Reform, train, rehabilitate: the history of juvenile incarceration in Texas, 1883 - 1979

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the role that economic interests had on the creation, maintenance, and changes in the juvenile incarceration system from the years 1883 to 1979 under the Texas Prison Board, the Board of Education, the Board of Control, the Texas Youth Development Council, and the Texas Youth Council. While scholars have previously traced the history of juvenile incarceration facilities to the efforts of social reformers of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1886, this dissertation repositions the point of origin of the juvenile system at the Texas penitentiary system in the late 1870s under the planning and lobbying of prison officials. After the creation of the Gatesville House of Correction and Reformatory in 1889, Texas lawmakers, governmental agencies, and facility administrators pressured youthful inmates between the ages of nine and twenty-one to labor for no pay and produce revenue for the state in a system that directly mirrored management practices of the Texas state penitentiary system for adult convicts.