jan 1, 1825 - New York House of Refuge

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The reformatory opened on January 1, 1825.

Prior to the establishment of today’s juvenile justice system, troubled children were offered intervention efforts focused on family control, in addition to use of the almshouses—locked, one- room buildings that housed many types of people with many different problems. During the later 1700s, the family was responsible for control of children, with the most common response by the community being to remove children and place them with other families ; typically, this happened because of poverty. Many times, these children were “bound out,” becoming indentured servants for the new family as a form of social control of troubled children. If there was no suitable placement with a family, however, an almshouse was one of the few community alternatives (Bremner, Barnard, Hareven, & Mennel, 1970; Grob, 1994; Rothman, 1971).

By the 1800s, with the impact of increased poverty across many regions of the country, urban growth particularly in the Northeast, economic downturns, and immigrant influxes new facilities were established in major cities to help control troubled, wayward, or orphaned children— the houses of refuge.

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