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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 100 years ago

The law was cracking down on young “joyriders” and motorcycle thieves.

Joyriding – in which teens steal autos and take their friends on excursions and then abandon the auto – was becoming far too commonplace. A Superior Court judge said the current practice of charging joyriders with juvenile delinquency was not working.

As he arraigned two more joyriders, the judge said they may be charged with grand larceny and sent to the state reformatory.

The chief probation officer also said parents would be liable for the money damages of joyriding and that even if the boys were not sent to the reformatory, “it is no joke to be forced to come to the probation office every Saturday for a year.” Neither, he said, was it “a pleasant thing to be constantly under court supervision and have one’s conduct constantly ordered by the court.”

But it still beat the reformatory.

“Boys who have taken the attitude that it doesn’t amount to anything to be brought into juvenile court will find life at the reformatory pretty strenuous business,” said the probation officer. “Boys there are treated the best they can be, but it is prison life, and it is the real thing.”