Platt, Anthony

The Child Savers

Within criminology, Platt's most well-known text is The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency(1977). In it, Platt analyzes the historical development of the child welfare and juvenile justice system in the United States. His study marked a decisive break with the liberal ideology that had previously depicted the development of the juvenile justice system as a benevolent and altruistic result of the enlightened middle classes. Instead, similar to other studies in the related fields of mental health (Rothman, 1971) and the prison (Ignatieff, 1978; Foucault, 1977), Platt portrays the child-saving movement as paternalistic, interventionist, and repressive. Thus he writes that:

The so-called child savers were 19th-century reformers who were concerned about the rights and welfare of the child. Most were white, middle-class, financially independent women. In many ways they embodied key liberal ideals of the Progressive era. Until the deconstructive and critical work of Platt, their actions were generally applauded, since they were instrumental in the ending of child labor and in the instigation of compulsory education. Many of these women operated specifically in the emerging urban ghettos and were inspired by a mixture of social health and welfarism. However, citing their roots and financial support from within the most powerful and wealthy sectors of society, Platt is clearly skeptical of the motivation for these women's philanthropic sentiments. Rather, he proposes that:

In fact, he even goes so far as to blame them for the development of ideas of delinquency by saying that:

In particular, according to Platt, the juvenile court system created by the reformers defined many behavioral characteristics of working-class and immigrant youth as criminal. In turn, this criminalization of behaviors forever connected delinquency with issues of race, ethnicity, and class. As a result, certain young people were more likely to be policed than others, and were also more likely to be placed in institutions.

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