Turf Wars in Progressive Era Juvenile Justice: The Relationship of Private and Public Child Care Agencies

• NCJ Number: 129623
• Journal: Crime and Delinquency Volume: 37 Issue: 2 Dated: special issue (April 1991) Pages: 225-241
• Author(s): K J Block; D C Hale
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 17 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article recounts the history of the New York Juvenile Asylum and Pennsylvania's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty Toward Children (SPCC), two 19th century child-saving agencies as they evolved prior to and through the Progressive Era -- a time of shifting responsibility for solutions to social and economic problems from the private sector to the public sector.

Abstract

The discussion focuses on the organizational contexts and the interorganizational relations of the agencies to other child saving agencies and the juvenile courts. Once the New York Juvenile Asylum and the Pennsylvania SPCC became involved with the juvenile court, they became subordinate and lost a measure of self determination. Both agencies worked to assert their influence, to retain their domains, and to affect the direction of law and court procedures, but found themselves in distinctly revised organizational complexes. Their survival within the new organizational field would depend upon their functional relationship with the juvenile court. Organizational theory and research can influence the study of the conflict between public and private child care agencies in the Progressive Era juvenile court movement. 4 notes and 30 references (Author abstract modified)