The Troubled Teen Girls: Polish Expert Debate on Juvenile Delinquency in the Context of Women Emancipation Processes in the People's Republic of Poland

• In Event: Falling by the Wayside: Expertise on Unwanted Children, Youth Criminals, and Sadistic Women in Socialist Czechoslovakia and Poland

Abstract

The latter half of the 1920s and the 1930s witnessed a period of intense research and public discourse on the causes of juvenile delinquency in interwar Poland. Failures within existing institutional frameworks and applied re-socialization methods necessitated reform, a process hindered by the outbreak of the Second World War.
This paper aims to explore the transformation of expert analyses in psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy, and criminology concerning juvenile delinquency in post-war Poland. Focusing on juvenile girls, it examines the reflection on youth delinquency within the context of international research in the field, the tradition of Polish interdisciplinary studies, and the unique aspects of women emancipation under state socialism.
Key areas of my interest include: (1) Investigation of the methodologies employed by researchers and their alignment with specific research schools; (2) examination of the transformation of language used to characterize female juvenile delinquency over the specified period; (3) collaborative efforts between institutions involved in addressing juvenile delinquency issues; (4) specific diagnoses of the causes of the phenomenon; (5) proposed methods of re-socialisation with emphasis on the particular situation of girls.

Author

• Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, Jagiellonian U (Poland)