Constructing Feminized Courts and Carceral Institutions: Gender, the Legal Regulation of Race, and the Making of Modern Criminal Justice

This study focuses on the twentieth-century emergence of women’s courts and carceral institutions for girls and interprets the ways in which gender has shaped racialized processes of criminalization in Illinois and New York. By exploring the advent of these institutions alongside the ideals that guided their institutional practices, this project sheds light on the kinds of local-level processes that underlie the modern criminal justice system.