Guardians of Virtue: The Juvenile Court and Female Delinquency in Early 20th-Century Los Angeles

Abstract

This article analyzes the origins and implementation of a policy and a formal institutional apparatus to discipline female delinquents in early 20th-century Los Angeles. The data derive from original case files of delinquent girls on whom petitions were filed in 1920. The authors seek to shed new light particularly on (a) the juvenile court's basic operations, (b) the social and institutional setting in which modern responses to female delinquency emerged, and (c) the characteristics of the girls petitioned to court. They conclude that the juvenile court held sway in the administration of female juvenile justice until the dawn of the modern women's movement.