Joseph C. Miller Lecture by Hendrik Hartog

The talk will reflect about the relationships between criminal law & policing, on the one hand, & property law, on the other, focusing on the historical case of Jack Robbins, something of a confidence man as well as a master of advertising. He also focused public attention on “the boy problem,” which was a pervasive and real concern in early twentieth century America. His story offers an interesting counter-narrative to the histories that have been written about Progressive reform & the development of the juvenile court & other carceral reforms of the early twentieth century. In 1914 & 1915, he created “The Boys’ Brotherhood Republic“ in Chicago as an alternative to the reform schools and other juvenile court related institutions of the city. For the next thirty plus years, the BBR would be an institution run by the boys, from which adult control was rejected. Robbins’s critiques & writings offer an early twentieth century preview of arguments of today’s police & prison abolitionists.