Unfrightened Crusader

In Philadelphia last month, seven Negro boys dragged a white girl off a subway platform and tried to rape her on the tracks before they were driven off by a U.S. sailor who went to her rescue.

Angry police called for 1,000 more men; cops with dogs began riding the subways. But of all incensed citizens, none acted faster than Juvenile Court Judge Juanita Kidd Stout, who warned that 27 active juvenile gangs "threaten to take over the city."

To prevent a repetition of last summer's Negro riots, Judge Stout immediately set herself a personal goal: the jailing of 1,000 delinquents, most of whom, police said, were Negroes. As a result, the judge has already been threatened with death three times. All the more remarkable is the fact that she herself is a Negro -- the first elected Negro woman judge in the U.S.

Lazy Homes. A stern moralist of 46, Judge Stout totally embodies her mother's motto: "Make yourself useful." Raised in Oklahoma, she whipped into third grade at the age of six, later taught school and then earned law degrees at Indiana University. In Philadelphia, she practiced criminal law, became an assistant D.A., and in 1959 overwhelmingly won election to a ten-year term on the county court. Barely 5 ft. tall, she peers from the bench atop three extra cushions and often keeps no-lunch court hours that make attendants mutter, "She's made of steel."

Her pet hate is the welfare system: "The tragedy of relief is that it has taken away from people the drive to work. I deplore a system that regards the indiscriminate handing out of checks as its prime function, that subsidizes the lazy and immoral home with the tax payer's dollar." To stem Philadelphia's juvenile crime (up 27% last year), Judge Stout, who is married but childless, advocates taking children away from relief homes and raising them in public dormitories where they can be urged to buckle down to schoolwork.

Knives & Chains. The trouble is that Pennsylvania is woefully short of facilities for problem children on the scale she envisions. By tossing the kids in jail, Judge Stout has now so dramatized the problem that the state legislature may soon relieve Philadelphia by opening up an old prison and building a new detention center for delinquents. To officials who lament the cost, Judge Stout snaps: "Let them raise taxes. Which is more important: rehabilitation or continued high crime rates?"

The American Civil Liberties Union is not happy with Judge Stout's self-styled "swift justice," which may overlook constitutional niceties. She is also in continuing physical danger; one spectator shakedown in her courtroom recently produced 22 weapons, ranging from knives to scissors to an 18-in. dog chain. Armed with round-the-clock bodyguards, however, the judge goes serenely on her way. "If they can frighten the courts," she says, "they will just take over. I don't intend to be frightened."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.