Treating Delinquent and Feebleminded Juveniles at the Beloit Industrial School for Girls in Early Twentieth-Century Kansas.

This study explores the troubling and unintended consequences of public health efforts to address the problem of juvenile delinquency and feeblemindedness. Health care professionals, superintendents, and other authority figures equated undesirable juvenile behaviors such as keeping "bad company" or "falling in with the wrong crowd," truancy, and petty theft with poor breeding, low intelligence, and inheritable criminal tendencies. This article interrogates historical documentation culled from the Kansas State Historical Society (KSHS) and focuses on a few specific cases to reveal the ways a patriarchal political and medical state system both protected and alienated young woman accused of a myriad of behavior issues including delinquency, incorrigibility, and feeblemindedness.