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Building The Foundation For
Juvenile Justice
March 15, 2007
For more than 2,000 years
western civilization shamefully neglected the children of our
society. They were abandoned throughout Europe from Hellenistic
antiquity to the end of the middle ages. Parents deserted their
offspring in desperation when they were unable to support them
due to poverty or disaster, or were unwilling to keep them
because of physical condition, ancestry, religious beliefs, self
interest, or interest of another child. |
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At no point did European
society entertain serious sanctions against abandonment; most
ethical systems either tolerated or regulated desertion. The
English Poor Laws, beginning with the Statute of Laborers in
1349, began regulating the working and nonworking poor, and in
1536 provided an act that states �Children less than fourteen
years of age and above five that live in idleness, and be taken
begging may be put to service - to husbandry, or other crafts or
labours.�
In 1601, primary family responsibility was added to the English
Poor Laws and local authorities were empowered to build housing
for the impotent and poor. If it was found that a child�s
parents were unable to care for the, the child could be taken
away and made an apprentice.
Eventually abandoned and neglected children became the
responsibility of the monarch, and the Commonwealth became their
guardian. The �Parens Patriae,� doctrine meaning �father of the
country,� gave courts the right to act in place of the parent
and recognized the monarch as the overall father figure (the
godfather) of all the populace. This established societal
patterns that left children with few personal rights.
The ideas of the European courts and customs, especially the
English Poor Laws, set the practices for subsequent social
legislation and regulation of the working poor in Colonial
America. (They may even be compared with the health, safety, and
welfare system in America today.)
In England, society�s attitude toward delinquent children began
to change in 1788. The Philanthropic Society of London, under
the influence of John Howard(1), established an �asylum,� a
place of safety for delinquent boys. Another group, the Society
for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders, established a
similar, separate refuge in 1816, and a public institution for
juvenile delinquents was opened near Birmingham in 1817.
Early American Reform
In America similar concerns about housing delinquent and
abandoned children led to the separation of juveniles and
adults. In 1817, the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism was
formed in New York City. In its 1822 paper, �The Penitentiary
System in the United States,� the society argued that there was
a necessity to provide new and separate prisons for juveniles.
However, the prisons were to be operated as schools for
instruction rather than punishment. Vocational training and
reformation was stressed.
The first American publicly funded and legally chartered
custodial institution for juvenile offenders, the �House of
Refuge,� was established in New York City in 1824. In
Philadelphia similar institutions followed in 1860. The first
houses were multi-story, grim, prison-like institutions.
During the mid-1800s the almshouse and workhouse practices
evolved into the training school, reformatory, truant school or
school of industry. The concept of the congregate living and
working situation was used as a means of training the abandoned
or delinquent juvenile.
The reform school system was introduced in Westborough,
Massachusetts, at the Lyman Reform School for Boys, in 1846, and
at the Reform School for Boys in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1858. The
treatment philosophy of these institutions recognized that
juveniles were more likely to be rehabilitated than adults and,
therefore, should not be treated within adult institutions.
Lyman Reform School for Boys
Westborough, Massachusetts
The Lyman School was almost self-sufficient. Youth raised
livestock, grew vegetables, sewed their own clothes and built
many of the facilities located on the school grounds. These
facilities were the models for the Colorado�s Mount View Campus
in 1881 and Washington�s Greenhill School in 1886.
Green Hill School, 1900
Chehalis, Washington
Reform Movements
Despite the increased use of reformatories or training schools,
the notion of punishment rather than reform was difficult to
abolish. In the decade of the 1880s(2), the nation experienced a
50 percent increase in the number of prison inmates. Child
offenders constituted one-fifth of the prison population, both
adult and juvenile. Confinement conditions prevalent at the
time, disease, squalor, and overcrowded living areas, led to
public concern and initiated a series of reform movements.
Advocates during the 1890s, referred to as the �child savers,�
emphasized the need for prevention and opposed the conditions of
the reform schools. They founded children�s aid societies to
distribute food and clothing, and to provide temporary shelter
and employment for destitute youths. Urban youngsters were
placed in apprenticeships with farm families in the West and
Midwest.
A similar movement in Chicago was organized by a group of
feminist reformers who passed special laws for juveniles and
created institutions for their care and protection. Louise de
Koven Bowen and Jane Addams were civic-minded philanthropists
who transformed child saving from a respectable hobby into a
passionate commitment.
Bowen�s primary interest was the protection and welfare of
children. She attributed the rise of youthful crime to the
corrupting influences of city life, where dirt, crowding,
artificiality, and impersonality robbed children of their
innocence. Playgrounds, supervised recreation, �morals police,�
kindergartens, visits to the country, stricter laws, and more
efficient law enforcement were her solutions to delinquency. The
problem of juvenile crime, said Bowen, would be diminished by
stringent enforcement of laws and the development of resolute
character in youth.
Addams was the epitome of professional philanthropy. Her
full-time career was centered on youth and family reform
interests. After college graduation, she encountered the concept
of a settlement house at Toynbee Hall in London and observed
educated university graduates living and providing social
services in the neighborhood community.
Hull House Butler Building
Chicago, Illinois
In 1889 with Ellen Gates Starr, Addams established Hull House.
The settlement house was located at the corner of Polk and
Halsted streets in Chicago. The neighborhood was a slum with
overcrowded tenements, crime, inadequate schools, inferior
hospitals and insufficient sanitation. Hull House workers
organized clubs, recreation, and educational programs for people
in the neighborhood. The distinguishing characteristic of the
settlement house was its ability to deliver services without
employing professional social workers or welfare agency staff.
Social and welfare workers of the time had developed a
reputation for being judgmental and punitive.
Contemporary delinquency control and prevention programs can be
traced to the reforms of the child savers at the end of the
nineteenth century. Socially responsible citizens created
special judicial and correctional institutions for the
identification and management of troubled youth. The origins of
the definition of the juvenile as a delinquent are found in the
programs and ideas promulgated by these social reformers. This
era of public responsibility was the next step in the evolution
of social reform and welfare programs in America(3).
Hull House Coffee Room
Chicago, Illinois
Juvenile Courts
In 1899, the Chicago Bar Association supported a statue which
established a separate and distinct legal process for mistreated
or delinquent juveniles. The concept followed the Parens Patriae
principles and appointed the juvenile court as the
representative of the state acting in lieu of the parent and in
the best interest of the child.
Cottage Institutions
An important improvement in institutions constructed to house
and treat juvenile delinquents began when the prison-like
barracks were gradually replaced by smaller cottages and
operated according to the principles of the �family plan� by
house parents. Living units were administered by married
resident supervisors who lived with the children.
The origins of the family plan can be traced back to the Rauhe
Haus, founded in 1833 by Dr. Johann Heinrich Wichern near
Hamburg. The separate residential cottage plan was also
introduced by the French penal reformer, Frederic Auguste Demetz.
The French youth campus was opened in 1840 at Mettray. The
cottages were three-story structures, with ground floor
workshops. Like the early Pennsylvania prisoner reformers,
Demetz believed in the influence of hard work. He also was
enlightened enough to set up a form of self-government for the
detainees.
The concept or model of self government was instituted in the
early 1900s at the George Junior Republic in Freeville, which is
near Ithaca, New York. The institution organized the treatment
to be a virtual microcosm of the outside world, and
self-government meant that youths were involved in the
definition and enforcement of rules under the close supervision
of staff. This concept is still fundamental in treatment methods
known as guided group interaction or positive peer culture.
House Parents
Cottage parents were to provide the paternal supervision,
understanding, and counsel that were missing in the youth�s home
life. The system exists today at Girls and Boys Town in
Nebraska, Le Roy Boys Home in California, The David and Margaret
Home in California, and other small, private programs.
Early programs were positive. A surrogate family was better than
no family. Today labor laws require a hybrid structure. Statutes
limit the weekly work period to 40 or 48 hours per employee.
Therefore house parents cannot be �at home� except for normal
working hours. Their presence has to be supplemented by day
counselors and other support staff. Homelike stability,
therefore, is confused, relegated to rules and procedures from
others - the definition of an institution (4).
Between 1910 and 1940, changes to the architecture of juvenile
facilities were minimal. Cottages located on large rural
campuses usually operated by the state were modeled after prison
site plans.
Several juvenile institutions were also located in older
correctional facilities or state hospital sites. Examples
include the Minnesota Home School in Sauk Centre, Minnesota;
Greenhill School in Chehalis, Washington; Mount View School in
Golden, Colorado; and Lorenzo Benn School in Atlanta, Georgia.
Federal Practices
Prior to 1938, no special provisions existed for the treatment
of juvenile offenders who came to the attention of the Federal
Courts. The enactment of the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act of
1938 provided flexible procedures for the handling of boys and
girls under the age of 18, and permitted Federal Courts to adopt
the procedures used by state juvenile courts.
The law enabled United States attorneys to prosecute youthful
offenders for delinquency, rather than charge them with a
specific crime. A wider range of alternatives to incarceration
(programs) and treatment options were therefore possible.
Professional Treatment
Following World War I, basic changes occurred in the care of
dependent children and juvenile law offenders. These programs
included a better means of identifying dependence and delinquent
behavior; the professional training of social workers; the
development of the social casework method; and the organization,
both public and private, of social service agencies. Emphasis
shifted from the authoritative and even punitive attitude of
earlier reform efforts. Each child became an individual case,
and the placement of juveniles in boarding homes and foster care
became more widespread.
Social Services
During the Depression and World War II, the functions of
government increased greatly. Local agencies provided social
services to the public: welfare, health, employment, mental
health, education, and services related to the needs of
children. Passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 also
encouraged the development of local child welfare services. The
juvenile justice system philosophy expanded to include
delinquency prevention and rehabilitation. Changes in the
juvenile justice system altered court procedures and
dispositions, and initiated the use of juvenile court referees
and juvenile court probation personnel.
Editor�s Note: Part two of this story will continue in next
week�s Corrections Connection ezine and discuss how a new
generation of thinking influenced juvenile facilities across the
nation.
End Notes:
(1) John Howard (1726-1790) was the leading advocate of
eighteenth century prison reform in England. In the 1770s,
Howard inspected prisons throughout England and Europe. His most
important publication, �Study of Prisons� (1777), surveyed
European prison conditions, proposed reforms, and coined the
word �penitentiary.� He promoted numerous prison reforms
including improving sanitation, classifying inmates, hiring
qualified staff, eliminating corruption in prison management,
and discontinuing the practice of collecting fees from inmates.
In the United States, an organization bearing his name was
created in 1900 to help newly freed prisoners make the
transition to the community. The John Howard Association
continues to be a respected advocate of prison reform (Roberts,
19).
The modern definition of a penitentiary is a maximum-security
penal institution: a prison with the highest walls, the
strongest locks, the tightest restriction, and the toughest
inmates. Originally, however, the word �penitentiary� derived
from �penance.� A penitentiary was a place where offenders were
sent to do penance for their crimes and attain redemption,
through isolation, reflection, and hard work. (Roberts, p. 31)
In both England and the United States, adherents of the Quaker
religion were among the most dedicated and influential prison
reformers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They
believed that reformation and salvation should be the objective
of punishment. They worked tirelessly for more humane prisons
and rejected corporal and capital punishment.
The American penitentiary emerged largely due to the efforts of
the Quakers, specifically William Penn who established Quakerism
in North America. He was Governor of Colonial Pennsylvania when
it made early attempts to establish incarceration as a humane
and constructive alternative to other forms of punishment. In
1787, Quakers were among the founders of the Philadelphia
Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prison, which was
instrumental in bringing about the realization of the
penitentiary concept at the Walnut Street Jail and Eastern State
Penitentiary.
New York businessman and philanthropist Thomas Eddy, warden of
New York City�s New Gate Prison, was a Quaker. His impact on
prisons was so great that he has been called America�s John
Howard. He and other New York Quakers formed the Society for the
Prevention of Pauperism in the early 1800s which endeavored to
improve treatment of juvenile offenders and promote the
development of single prisons (Roberts, 30).
Ironically, by the late twentieth century, many Quakers
regretted Quakerism�s historic involvement with prisons and
contributions to the development of penitentiaries. A leading
group of Quaker activists, the American Friends Service
Committee, lamented in 1971 that �the horror that is the
American prison system grew out of an eighteenth-century reform
by Pennsylvania Quakers and others against the cruelty and
futility of capital and corporal punishment.� The committee
concluded that �this two-hundred-year-old experiment has
failed.� (Roberts, p. 30)
(2) Between 1850 and 1900, America was evolving as a nation and
relied primarily on European education methods, traditions, and
historical precedent. The clergy, medicine, engineering, and law
were recognized as professions.
After the Civil War, American cities underwent dramatic,
unprecedented change. With the growth of the poor urban
population, crime increased and agencies and jurisdictions had
to deal with criminal behavior, jail/prison overcrowding and
miserable conditions of confinement.
At the same time, immigration, the development of efficient
transportation systems, and urban growth presented the
opportunity to increase the awareness of social problems. Social
responsibility is a concern for the common good, a respect for
human dignity, a commitment to the cause of social justice, and
responsiveness to the effects of one�s interventions in the
natural environment (Wasserman, 2000, 123-24).
Society was becoming aware of the collective responsibility for
the poor and less fortunate which included children. Numerous
groups begin to focus on the reform movements of the time. A
responsibility for wayward youth was one of outcomes of this
societal concern.
(3) The child-saving movement provided middle-class women with a
vehicle for promoting acceptable �public� roles and for
restoring some of the authority and spiritual influence that
women had seemingly lost through the urbanization of family
life. (Richard Hofstadter makes the same point about the clergy
at the end of the nineteenth century in The Age of Reform,
151-152.) Child saving may be understood as a crusade which
served symbolic and ceremonial functions for middle-class
Americans.
The movement was not so much a break with the past as an
affirmation of faith in traditional institutions. Parental
authority, home education, rural life, and the independence of
the family as a social unit were emphasized because they seemed
threatened at this time by urbanism and industrialization. The
child savers elevated the nuclear family, especially women as
stalwarts of the family, and defended the family�s right to
supervise the socialization of youth (Platt, 98).
The child savers should not be considered libertarians or
humanists. Their reforms did not herald a new system of justice
but rather expedited traditional policies which had been
informally developing during the nineteenth century. They
implicitly assumed the �natural� dependence of adolescents and
created a special court to impose sanctions on premature
independence and behavior unbecoming to youth.
Their attitudes toward delinquent youth were largely
paternalistic and romantic, but their commands were backed by
force. They trusted in the benevolence of government and
similarly assumed a harmony of interest between delinquents and
agencies of social control. They also promoted correctional
programs requiring longer terms of imprisonment, long hours of
labor and militaristic discipline, and the inculcation of
middle-class values and lower-class skill (Platt, p. 176).
(4) Erving Geoffman�s definition of the institution(1961): The
central feature of total institutions can be described as a
breakdown of the barriers ordinarily separating these three
spheres of life (work, home, and friends). First, all aspects of
life are conducted in the same place and under the same single
authority. Second, each phase of the member�s daily activity is
carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others,
all of whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing
together. Third, all phases of the day�s activities are tightly
scheduled, with one activity leading at a prearranged time into
the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from
above by a system of explicitly formal rulings and a body of
officials. Finally, the various enforced activities are brought
together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to
fulfill the official aims of the institution.
Resources cited:
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deviance. New York: Free Press.
Boswell, J. (1988). The kindness of strangers, the abandonment
of children in Western Europe from late antiquity to the
renaissance. Chicago:The University of Chicago Press.
Handbook of correctional institution design and construction.
(1949). Washington, DC: United States Bureau of Prisons.
Humphrey, M. E. (Ed.). (1937). Speeches, addresses and letters
of Louise de Koven Bowen (Vol 1-2). Ann Arbor, MI: Edward
Brothers.
Krisberg, B. (1996). The historical legacy of juvenile
corrections, correctional trends, juvenile justice programs and
trends. Lanham, MD: American Correctional Association.
Platt, A. M., (1969). The child savers - The invention of
delinquency. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Quigley, W. P. (1996). Five hundred years of English poor laws,
1349-1834: Regulating the working and nonworking poor. Akron Law
Review, 30(1), 73-128.
Richardson, A. B. (1894). The cooperation of woman in
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history of American prisons (pp. 140-148). Lanthan, MD: American
Correctional Association.
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the best interests of the child. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
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Juveniles and the right to counsel. Criminal Justice Magazine
18(3). Retrieved October 19, 2005, from http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/cjmag/18-2shep.htm
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in the nation. Author. Retrieved February 16, 2005 from
Sutton, J. R. (1988). Stubborn Children: Controlling Delinquency
in the United States, 1640-1981. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
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