Daniel Macallair, Executive Director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) is a practitioner-in-residence at San Francisco State University (SFSU)'s Department of Criminal Justice Studies. These slides are from his Intervention Policies in Juvenile Justice course materials.

1. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
The Emergence of New Forms of Institutional and
Non-institutional Policies in the mid 19th Century
The End of the House of Refuge Era and the Growing
Dissatisfaction with the Congregate Institution

2. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Critiques of the Congregate System
• Absence of parental nurturance
• Impersonal nature of congregate
care
• Inherent abuses of enforced
regimentation
• Dehumanizing effects of
involuntary confinement
• Dissimilarity between institutional
confinement and community life
• Inability to segregate child inmates
by age and sophistication
• Forced separation of children from
their parents

3. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
The Cottage System as an alternative institutional system
Borrowed from European
Models
• Frederic August Demetz
• Family System (cottage)
• Farm Labor
• 3 Story Cottages
• Self Government
• Military Regime
1839 AGRICULTURAL COLONY AT
METTRAY, FRANCE

4. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Cottage/Family System in America
• Groups of 40 children or fewer
• Semi autonomous living
arrangements
• House parents
• Preference for agricultural work
• 1857 - Girls Industrial School at
Lancaster MA first cottage
institution

5. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
The
Development of
Probation
Response to the failures of
institutionalization and the forced
removal of children from their
parents
 Established by John Augustus
in 1841
 Allowed youth to remain at
home under supervision
 Allowed the court to place
requirements on the youth
and parents
 Expanded the role of child
saver organizations

6. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Development of Juvenile Probation (1860-1900)
• Boston Children’s Aid Society (background checks, bail and supervision)
• Massachusetts Board of Charities Act (1869) (home supervision)
• California Juvenile Probation Act (1883) (allowed placement with private
charitable organizations)

7. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
The Reform School Replaces the House of
Refuge
The Next Era of Congregate Institution

8. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Characteristics of the Reform School
• Congregate institution
• Also called training schools and
industrial schools
• Publicly administered
• Rural location
• Campus structure
• Elimination of the contract labor system
• Greater emphasis on education and
desire to identify with compulsory
school movement
• Use of military drill
• Indeterminate and determinant
commitments
• Separation by age and gender

9. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
First public reform school established in Westborough Massachusetts
known as the Theodore Lyman school (1847-1972)

10. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
The Placing Out System and the Origins of Foster
Care
And the evolution of non-institutional care

11. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
PLACING OUT
• An informal procedure whereby
child-saving societies employed
agents to take groups of children
west by railroad

12. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Origins of the
Placing Out System
Charles Loring Brace 1826-1891
Charles Loring Brace (1826-
1891) arrives in New York to
study for the ministry and is
appalled by the number of
homeless and impoverished
children
1853 – Brace abandons his
ministerial calling and
establishes the Children’s Aid
Society (CAS) to seeks a
solution to children’s
homelessness and poverty

13. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Origins of the Placing Out System
• 1853 Braces establishes Children’s
Aid Society (CAS) through a city
permit as an alternative to House of
Refuge
• CAS employs outreach workers to
make contact with street children
and persuade impoverished
parents to relinquish custody
• CAS places children in short term
residences to teach grooming and
basic manners
• CAS places children on special
train cars for transportation to the
Western US

14. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
The Placing Out System/Orphan Trains
• Trains become known as Orphan trains
• Trains stop at towns along the route
• Local citizens encouraged to take-in
children
• If the child was under 15 were required
to attend school
• Over 15, children were expected to
work
• CAS required two contacts a year
through letters

15. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Children’s Aid Society’s Conditions of Placement

16. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
Children Aid Society and the Legacy of Charles
Loring Brace
Third Largest Foster Care Agencies in NYC (2017)

17. www.cjcj.org
© Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2013
40 Boardman Place
San Francisco, CA 94103
People v Turner (1870)
• Illinois Supreme Court determined that a reform school commitment was an
unconstitutional deprivation of liberty necessitating due process protections
for children.