The Fight for a Juvenile Officer
Community members push for the appointment of a female juvenile officer to protect vulnerable girls, despite political pushback and accusations of outsiders interfering in local county affairs.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We fail to see any occasion for such a fuss over the application of Mrs. Blanche H. Mason for the position of assistant juvenile officer for Snohomish county. A group of women became convinced that jail conditions surrounding women unfortunate enough to be incarcerated were bad. Further study convinced them that in the work of reformation of erring women and the saving of young girls from the fatal consequences of the first misstep, a large-souled, sympathetic woman officer was needed. Mrs. Mason is a woman who has devoted the better part of her life to work among her sex. In Michigan and Washington she held state positions that brought her in daily contact with the women of industry. We strenuously object to the insinuations that the whole thing is a political deal. We are getting very weary of hearing that 'So-and-so controls the labor vote.' Nobody has the labor vote in his or her pocket and such an assertion is nothing more nor less than pure buncombe.
“Nobody has the labor vote in his or her pocket and such an assertion is nothing more nor less than pure buncombe.”
The struggle to establish specialized care for incarcerated women and girls in 1912 reflects early, urgent civic arguments about the gendered nature of the justice system, a topic that persists in current discussions regarding juvenile detention reform.
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