Juvenile Justice and the Boys' Farm: Surviving a Court-Created Population Crisis, 1909-1948

Abstract

Reform for juvenile delinquents have shown remarkable resilience and adaptability in the face of changing public policy about how children who break the law should be treated. This paper is a case study of one Canadian reform school which has survived four serious population crises since 1909: The Boys' Farm and Training School in Shawbridge, Quebec. I focus on the first population crisis, from 1921 to 1930, showing how it arose and the strategies adopted by the board of directors at The Boys' Farm to deal with it. Then I examine two other strategies which the board used subsequently to deal with the ongoing problem of dwindling population at the reform school. I conclude by discussing the implications of my research for the ongoing debate over juvenile justice policy. Institutions are not only created; they disappear, both individually and as entire classes. Maternity homes, orphan's homes, and almshouses have all been rendered obsolete by shifts of public policy and the consequent loss of clients (Rains, 1971; Rooke and Schnell, 1983; Rothman, 1971). But the failure of institutions to disappear can itself be remarkable and worthy of explanation. Agencies for blind children and young adults did not fade away as the blind population became increasingly aged; they simply competed more intensely with one another for these increasingly rare clients (Scott, 1969). The failure of reform for juvenile delinquents to disappear is similarly remarkable. Virtually every reform of the juvenile justice system in both the United States and Canada since the beginning of the 20th century has been fuelled ideologically not just by the view that children should be dealt with separately from adults, but also by the view that children, even delinquent ones, belong in families rather than in institutions. These reforms have produced many alternatives to institutional life. Juvenile courts put children on probation; children's aid societies put them in foster homes; psychiatrists and social workers attached to the juvenile court refer children to family counselling services; and, most recently, diversion programs allow children even to avoid appearing in juvenile court. The populations of reform have been reduced not only by these alternatives to institutions but also by shorter sentences and the use of group homes and detention homes (where children supposedly wait for their court appearance) rather than reform schools. Reform nevertheless continue to exist, although disguised under increasingly benign names: known once as reformatories and industrial schools, they have since come to be called schools, youth protection schools, and reception centers. In the mid-1970s, there were at least 42 self-defined training schools in Canada, 13 of which were located in Quebec (Canada, Statistics Canada, 1973). The continued incarceration of children in the face of these reforms has sponsored both radical reinterpretations of juvenile justice history and objections to the radical view. Much of this debate has focused on the creation of the juvenile court. Platt (1969) challenged the benevolent intent of juvenile justice reformers. He viewed the juvenile justice movement as an expansionist and essentially coercive form of state intervention into the lives of working-class children and their families. Platt observed that the first juvenile court in the United States, which opened in Chicago