Caught: Montreal's Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-1945 (review)

Whether in Montreal or Halifax, the sentiment in the early part of the twentieth century was relatively the same: moral decay had begun to seep into Canadian society as a result of modernity and its concomitant evils that lurked within the country's cities. Two potent symbols of this decay were the apparent rise in juvenile delinquency and the appearance of the young, modern girl. "Les jeunes filles modernes" are the focus of Tamara Myers's Caught: Montreal's Modern Girls and the Law, which makes an important contribution to Quebec and Canadian criminal justice and social history. Myers explores the juvenile justice system's relationship with these modern girls, along with the threat that their actions, as well as the deviant image that Montreal society had constructed of them, posed to the stability and the future of the French-Canadian nation. Myers deftly interweaves the lives of girls who explored Montreal's "sites of perdition" (p. 17) and their experiences before the city's juvenile court. In the process, Myers draws several significant conclusions about how juvenile justice functioned in Montreal.

In theory, Canada's system of juvenile justice was meant to be progressive and, unlike adult courts, non-confrontational. As Myers reveals, however, girls and their parents often battled one another in court. Similarly, although reformatories and training schools were hailed as a welcome departure from prisons as way to turn problem girls into "true homemakers" (p. 212), many of the girls whom Myers studies felt that, on the basis of the treatment that they received and the confinement that they endured, they were being punished for their actions. Moreover, in many cases, evidence of these girls' misdeeds often took the form of gossip, while social workers, who as Myers indicates were not trained in the law, played a central role in determining their fates. In this sense, Caught provides another reminder that historically the best interests of children and adolescents have often been overshadowed by the impulse to ensure that social and moral order in Canadian society was maintained.

The juvenile justice system in Montreal, as elsewhere in the country, was gendered. Girls, more so than boys, were arrested for moral offences. According to Myers, girls usually appeared before the Montreal Juvenile Court for failing to obey a curfew, staying out all night, talking back to parents, or dating an "inappropriate" boy. As well, judges and probation officers practised maternal justice towards girls. Rather than deal with delinquents as "criminals," the juvenile justice system dispensed maternal guidance to wayward youth. As was the case in other cities and provinces, maternal justice in Montreal amounted to increased state surveillance of girls' lives. A key part of Myers's discussion of maternal justice centres around Montreal's female probation officers, the "mothers of all children" (p. 91), who advised juvenile court judges as to the best treatment for delinquent youth. In outlining the work of Montreal's probation officers, Myers uncovers how, through an array of forms, some of which are reproduced in the book, probation officers reduced girls' lives to bureaucratic entities. Myers also includes a discussion of the work performed by Jewish probation officers or caseworkers and their interaction with Montreal's burgeoning Jewish community. This is a key contribution to the literature on the professionalization of the juvenile justice system in Canada.

A familiar feature of the discourse surrounding adolescent girls and juvenile justice in Montreal was the role of experts in identifying and offering solutions to the "modern girl problem." Among these self-described experts were priests, social reformers, and psychiatrists. In examining how various experts understood Montreal's girl problem, Myers detects a subtle transition in their thinking in that many of these girls were no longer considered to be victims of male seducers, but "problem girls" (p. 61) whose sexual lives had to be placed under scrutiny and tightly regulated. As Myers points out, the city itself was not the sole culprit when it came to...