Reformers United: The American and the German Juvenile Court, 1882-1923 (From Institutions of Confinement: Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500-1950, P 235-274, 1996. Norbert Finzsch, Robert Jutte, eds. - See NCJ-171744)

• NCJ Number: 171747
• Author(s): K T Winkler
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 40 pages
• Sale Source: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter examines comparative history through the works of German and American juvenile courts at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Abstract

It is difficult to research subjects such as prison history without taking into account the international link or network of German and American reformers. German reformers watched how the United States tried to solve problems of juvenile delinquency and juvenile jurisdiction. But, in their efforts to implant the American model in Germany, they had to adapt to a different culture. They created a code of laws and practices that laid its main stress on conformity in a major attempt to regulate and control a generation of youth who apparently had gotten out of control. Discipline, more than anything else, set the tone for the German system, whereas American reformers and American courts had always tried to protect the rights of juvenile delinquents. The chapter discusses the problem of juveniles as an age category, the segregation of delinquency from the criminal justice system, the juvenile court in practice, and administrative reform. Notes