ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 mentioned that the šrst juvenile court in the United States was established in Cook County, Illinois, in 1899. It was the end product of more than half a century of e€ort by child saver organizations. ese organizations and groups represented di€erent constituencies and had various motives for becoming involved in saving children. e motives of some were self-serving. For others, the motives were altruistic and focused on improving the welfare of poor, homeless, and neglected children. Few questioned the underlying philosophy of the movement in regard to the right and duty of the state to intervene and take on the role of parent-substitute for children whose parents were unable, unwilling, or unavailable to care for their children’s needs. It was argued that to ensure that the needs of these children would be met and that they would be properly supervised, the courts, acting on behalf of the state, should be given unlimited discretion to make decisions on what would happen to these children. e judges could maintain that their decisions to place children who were never convicted of crimes in houses of refuge, or even hold them in jail, were appropriate decisions, because they were made on the basis of the parens-patriae principle.
