Delinquency and Disorderly Behavior

Part of a series examining the history of crime and justice in America, this volume looks at the creation of a special legal category for youth crime, based on a complex mix of social and attitudinal changes. The contributors focus on the growth of juvenile delinquency.

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The last half of the 19th century saw the creation of a special category for youth crime, based on a complex of social and attitudinal changes. Thus the question of importance has been not about the nature of crime by young people but about the growth of a new legal and institutional category - juvenile delinquency. The controversy which continues to surround the treatment of young offenders causes historians to ask why we have the system we now have and to try and evaluate our present treatment of youth offenders in relation to the era when they did not get special treatment. We know that the segregation of youthful offenders from adults has something to do with the growth of cities and of modern educational systems. Cities did not cause an increase in crimes, but they did make crimes more visible and more concentrated. Educational systems tried to make orderly and scheduled the lives of children; those who did not fit in and were disorderly became more visible.
Educational reformers, in their efforts to sell an expensive system, made claims that schooling would change such disorderly children, would stop or at least reduce crime, so that the history of education and the history of youth crime became strangely interwoven.