Juvenile Detention Centers

History

For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the majority of the American population lived in rural areas where communities were closely knit and citizens’ lives were well integrated. The solidarity experienced in colonial America meant that criminal courts were unnecessary as justice was meted out by community members and was primarily directed not toward social exclusion (as is practiced today) but rather toward reintegration of the delinquent person into the community.

The primary mechanism to govern young offenders at this time was an informal network made up of [Page 509]church discipline, the family, and a strong network of community members. With the emergence of cities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the relative anonymity of the burgeoning urban context, informal social controls came to be less effective in dealing with juvenile misconduct. The influx of Western European immigrants and rural Americans migrating to cities in search of employment in the manufacturing sector created both a juvenile delinquent problem and a movement for its control.

To reclaim deviant youths, 19th-century reformers proposed centers of detention such as reformatories and industrial schools. Some institutions offered deviant boys disciplinary programs that emphasized education, athletics, drill, training in the habits of industry, and religious guidance designed to remake deviant them into respectable members of the working class who could fulfill their breadwinner roles, respect authority, attend church, and demonstrate self-control. Other institutions provided a disciplinary program designed to (re)make deviant girls into good, working-class women by training them in the values and manners of domesticity, femininity, and maternalism. Institutional officials encouraged girls to resist sexual temptations and attempted to make them into wives or chaste girls who could fill domestic roles in affluent homes.

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