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1825: the starting point of institutional control
Posted by Chuck on 2026-September-28 23:30:47, Monday|
Child control, that is. The following is a quote from an article i published back in the late 1990s on an old fpc website i used to have. It is written by Ronald Boostrom, whom i used to quote all the time with my sig pic. I'm posting this here and now because of BlueRibbon's assertion that similar things began later, and were initiated by the womens' suffrage movement for equal rights (with men). I'm wondering if BlueRibbon's view is actually mysoginist (or just plain ignorant). My feeling is that by 1800 the State had solidified itself enough to then begin the task of reducing the diverse 'power spots' of the u.s. citizenry so to consolidate its own power. And thus made major funding available, to which groups like womens rights'-seeking groups took advantage (a precursor to groups who took advantage of Big Funding made available around 1975, such as via the Trilateral Commission). Building up examples of this situation may prove valuable to future researchers, perhaps. Excerpt (speak up if you'd like to see the entire quote) : (...) "The Historical Development of Juvenile Justice "Prior to the Jacksonian era in American history, juvenile deviants were either subject to the criminal law and the same criminal sanctions as adults...or were subject only to informal social controls exercised by parents and the local community. This changed, to some extent, with the advent of the first juvenile reformatory in America--the New York House of Refuge, a state chartered but privately operated facility which was founded in 1825. This marked the beginning of a new policy of exclusion, de[s]parate diagnosis, and special treatment for juvenile offenders. This development was emulated by other major urban centers on the Eastern seaboard and its assumptions and separate system of treatment...became a model for future developments... "The act of incorporation of the house of refuge contained the first statutory definition of juvenile delinquency in our history. This statute, like others to follow, defined the special status of juvenile delinquency to include youthful criminal offenders, youngsters who were seen to be in danger of leading an immoral and uncontrolled life if left to their own devices, and dependent and neglected children. "This new institution and the laws creating it:
"The juvenile reformatories were the birthplace of the delinquent [as a term]. Reformatory managers began to collect biographical information about the background of juvenile offenders to be used for reform and explanation of the etiology of delinquency. (See Rothman, David J. The Discovery of the Asylum; Little, Brown; Boston; 1971) "Once reformers were successful in establishing the special status of the juvenile delinquent in law and policy and once special institutions were in place to reinforce the special status and special treatment, juveniles lost the protection of due process of law which had been traditionally available to criminal offenders." "Dr. Szasz has stated that pioneering eighteenth-century asylums were the first factories for manufacturing madmen and renaming badness as madness. In like manner, the new reformatories were the factories for manufacturing delinquents and renaming the badness as delinquency. "The delinquent is an institutional product." (Foucault, Michel; Discipline and Punish; Pantheon; NY; 1977 p.301) "Michel Foucault has pointed out that the creation of these institutions in modern Western societies was part of a general movement toward domination, observation, and enforced discipline promoted by agents and agencies of normality in the new industrial society.
"As these disciplinary functions become well established and legitimized in society, the process of manufacturing delinquents is no longer confined by the walls of the reformatory. Like madness, delinquency burst through the walls of the asylum by the beginning of the twentieth century. "It "was being discovered in clinics and doctors’ offices, in literature and art (i.e. Huckelberry Finn), and in the ‘psychopathology of everyday life.’" (ibid. p.306) "All of the earlier principles and practices which began in the Jacksonian era were built upon and elaborated by Progressive reformers [including the famous "Mother Jones"--ed] at the turn of the twentieth century. They took them into the community where they discovered ever-more problems of delinquency and juvenile deviance. "[These reformers] created new social control devices such as the compulsory public school with its inevitable truant officer, the juvenile court with its diagnostic clinic, probation, parole, and settlement houses; all designed to spread the logic and methods of the "carceral" institutions of the new industrial state and the ideology of the therapeutic state throughout the community of potential deviants. "Once reformers were successful in establishing the special status of the juvenile delinquent in law and policy and once special institutions were in place to reinforce the special status and special treatment, juveniles lost the protection of due process of law which had been traditionally available to criminal offenders. "Efforts to reform individual delinquents and to assuage anxiety about social change through special treatment of the juvenile deviant undercut traditional liberal concern for civil liberties and the need to protect the individual from the power of state intervention. "A new faith in therapeutic scientific management as a solution to the problem of delinquency was introduced during the Progressive era which was inimical to basic libertarian principles and philosophies espoused by our Founding Fathers and contained in the founding documents of this nation. Progressive reform programs and practices continued to dominate twentieth- century juvenile justice. However, they have recently come under attack for their lack of attention to legality and their correctional, rather than appreciative, assumptions." (...)  |
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