“Impossible Cases Can be Cured When All the Factors Are Known”: Gender, Psychiatry and Toronto’s Juvenile Court, 1912–1930

Mental health professionals intent on leaving their mark on juvenile justice and committed to behaviour modification forged a partnership with Toronto’s Juvenile Court during the 1920s. However, the routine practice of the court did not allow for intensive investigation of juvenile offenders or for careful study of the causes of delinquency. Conferences started in 1925 by W. E. Blatz bridged this gap by offering a number of advantages that could not be realized under the court’s busy routine. Taking charge of a limited number of offenders permitted psychiatrists to more thoroughly examine special cases such as recidivists, intensely debate treatment strategies, more carefully supervise individual cases, and test their theories about the causes of juvenile crime. Conference case files reveal that psychiatrically informed strategies of regulation were a novel way to respond to deviance and that gender-specific understandings of, and strategies for, appropriate conduct also served to reproduce prevailing ideals for working-class boys and girls. With clear ideas about appropriate conduct for girls and boys, mental health professionals attempted to create such standards in the delinquents whose cases appeared before them.