In most states the jurisdiction of the courts of domestic relations should be extended and co-ordinated.  Few states escape some glaring inconsistencies in the laws governing desertion and abandonment.  There is, for instance, much confusion between states as to whether a woman whose husband brings her to a strange city and there deserts her must prosecute him in the city where their home is or where the desertion took place.  Under certain circumstances the woman is forced to travel to the city where her husband has gone, and bring action against him there, if the courts in that place will entertain a suit.  In New York state there is no law which covers the case of a man who abandons his wife while she is pregnant, if there is no other living child.  To constitute an extraditable crime there must have been abandonment of a child in esse not merely in posse.

But no institution, however carefully established by law, is any more effective than the people who run it; and the usefulness of the domestic relations court in any community depends entirely upon the social-mindedness and freedom from political entanglement of the judge and the amount and quality of probation service.  From a social point of view, the latter is more important than the former; for a bad decision of the court can be mitigated by good case work later on, while a poor probation officer may nullify the effects of the wisest judicial decision ever made.

The importance of having enough probation officers to handle the work of the court has already been touched upon.  An overworked officer is perforce an inefficient officer.  He has usually to spend at least half his time in the court and attending to the clerical end of his job.  From 50 to 60 cases is probably all that one probation officer can be expected to handle thoroughly at one time, if, as is to be hoped, he is required to make careful preliminary investigations to be presented to the judge before the trial.

In training and in equipment for the job, probation officers should be the equals of case workers in private agencies.  Examinations for probation officers ought to be conducted by social workers of skill and high standards.  A few months of cramming at a civil service school, or a few weeks of volunteer visiting with some case working agency, should not suffice to enable candidates to pass the examinations.  The standards should be high enough and the salaries sufficiently attractive to draw into this field people who have successfully completed their apprenticeship in the art of case work.  Only then can the status of the probation officer be raised to what it should be in the court itself.  The relation of the probation officer to the judge ought to be exactly like the relation of the medical social worker to the physician—­that of a person acting under his direction in a general way, but with a special contribution to make to the treatment of the case and with a recognized standing as an expert in his own particular field.