Abstract
Geoff K Ward, The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice, The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2012; 336 pp. (including index): 9780226873183, $ 90 (cloth), $30.00 (pbk)
The Black Child-Savers, the latest book by Geoff K. Ward, Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine, is a valuable addition to the history of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice systems not only in the United States but across the globe. The book, which tells the powerful and thought-provoking story of the nearly century-long campaign to achieve a more democratic system of juvenile justice for black American youth, opens with a well-written and engaging introductory chapter summarizing the study’s key arguments. It then proceeds in two parts, focusing respectively on the origins and organization of Jim Crow juvenile justice and the emergence and development of the black child-saving movement. In seven thematic and broadly chronologically sequential chapters, The Black Child-Savers analyzes the historical experiences of young black people in the US juvenile justice system and the determined efforts of reformers working to improve their lot between 1890 and 2000. Although forming the core period of the research presented in this book, developments in these years are placed firmly within the context of earlier debates about the nature of childhood and adolescence from the late 18th century as well as current discussions and developments within the youth justice system.
This study is particularly important because, as the introduction makes clear, there was a good chance it might never have been written. As the author tells us, his original intentions were quite different – he began with the goal of writing a ‘contemporary statistical study of race and juvenile justice’ with a ‘brief “historical background” section’ (p. 1). During the course of his initial research, however, he became increasingly preoccupied with the historical significance of race and racial distinctions in the structuring and shaping of youth justice in the USA. As the author explains, what led to this was the ‘near absence of historical background in the race and juvenile justice research’. ‘Most empirical studies read’, he continues, ‘as though American juvenile justice was suddenly overcome with race problems in the final quarter of the twentieth century’ (p. 2).
This absence of historical perspective is indeed a problem characteristic of much recent research on juvenile delinquency and youth justice, not just in the USA but around the globe. Historical studies of juvenile delinquency remain relatively rare and, where they do exist, tend to be published as works primarily intended for historians and not for those writing about contemporary juvenile crime and youth justice such as criminologists and sociologists. The fact that Geoff K. Ward is a trained and practicing criminologist who has written a serious historical study is thus particularly to be welcomed. The combination of the two disciplinary perspectives is a real strength of the book; a tightly argued and insightful historical narrative is complemented with a wealth of illuminating figures and tables which further deepen the author’s analysis.
This combination of a criminological training and historical insight is shared by the author of the book we cannot but recall when we read the title of the study currently under review —The Child Savers by Tony Platt, first published in 1969 also with The University of Chicago Press. Both books function as important works of deconstruction, uncovering the hidden agendas and agencies at work in the establishment and development of US youth justice and challenging long-standing grand narratives. Platt’s 1969 study helped to shatter the enduring myth that the campaign for the establishment of a separate juvenile justice system in the USA, beginning in the early 20th century, was a story of unremitting cultural progress, by pointing to the deep class-based inequalities which characterized the system. In turn, Geoff K. Ward highlights the crucial role of racial distinctions in structuring the workings of youth justice in the United States over the last century. As he rightly points out, the experiences of black American youths have been largely ignored in both contemporary and historical studies of juvenile justice in the United States.
The importance of this study goes beyond the bounds of the USA, however; indeed, it has the potential to encourage further studies examining the role of ‘race’ as a structuring principle in notions of youth crime and systems of juvenile justice in other times and places. While there have been increasing numbers of national historical treatments of youth crime and juvenile justice in recent years, comparative, regional and transnational studies have been noticeably lacking and it is precisely in these contexts that the issue of ‘race’ may prove especially pertinent. There remains, for example, much work to be done in uncovering the crucial role of racial distinctions in shaping the history of juvenile delinquency and the operation of youth justice systems in the colonial empires of Western European powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, many histories of juvenile delinquency still tend to reproduce the self-legitimating grand narratives propounded by colonial elites at the time – in particular, the notion that the provision of juvenile justice was a sign of the superior civilization of the colonizers and a reason for the continuation of exploitative colonial regimes.
While generally written in a clear and engaging style, the terminology employed in The Black Child-Savers is occasionally of a rather technical nature, which may prove difficult for students of history and other non-criminologists to access. Likewise, the repeated use of the first person and phrases such as ‘in my view’, seem to jar with the otherwise scholarly, critical and reflective style of the narrative. Overall, though, this is an important, interesting and timely contribution to both the historical and criminological debates surrounding race, juvenile crime and youth justice not only in the United States but around the world. It will hopefully encourage further research into the role of racial distinctions in shaping both youth justice systems and the experiences of young people caught up in the court system. It deserves to be read not only by students and scholars but by all those interested in the history and present of youth crime and juvenile justice.