Parens Patriae

History

The doctrine of parens patriae, which literally means the “parent of the country,” originated from early English common law in the 12th century. It developed to protect the crown's interest in chancery courts and was brought to the United States as the primary justification for allowing the state to remove children from their homes and the inadequate care of poor parents. In such interventions, the children became wards of the state and were often then sent to houses of refuge or reformatories. It was thought that these institutions could care for the basic needs of delinquent and dependent children and instill in them morals and work ethics they were not receiving from their own parents or in their own communities. By removing them from their families and sending them away to reformatories, the state attempted to prevent these children from growing up to become paupers and criminals.

The juvenile justice system in the United States was created with parens patriae at its heart and as its legal foundation. Beginning in Chicago in 1899, the juvenile courts were designed to accommodate the special needs of children. Juvenile court judges were intended to adopt a caring, protective outlook in treating wayward or needy children. As part of this philosophy, it was thought that minors did not need due process rights because the proceedings were never meant to be adversarial—everyone was expected to work toward the same goal of helping the child to become a conforming, productive adult. The criminal justice system would continue to operate to sanction and punish adults, but judges in the juvenile system were expected to act as kind and benevolent parents to the children in their courtrooms, deciding each case in the best interests of the particular child and his or her circumstances. Juvenile court judges were given absolute power to decide what to do with the children in their courtrooms. Based purely on their own wisdom and discretion, they decided whether to remove the children from their homes, where to send them, and how long their sentences should last.

Unfortunately, young people who had committed similar crimes—or no crime at all—often received wildly diverse sentences and placements because the system had no safeguards to hold judges' biases in check. Girls, for example, were watched over more closely than young men, and they were much more likely to be punished for early sexual behavior. Poor and minority youth were vulnerable to state intervention and were overrepresented in punitive detention homes and reformatories. Parens patriae apparently worked best in the interests of middle-and upper-class boys.

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