For the Protection of Society from the "Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes": An Historical Examination of Carceral Logics in the Development of Professional Social Work, 1874-1925

Background/Purpose

From its inception, much of social work, organized under the dual headings of charities and correction, was built on carceral logics, “that framed marginalized communities as threats to the social order.” Carceral institutions were, also, ideal research sites for the emerging sciences that formulated social work’s developing knowledgebase. While the charitable beginnings of social work have been well documented, its carceral foundations have not.

In this historical study analyzing those foundations, we contend: 1) carceral logics were central to the development of the profession; 2) the emerging profession was a key terrain in which carceral policies and practices were developed and implemented.

Especially given current interest in abolitionist and anticarceral perspectives across multiple social work domains of practice and research, an historical lens that provides longitudinal contextualization for today’s prevailing conceptual and methodological tools is urgently needed.

Methods

This study covers the five-decade span from the 1874 creation of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (NCCC) through the first quarter of the 20^th century. Primary sources of data included:

• The Proceedings of the NCCC (became National Conference of Social Work in 1917) — the primary professional gathering for nascent social work.
• The Survey — leading period publication featuring writings by prominent social work leaders.
• Archival records of state charity and correction boards.

Results

Whether in the form of hospitals and asylums for “defectives;” orphanages, workcamps, and poorhouses for “dependents”; or reformatories and penitentiaries for “delinquents,” by mid-19th century, custodial institutions were the dominant mode of intervention for those deemed “unfit” for society. Whether heredity or environment was held the cause for deviance, and intervention or prevention the goal, carceral logics demanded the “unfit” be surveilled, segregated, and confined, for the protection of society from the dangers of the physical, moral, and hereditary contagion they ostensibly posed.

Social work was extensively involved, through for example, state and county charity and correction boards which oversaw “charitable, penal, and reformatory institutions of a State, the supervision of jails, almshouses, and kindred places of detention and shelter.” Social work was also integral to the development and implementation of racialized epistemologies that undergirded emergent scientific methods for distinguishing the normal from the “dependent, defective, and delinquent.” Together, these epistemologies located deviance in the bodies of marginalized persons and communities, rather than in structures of society.

Conclusion/Implications

Prominent eugenicist and social reformer, Hastings Hart, declared in his Presidential plenary at the 1893 NCCC, that the “principles and methods” formulated there to “stop the springs of crime” had been “built into the walls of prisons and hospitals for the insane.” His chilling prediction that these ideas would “determine, to some extent at least, what shall be the policy of this nation for a thousand years to come,” are evident in today’s policies and practices, ranging from incarceration to involuntary sterilization to immigrant deportation, which continue to perpetuate a system of racialized captivity, criminalization, and marginalization. Knowledge of this history is essential to better understand the carceral legacies embedded within the ongoing negotiations of the present.