Deviant Youth between Public Morality and Expertise. Law-Making and Child Welfare Public Policy under the Vichy Regime

The Vichy regime was a turning point in the history of public policy of child welfare. It inherited republican debates on the reform of the juvenile justice system. Beyond the alarmist rhetoric of a totalitarian regime maintaining an ambiguous relationship with “its” youth, public policies of child welfare were elaborated in a complex process, involving private and public sector reformers, moral entrepreneurs and scientists, lawyers and civil servants, judges and administrators. Thus, a “science of government” targeting pri- marily “unadjusted” childhood was developed in the shade of ministerial offices, in the context of increasing intervention of the bureaucratic state. Employing a socio-historical approach, this article intends to take a closer look at the very making of the norms concerning at-risk children.