Feral Populations: Juvenile Delinquency and Antebellum Population Theory

While the figure of the child is often understood as through the lens of liberal individualism, as a citizen-in-formation, this paper pushes for a different, earlier role for childhood as a figure of plurality and a... [ view full abstract ]

While the figure of the child is often understood as through the lens of liberal individualism, as a citizen-in-formation, this paper pushes for a different, earlier role for childhood as a figure of plurality and a pre-statistical tool for imaging the reproductive lives of populations. By examining at the category of the juvenile delinquent as it first arose in the 1820s – and particularly, the accompanying category of the incorrigible, or unreformable delinquent – I argue that writers seized on narratives of deviant childhoods as a means of working through the fear that the population of the U.S. might not be a stable one.

This paper reads the day-to-day records of the earliest juvenile prison, the New York House of Refuge, alongside popular domestic manuals. These texts converged to generate visions of childhood as a site of potential rift from the adult authority and a potential aporia in social stability. The incorrigible child was one who could not be understood by adult authority and who could thus never be socialized to become an adult authority themselves, but who also appeared spontaneously, isolated from normal reproduction. Incorrigibility thus provided a narrative to justify the warehouse of the rising numbers of children attracted to U.S. cities by immigration and industrialization, while also denying their existence as a stable population unto themselves.