Describe who the "child savers" were and the impact the group had on the creation of the concept of delinquency in the United States

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Child savers were concerned that the moral training of children of the dangerous classes was inadequate. Their focus was on extending government control over youthful activities (drinking, vagrancy, and delinquency) that had previously been left to private or family control.

Poor children could become a financial burden, and the child savers believed these children presented a threat to the moral fabric of society. Child-saving organizations influenced state legislatures to enact laws giving courts the power to commit children who were runaways or criminal offenders to specialized institutions, such as the House of Refuge, which opened in New York in 1825, and reform schools, devoted to the care of vagrant and delinquent youths. Under the Children's Aid Society in 1853, delinquent youths were rescued from the harsh environment of the city and provided with temporary shelter through the placing-out plan to send these children to western farms where they could be cared for and find a home (orphan trains).

Although reform groups continued to lobby for government control over children, the committing of children under the doctrine of parens patriae without due process of law began to be questioned by members of the child-saving movement. This concern and consequent political activity culminated in passage of the Illinois Juvenile Court Act of 1899

The designation delinquent became popular at the onset of the twentieth century when the first separate juvenile courts were instituted. The child savers believed that treating minors and adults equally violated the humanitarian ideals of American society. Consequently, the emerging juvenile justice system operated under the parens patriae philosophy.