CHAPTER X

PREVENTIVE,   REFORMATIVE,   AND   CORRECTIONAL
AGENCIES   IN   NEW   YORK   CITY

The agencies working to meet the need of wayward
and professional delinquent women and girls in New York
City are both private and public, direct and indirect.
Work in this field can rarely be strictly characterized as
either preventive, reformative or correctional. Almost
all the agencies in question do both a preventive and
a reformative work, though, in the main, the tendency
toward preventive work is stronger than that toward
rescue work. The following account is not exhaustive,
but aims to deal with the representative institutions in
each field.

(a)      THE  WORK   OF   PREVENTION

Preventive agencies cover a very wide range, beginning
of course with the home and family, the school and the
church; but important as these and similar institutions
are, they are too general to come within the scope of
this chapter. There are, however, certain societies and
institutions which exert a potent though indirect influ¬
ence,— among them the New York Society for the Sup¬
pression of Vice, the Society for the Prevention of Crime
and the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children. A few institutions render more direct serv-
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