Preliminary Programme

The paper focuses on the strategies employed in the 1950s and 1960s by juvenile probation officers in order to achieve the reformation of boys and girls considered in ‘moral danger’ or in the first stages of ‘anti-sociality’. Targeting adolescents from poor urban families and operating with limited means and expertise, Greek juvenile probation officers formulated their intervention as a process moving toward self-discipline conceived in gendered terms. In their contacts with the boys and girls they sought to ‘inculcate with disciplined life’ and over whom they had important power, the juvenile probation officers employed varied techniques for countering the negative effects of what they considered as aggravating factors, including purportedly widespread ‘modernising’ behaviour. Along the way they often exceeded the bureaucratic framework of their relations with the juveniles on probation and formed emotional bonds with them. (Show less)

Since their creation in 1912, Belgian juvenile courts dealt every year with thousands of young people who committed an offence, or whose behaviour was perceived as threatening to themselves or wider society. If the judges had to establish the relevance of the facts when pronouncing a measure, their decisions were mainly inspired by the results of the social inquiries conducted by probation officers or by the reports of medico pedagogical evaluation centres, where children could be preventively placed. It is well known that the great majority of these young offenders came from working-class families, which were evaluated by social workers in terms of hygiene, morality, education. However, in the immediate post-war period, Belgian authorities, juvenile courts and reform schools had to deal with cases and children of a very different nature: youth (quite frequently from middle-class or wealthy families) who collaborated with the German enemy during the occupation. This paper aims to explore the reaction of the Belgian juvenile justice system to the unique nature of this phenomenon, questioning the motivations and the ability of these actors to challenge significant tensions, especially between the political and the social dimensions of the evaluation and treatment of these young people, but also between the strong demand for revenge amongst the population and the ambitions of the protectional model. (Show less)

For politicians, policy makers and social workers, the ‘family’ was both the cause of, and the solution to, the problem of juvenile delinquency in post-war Britain. This paper will evaluate the views of probation officer, police and magistrates regarding appropriate structures of discipline and authority in the home and within the family. The practitioners who were brought together within the juvenile court acted as mediators between young people and their parents, commenting on practices of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting, assessing and advising on the disciplinary regime within the family. The family was assumed to be the primary site through which children’s behaviour was regulated; a key objective of the juvenile court was to ascertain whether discipline was effectively delivered in the home, and, if not, to enable the state to intervene by making other arrangements for the child’s supervision. It will be argued that the reports prepared by probation officers as well as newspaper coverage of magistrates’ decisions are grounded in the detail of specific cases, but offer a useful barometer of public opinion regarding mechanisms such as corporal punishment, the imposition of curfews and other everyday penal strategies. The paper will draw on models developed by Bernstein to demonstrate a noticeable shift away from patriarchal and positional forms of authority, which assumed a culture of deference based on gender and generation, and a move towards approaches that were more inclusive, negotiated, and linked to potential for self-actualisation and self-realisation. (Show less)

At mid-century anxiety over juvenile delinquency rates and concern over child safety produced a context ripe for the heightened surveillance and disciplining of young people. Local and national police forces introduced an imaginative range of solutions to the ‘youth problem,’ all predicated on the idea that policemen could be embraced as ‘friendly’ authority. Canadian police forces dramatically expanded socialization of youth through extracurricular programs. These mainly sports programs created new normative relationships between cops and kids. This paper explores the new level and form of interaction between police and youth and new sites of contact. I argue that paternalism undergirded the ‘sports solution’ to the youth problem. Paternalism as an expression of patriarchy functioned to sustain a hierarchy of age, race, and gender relations that traveled from the home to the hockey arena. Boys’ consent to participate in this unequal system is the question – under what conditions did they agree to it, acquiesce to it, and accept it? How did the sports solution alter ideas about childhood and authority? And, what was being performed in these new paternalistic relationships between cops and kids? (Show less)