UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Because American society in general viewed female juvenile delinquents as a challenge to established societal norms, the Texas Youth Commission, as well as other juvenile justice agencies in the United States, set forth policies, curriculums, rules, and regulations that attempted to extinguish the threat of subversive behaviors in delinquent youth. Juvenile crime was different, and anything that was unordinary from the American nuclear family was a perceived threat to the morality and national security of the United States. Legislators and other authority figures presented delinquent girls that participated in premarital sexual relationships, prostitution, or other disturbing or questionable behavior as a serious threat to the American family, and therefore to America’s political, economic, and social systems. The Texas Youth Commission created programs that reinforced societal norms to those who had strayed in order to teach good values to those whose education had been lacking. Ultimately, the Texas girls’ juvenile justice system used its authority to perpetuate race and gender constructs of the time through curricula, rules, and regulations within the Gainesville State School for Girls, Brady School for Negro Girls, and Crockett School for Colored Girls.