobs, that honest nickel, quarter, or dollar, whatever it might be.

The second thing is the expense of normal recreation; attending movies and dances and whatnot has increased, and we have put nothing into this picture.

In addition to that, I am recommending that there should be a project which would involve a thorough review of all legislation affecting youth, especially in this 15 to 16 age group; not for any major revisions but to see whether the child labor laws, the juvenile court laws of course, that is not a national level, but it is in terms of pattern for the State level-the compulsory school attendance laws, which again relate to the local level, and the minimum wage laws, that these be reviewed to see whether there might be a few discretionary factors inserted at some places so that some of these particular problems involved with getting some gainful occupation for these youths might be possible although currently it might be prohibitive under existing legislation.

I don't know, Senator, and I am open to question on this statement, but I do not know that anybody ever sat down and thought of all of the laws together. They thought of them as segments but not all of the laws at one time.

Senator CLARK. I would hazard the observation that youth is in competition with the elderly in many of these fields which you have mentioned, and that the difficulty of obtaining employment for the elderly results in competition perhaps between the elderly and the youth, and that perhaps we need an equal amount of attention at that level in the same sector, although we are only concerned today with the youth angle of it. Nevertheless, it does seem to me it is a problem also.

Mr. SHARP. In addition to that, you have this possibility of compulsory military attendance, and, likewise, you have this lessening of the demand for the unskilled worker. Those are the school dropouts which we have to consider in this particular emphasis.

Senator CLARK. Do you have any observations as to the effect of the draft on the question of prevention of juvenile delinquency?

Mr. SHARP. In terms of being taken into military service, on the basis of the interest of the youth and not as an escape mechanism, I feel that it has real value. I do have the honor of doing some work with the provost marshal division of the military service, and have been very much interested in their success, in the younger members of the military, especially the Army. However, where it is an escape mechanism in which that is the only way that a child is kept from going to an institution, I do not think the prognosis of those cases is nearly as high as if they were able to go in prior to the using of this as a way of getting out of the country.

Senator CLARK. Would you go so far as to say that, more times than not, military service is helpful?

Mr. SHARP. I would say so; yes, sir.

In closing I would just like to say that, to me, this delinquency problem is a social blight. When we have had blights in agriculture, in animal husbandry or in some other areas, we have turned in terms of citizen interest, nationwide, in order to find some solution for it, or control. It is unfortunate that in the area of values in our country our children are not valued as highly as agricultural products or animals.

STATEMENT OF NORMAN V. LOURIE, DEPUTY SECRETARY,

PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE

Our next witness is Mr. Norman V. Lourie, deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania State Department of Public Welfare.

We are very happy to have you with us, Mr. Lourie. I personally know of your activities and how helpful you have been to us.

For the record, Mr. Lourie was formerly director of the HawthorneCedar Knolls School for Delinquent Boys and Girls. He was the 1951 White House conference leader of the section on "children who rebel." He has also been an organizer and director of the U.S. Army School for Psychiatric Social Workers, and a director of several settlement houses, and the really working deputy of the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare during the last 41/2 years, during a period when that department has been modernized and given a much more responsible position in the work of the State, and I think he is entitled to a good deal of credit for the substantial success that that department has achieved in that field.

Mr. Lourie, you have a statement. With your permission I will ask to have it placed in the record at this point, and in view of the time factor and the number of other witnesses we want to hear, ask you if you will hit the highlights of it.

(The statement referred to follows:)

STATEMENT OF NORMAN V. LOURIE, DEPUTY SECRETARY, PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE

Thank you for asking me to testify today about juvenile delinquency. I bring you greetings and views which are shared by our Pennsylvania Governor, the Honorable David L. Lawrence and our secretary of public welfare, Mrs. Ruth Grigg Horting.

Your invitation asked me to discuss proposed remedies. These are many. I will tell you which ones seem to me the most useful and necessary. There is no one panacea for prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency, mental breakdown, and adult criminality. Religion, economic security, education, and basic social and child welfare services are necessary ingredients operating side by side in every city and hamlet if we are to prevent social breakdown. No one force alone can do the job. I list the most urgent needs in three categories: (1) Strengthening and improving useful programs. (2) Training and recruiting of qualified personnel.

(3) Research and demonstration to prove or disprove current theory and practice and try out new ideas.

In the areas of research problems our attention needs to be centered on the following major concerns:

1. How can we most effectively utilize the combined experience and information of the several disciplines to identify and deal with the basic causes of delinquency? I refer to the fields of social work, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and others.