"The Cop Will Get You": The Police and Discretionary Juvenile Justice, 1890-1940

While urban police are the public officials who most directly regulate juvenile crime and delinquency, their work has rarely been considered in histories of juvenile justice. Most studies concentrate on Progressive-era reform and juvenile court, not how kids got in trouble and entered the judicial system in the first place. This essay addresses that gap. Focusing on everyday interactions between police and disorderly youth in Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles, it demonstrates how the exercise of discretionary authority by the police shaped juvenile justice, both before and after the creation of juvenile court. First, police performed a filtering function, deciding which complaints against children and teenagers to handle at their own discretion and which to refer to court. Second, the police regulated adolescent behavior on their own by targeting potential offenders for arrest based on the perceived problems of the day (larceny and truancy in turn-of-century Detroit, auto theft in Depression-era Los Angeles). Third, the police, not the courts, decided whether or not to detain arrested youth prior to court hearings. Thus, the police largely determined the intake of the juvenile court and could discipline young offenders in their own fashion regardless of the outcome of a case.