Book Review

Promise and Pitfalls in New Approaches
to the History of Gender and Justice

David Wolcott
Miami University, Oxford, OH

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a renaissance in historical studies of juvenile delinquency, particularly the Progressive-Era origins of juvenile courts. While many juvenile justice studies published in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the era's scholarly concern with the dynamics of social reform and social control, this new wave has been driven by two more contemporary issues. First, questions of gender dominate works by scholars such as Mary Odem, Ruth Alexander, and Elizabeth Clapp, which focus on female sexual delinquents and female reformers.1 Second, a concern with how members of professions constructed social scientific knowledge by using delinquency and delinquents as subjects of investigation drives works by scholars such as Margo Horn and Victoria Getis.2 Anne Meis Knupfer links both issues in her study of the Cook County (Chicago) Juvenile Court, Reform and Resistance, arguing that variations on "maternalism" (professional ideologies rooted in motherhood and children's welfare) shaped the operations of juvenile justice.3

1

The Cook County Juvenile Court (founded in 1899) was America's first court specially designated to hear children's cases. It represents one of the most enduring institutional achievements of the "child-saving" movement and has become the centerpiece for subsequent interpretations of juvenile justice. Knupfer distinguishes her study from the existing literature by examining how a range of emergent professionsÑpsychiatry, sociology, social work, policing, and probation workÑused juvenile court to impose complex and competing models of behavior and sexuality on "delinquent" girls, while at the same time girls rebelled against the court's dictates. One of Knupfer's most significant contributions is bringing a holistic perspective to the juvenile justice system. Most studies concentrate on one discrete institution (a court, a reform school), but Knupfer demonstrates the links between multiple players: philanthropic women's groups that helped found juvenile court, probation officers initially sponsored by these philanthropies, Chicago sociologists, the court itself, its detention home, and three correctional facilities for girls' "reeducation." In particular, she analyzes how the financial links between the court and correctional institutions chained them together and shaped their operations. Knupfer also emphasizes how race impacted justice for girls, contrasting the work of African American social workers with that of whites and showing how segregation determined the inmate population of correctional institutions.

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