A forward-thinking Colorado judge was a major champion for children, yet only has a small place in history books. Judge Ben Lindsey, 1869-1943, was the founder of the nation's first juvenile court system.

A young judge in the late 1800s, he had studied the plight of teenage offenders and decided that the ages-old practice of punishing them was harsh and legally unfair.

Not long after the Mayflower landed in America, our new society had to deal with the issue of young criminals. Formal prisons and jails were almost nonexistent in the early decades, and records of what happened to offenders younger than 16 are almost impossible to find. It is known that some received sentences requiring unpaid labor. Boys over 16 found to commit a crime were publicly whipped.

Jagged Justice

By the end of the 1700s, the U.S. had a prison system, so young criminals who had been charged were sent to adult prisons. The shocking fact is that children as young as age six were put in these prisons.

We also had protesters in the early days, and one writer who called for reform wrote that children "were cast into a common prison with older culprits to mingle in conversation...with them, acquire their habits, and by their instruction to be made acquainted with the most artful methods of perpetuating crime."

In the 1800s, as more people who discovered this slice of American life began to publicly protest and seek changes, some states began to establish juvenile detention institutions. Sentencing and placement of young offenders was still very inconsistent, though, depending on how the judge or court felt at the time.

From his bench, Judge Ben Lindsey was forced to sentence teens when they had been arrested for all sorts of crimes, from murder to theft. While juvenile penal institutions were in existence, there was still no formalized federal system for dealing with them in court that assured they would not end up in adult prisons. He had recognized early that criminals of a young age benefited from rehabilitation rather than imprisonment.

"Profitable Criminals"

When Lindsey asked to put a juvenile court system in place, he was rebuked. Young criminals were, in many cases, profitable for the local community. In prison they worked long hours making things like chairs, shoes and nails, which were then sold by local merchants at great profit.

So Lindsey gathered the Governor, politicians on both sides (for and against his suggestion), ministers and the press to a meeting in which teenage boys described their life in adult prisons.

Lindsey said, "The boys told stories of bestiality that were more horrible because they were so innocently, so baldly given. One boy broke down and cried when he told of the vile indecencies that had been committed on him by older criminals."

Sadly, many of the youngsters who had turned to a life of crime were runaways fleeing abusive homes.

This single meeting caused the politicians who were against his plan to change their minds. This was the beginning of a formalized court system designed specifically to deal with juveniles, and the now-mandated practice of young criminals, both boys and girls, being specifically placed in juvenile rehabilitation centers rather than adult prisons.

The old saying, "One person can make a difference" was certainly demonstrated in the life and efforts of this progressive judge.