Constructing juvenile delinquency: The socio-legal control of young offenders in Israel, 1920-1975

The discourse of pathology which started to emerge in the earlier period expanded and began to include new ideas and new psychological and sociological explanations were imported to Israel from Europe and the USA. Against the social background, members of the elite groups were concerned at the phenomenon of wayward youth cut off from society, among them young offenders. The pathologization of juvenile delinquency was advanced by the discipline of social welfare which started to emerge in Palestine during the 1930s, mainly through the work of Henrietta Szold who was appointed as the Director of the Vaad Leumi’s Welfare Department. In the dominant expert account for juvenile delinquency only scant voices were heard attempting without success to challenge it. Similarly to the European and North American progressive reformers, professionals in Palestine monopolized the societal responses to juvenile delinquency. Juvenile delinquents in Jerusalem, were described by Dr. Kraus as coming from Moroccan families whose parents were ‘manual laborers, water-drawers, and beggars’.