In the Web of Class: Delinquents and Reformers in Boston, 1810s-1930s.

Eric Schneider has written a sophisticated and compelling analysis of the origins and development of the juvenile justice system in the United States. His study is the first to demonstrate the critical relationship between the history of social welfare and of programs to prevent and control delinquency. Schneider traces this complex history through a case study of Boston, a city at the forefront of juvenile justice reform in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Throughout this period, American responses to delinquency were shaped and limited by what Schneider calls the "cultural reform tradition." Middle-class reformers repeatedly focused on the individual, moral sources of deviance and ignored the impact of broader structural forces. They established institutions and programs that aimed to correct the character and cultural deficiencies of working-class youth, rather than the poverty and economic hardships that influenced their lives. Yet youth and their families were not passive recipients of reform efforts. Schneider demonstrates how they struggled to use institutions for their own needs and interests. Similar to Linda Gordon's work on the history of family violence, his study emphasizes the agency of working-class people within the social welfare system.

The book is divided into four sections that explore four stages in the develpment of the juvenile justice system from the 1810s to 1930s. The initial programs for delinquent children emerged out of early 19th-century efforts to systematize poor relief end pauperism by instilling self-discipline in the poor. After repeated failures with the adult poor, evangelical reformers directed attention to their children, who appeared to be more malleable. Reformers sought to mold the moral character of working-class youth and steer them away from pauperism and crime through a range of institutions, including public schools, Sunday schools, and juvenile reformatories.

The second stage emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as advocates of domestic reform emphasized the importance of rural life and family training in the reformation of delinquents. Instead of the congregate reformatories established earlier, they supported small, family-style institutions in rural settings and placement of delinquent youth in Protestant families. These real and institutional families aimed to impart bourgeois values of thrift, morality, and self-restraint to working-class children.

The economic turmoil of the 1870s and 1880s led to a third stage of increased organization among private social welfare agencies in the city. Rivalries between Protestant and Catholic organizations diminished as they began to cooperate with one another to promote moral uplift among the poor. Instead of removing delinquent children from their own families, charity organizers established cultural centers within working-class neighborhoods--home libraries, boys' and girls' clubs, and industrial schools. They promoted a somewhat narrower cultural program than antebellum reformers, one that emphasized the discipline and work habits necessary for an industrial labor force.

Progressive reformers of the early 20th century ushered in a new approach with the expansion of state authority and the application of scientific expertise tot he probelm of delinquency. The juvenile court and mental health clinic were created in this reform context. The court adopted a therapeutic model of delinquency control through its careful investigation of individual cases and its emphasis on treatment rather than punishment. The mental health clinic applied the new science of psychiatry to the problem of deviance. Social workers and psychiatrists in these clinics prepared psychological evaluations and treatment plans for troubled youth based on mental examinations and analyses of early childhood and family experiences. Despite the sceintific rhetoric, the court and clinic, Schneider argues, remained firmly within the cultural reform tradition. Delinquency continued to be seen as an individual problem and its cure typically meant the adoption of appropriate cultural values.

Schneider finds that juvenile justice policies throughout the period ultimately failed, due both to the resistance of working-class clients to moral uplift and to the inability of the cultural reform tradition to address the real social and economic problems of delinquent youth and their families.

His work makes a valuable contribution to existing historical scholarship with its careful attention to the impact of gender on juvenile justice policy. He demonstrates that reformers defined delinquency differently for boys and girls and devised different forms of punishment. Deviance for girls was understood as inappropriate sexual conduct and correctional treatment entailed instruction in domesticity and moral purity. Court officials and reformers considered female moral offenders more difficult to manage, and thus subjected them to greater scrutiny and control.

Schneider is less successful in assessing the influence of gender within the reform community. He acknowledges women's participation in the 19th-century reformatory movement, but neglects their central role in Progressive-era child saving. Female reformers and social workers spearheaded the campaign for the juvenile court and acquired administrative positions within the court and its allied institutions, yet Schneider focuses almost exclusively on male activists and officials. Recent studies suggest that women brought somewhat different concerns to social welfare reform from their male colleagues. They too emphasized scientific method and expertise, but also drew on a maternalist ideology, rooted in women's political culture, that applied the values of care, nurturance, and morality to social policies. By neglecting women reformers, Schneider misses this aspect of Progressive juvenile justice reform.

Schneider, nevertheless, has written one of the most insightful studies to date of the history of the juvenile justice system. His careful analysis of the complex ways in which class, gender, and culture have shaped that system will be of great use to both scholars and policy-makers.

Mary Odem Emory University