The Transformation of Strategies for Controlling Admissions: Professionalization and Youth Processing Organizations

Abstract

This article presents highlights from a larger study tracing the history (1908-1984) of public policies affecting the disposition of delinquent, neglected, and emotionally disturbed anglophone youth in Montreal. The impact of these policies is examined from the vantage point of a single organization, The Boys' Farm/Shawbridge Youth Centres, and its long attempts to control the admission of clients. The analysis demonstrates how professionalization altered, masked, and legitimated organizational strategies for selecting desirable clients and warding off undesirable ones. The effectiveness of these transformed client-recruitment strategies is clearly displayed against the backdrop of earlier, balder and less successful strategies.