Among the multiple issues raised dealing with the future of the juvenile process, legal issues appear to predominate. These issues have taken on new momentum since the Gault case, but have become of increasing concern for at least the last decade (In re Gault, 1967). Such issues as a timely notice for a hearing, content of such notices, the vagueness and in-definiteness of statutes pertaining to pleadings, right to counsel, right to confrontation of witnesses, and the privilege against self-incrimination have been guaranteed to juveniles under due process. In connection with the question of this paper, it should be noted that Gault applied only to proceedings in which the determination of delinquency could result in a commitment to an institution in which the freedom of the juvenile would thus be curtailed. Additional legal issues can be raised as well, focused on the various stages of apprehension, intake, adjudication, and sentencing. Such matters in the juvenile process as discovery, right to a speedy trial, public proceedings, jury trial, and change of venue, are some related due process issues which still remain basically unsettled in different jurisdictions.

Two separate questions must be answered when a child is charged with delinquency. The first is whether he has committed the alleged act. If the child is found to be delinquent, the second question is what action the court should take to correct the child's delinquency. Both questions may be considered in a single hearing or they may be separated and determined in two hearings.

In recent years sociologists have become increasingly aware of and interested in legal environments and the characteristics of legal systems. This burgeoning interest in the law as a subject of sociological inquiry has not, however, brought with it an appreciation of the possibility that legal skills or knowledge may elucidate questions of interest to students of social systems generally. Law is arguably relevant to many sociological issues which make normative arrangements problematic. This is because a legal code represents a formalized (and often idealized) statement of those norms which are considerd basic in a Particular society. It was the genius of Emile Durkheim (1964) to recognize that the quality of legal remedies in a system could provide a good operational indicator of the way in which that society sought to answer the Hobbesean question of maintaining order. The Division of Labor in Society (1964) draws heavily on this insight.

“Like it or not — and many from Plato to Marx have disliked it — law is a central concept in human society; without it, indeed, there would be no society.” The truth of this statement from the jacket of Lloyd's The Idea of Law (1966) is implicitly borne out by the fact that, prior to the emergence of social science as a discipline, an empirically minded member of Western society, interested in the function and structure of his civilization, had to turn to the study of law as the only avenue to this knowledge. This was my experience (there was little of modern social science in Czechoslovakia in 1945), and that of many social scientists of the past. It is then no surprise that many anthropologists of the nineteenth century were either practicing lawyers or had a solid legal education, as, for example, Adolf Bastian, Lewis Henry Morgan, Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Johan Jakob Bachofen, and John Ferguson McLennan, to name a few. It is only interesting to note that Morgan's epochal Ancient Society (1877) was preceded by Maine's famous treatise Ancient Law (1861), which he wrote rather than one on ancient social structure, ancient religion, or some other cultural specialty.

Estimates of the impact of personal health care services on the health levels of definite populations range widely. Whatever the figure derived, it is often surprising to discover what little effect such services have on the conditions of health. Rene Dubos offers no numerical estimate but phrases the point in this way:

The last few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest among social scientists in the possible effects of negative sanctions in producing conformity to norms. During the first half of this century deterrence ideas were often the object of debate and research. Debate, however, was usually conducted on an ideological level, and the extant research generally suggested that punishment was of minor importance as a behavioral influence (Ball, 1955; Tappan, 1960: 243-255). As a result, many social scientists came to regard the question as either theoretically uninteresting or as empirically non-problematic.

The partnership between Karl Llewellyn and E. Adamson Hoebel is generally regarded as the most successful example of collaboration between a lawyer and an anthropologist in the annals of Anglo-American scholarship. In many respects it is unique. There have been individuals who have been trained in both disciplines; a number of legal scholars have made extensive use of anthropological literature; jurisprudence has regularly provided ethnographers of law with some of their main concepts and in recent years there has been an extensive, if disjointed, dialogue between representatives of the two disciplines. But, Llewellyn and Hoebel apart, in respect of research there has been little alacrity on the part of lawyers and anthropologists in responding to calls for interdisciplinary co-operation. Moreover, there are sometimes signs of tension in relationships between the two groups, although for the most part such tensions are hidden behind the curtain of academic diplomacy.

Connecticut presents a perfect case study of differential correctional treatment for young male and female offenders. The state controls two juvenile correctional institutions: the Long Lane School (LLS) in Middletown for girls and the Connecticut School for Boys (CSB) in Meriden. Both facilities have existed practically side-by-side for over a century under state management, yet they have evolved in markedly different ways. The boys' school has been in the throes of constant turmoil and consequently under severe public scrutiny throughout most of its operation. The administrators of the “farm for girls,” on the other hand, have run a very tight ship and take pride in their undisrupted tradition. As a result, the Connecticut School for Boys has bungled its way (albeit ineptly) into the twentieth century while the Long Lane School still prepares women to re-enter the community as nineteenth century domestics.

On January 19, 1971, President Nixon, catching most White House observers by surprise, issued a terse, 275-word statement halting further construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal. This was imperative, the President declared, “to prevent potentially serious environmental damages” and was done at the urging of the new Council on Environmental Quality; the Council v/arned that the project “could endanger the unique wildlife of the area and destroy this region of unusual and unique natural beauty.” Thus was the nation notified that the canal, weighed by the President against the newly minted values expressed in the National Environmental Policy Act, had been judged a $50 million mistake.

In the rapidly expanding literature on the police, one question has been treated with increasing frequency in the past few years: How can the police be encouraged to become more responsive to the publics they serve? Many writers contend that in order for change to take place, it will be necessary to alter those conditions which affect the type of individual who becomes a policeman, either by modifying recruitment procedures, the training process, or the schedule of compensation (President's Commission, 1967a: 20). Others have questioned whether such strategies will work unless they are accompanied by basic social and organizational changes, redefining the role of the police officer and his relationship to the community (President's Commission, 1967a: 149).

I first went, as a student, into the field (Zululand, 1938) without the benefit of a clear theory of investigation of customary law. Llewellyn and Hoebel's Cheyenne Way (1941) had not yet appeared; and years later, when I ended my field-work among some Rhodesian Shona tribes (1952), Hoebel's classic The Law of Primitive Man, which further elaborated the theoretical angle of this kind of inquiry (1954: Ch. 1-4) had yet to be published. I did not, however, course entirely haphazardly through this field. I was trained in (mainly African) ethnography and (Roman Dutch) law, had learnt to read the decisions and interpretations of (South African) European courts on “native law and custom” with some critical reservation, and had found in works like Schapera's Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom (1938) — probably still the best of its kind as regards Africa — a suitable, systematic frame for the pursuit of my inquiries and the exposition of my findings. Moreover, my home background had acquainted me with some of the work and aims of Dutch scholars on Indonesian adatlaw who, inspired by the great jurist Van Vollenhoven, then seemed to be leading the field with their efforts to arrange the rich variety of Indonesian folk law and practice into a coherent system with a distinctly indigenous imprint. Van Vollenhoven's early and repeated insistence upon the need “het oostersche oostersch te zien” (to perceive that which is oriental through oriental eyes), instead of seeking to fit Indonesian concepts into the familiar categories and analytical schemas of Western jurisprudence, had obvious application also to the African field.

In the reform literature on the police, ranging from Hopkins' Our Lawless Police and the Wickersham Commission Reports in the 1930s to the Presidential Commissions of the 1960s, the argument has always been made that effective police reform waits upon professionalization. It is implied that better personnel, with better training, will provide better performance of police tasks. The recruitment and training proposals that are offered suggest that criteria such as a college degree are necessary in order to encourage adherence to “high professional standards of law enforcement.” Few have challenged the implicit assumption that professionalization is indeed efficacious, despite the fact that clear evidence of better performance has never been offered.

It is the purpose of this paper to examine, briefly, the Crime Commission's proposals for the establishment of youth services bureaus. The aim of this examination is to lay the foundation for a discussion of the nature and role of these bureaus, the type of cases with which they should deal, the bureaus' significance in the pattern of juvenile services, and some of the problems which must be considered by those concerned with the implementation of the scheme.