No. 14,978.
STATE ex rel. CAILLOUET v. MARMOUGET, Recorder, et al. (Oct. 15, 1903.)
1. Recorders in the city of New Orleans have authority to enforce the city ordinance relating to juvenile vagrants by committing girl vagrants to the House of Good Shepherd until they shall have reached the age of eighteen (18) years.
2. At the instance of relatrix's mother, the relatrix, a girl of 17 years of age, was arrested, and taken before the recorder, under Ordinance 2272, relative to juvenile vagrants. The recorder ordered her to be committed to the House of Good Shepherd until she was 18 years of age. From this order she appealed 111 LA.-8 to the criminal district court, and that court affirmed the order. She then applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari and prohibition, and asked to be discharged on the ground that the recorder exceeded his authority in enforcing or trying to enforce an ordinance the penalty of which was different from that authorized by law, as in her case it amounted to her incarceration for six months in the House of Good Shepherd, which penalty the recorder had no right to impose. The case is one where a widowed mother, having sought and obtained, in aid of the enforcement by herself of her parental duty towards and her authority over her minor child, the assistance of the judiciary, the minor is invoking, after judgment, the assistance of the court to resist her in her performance of that duty and the exercise of that authority, not because the mother is acting beyond her right and her authority in the premises, but on the ground that she had had recourse to officers having no authority to aid her.
3. The case does not call for the exercise of the supervisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Ordinance No. 227.2 is not a criminal ordinance. It is a mere administrative police regulation designed as a preventive against wrongdoing, and not as a punishment for wrongdoing. It is to guard and protect children against themselves and evil-minded per sons surrounding them. Detention under it is not imprisonment. The proceedings under the ordinance were not criminal proceedings. The recorder's order was not technically a "judgment." It was a mere order of commitment, subject at any time to be set aside under proper conditions.
4. Act No. 143, p. 256, of 1898, in making it lawful for the city to enforce obedience to and to punish the violation of all ordinances through fine or imprisonment, or both, and enforce the same through the recorders of the city, did not make it obligatory upon the city to enforce each and every ordinance in that way, or narrow the extent or scope of the powers of the council in legislating upon subject-matters over which it had legal control; nor did it withdraw from the recorders their authority and their duty to enforce all valid ordinances of .the city in manner, form, and extent as the ordinances themselves directed.
5. Even if the order of commitment was subject to criticism as fixing the period of detention for a certain designated time. the commitment would not be null and void in its entirety. The commitment would hold good, the period of detention being left open to bd met by future contingencies.
