An Alternative Approach to Managing Juvenile Corrections

Abstract

Alexis de Tocqueville, an admiring but normally discerning observer of American mores, toured our penal institutions in 1831. Reflecting on the condition of the children he saw, de Tocqueville subscribed to the view that “the children were not victims of persecution, but merely deprived of fatal liberty.” His opinion represents one side of an argument that has persisted for more than 150 years. The dispute concerns what to do with children who break the law, and whether or not the state should confine them for their own protection against “fatal liberty.” It remains the central question in juvenile justice today.