Scientists' expertise as performance : between state and society, 1860–1960

This chapter focuses on the influence of experts and various forms of scientific expertise on the Belgian juvenile justice system and child welfare policies in the 20th century. Within this specific context - the institutions devoted to the disciplinary reeducation of 'criminal' and 'deviant' subjects - expertise takes on the particular form of a procedure which introduces the authority of science into the exercise of state power, through complex technological modalities of risk assessment, but also through the philosophical primacy of reason and its relation to truth as a form of legitimization. The 1912 Belgian Child Protection Act is interesting in this respect, since it introduced the instrument of social and medical-psychological inquiry into the judicial treatment of delinquent youth. Not only did this reflect a significant shift in the problem-definition of juvenile delinquency, it also created an important new, formal and institutional 'space for experts' within the juvenile justice system. This development was part of a larger movement in which several forms of expert knowledge served to formulate a new set of doctrines and ideas about child welfare policies. In the first part of this chapter, we discuss how firstly judicial and criminological knowledge, then medical, psychological and pedagogical knowledge and, finally, sociological knowledge entered reform debates in this field. In the second part of the chapter, we try to assess the actual role allotted to, and taken by, expert diagnostic practices and power within the Belgian child protection-cum-juvenile justice system. We examine the organisation and importance of 'scientific' observation of juvenile delinquents or 'child guidance' within the central state observation centres for boys (Mol) and for girls (Saint-Servais) from 1913 to the 1950s.We aim to demonstrate how the practice of expert diagnostic observation of 'problem children' contributed first to a medicalization and later to a psychologization of both the definitions of juvenile delinquency and the responses of disciplinary reeducation. Further, we argue that through this performance of expertise and the prism of this specific expert gaze, expertise came to play a crucial role in the construction of juvenile justice cases and the shaping of juveniles' individual trajectories through the system. At the same time, however, we try to indicate that the experts' power and their disciplinary discourse did not reign supreme, but rather involved 'negotation' with other forms and actors of power: it remained largely confined to the inside of the juvenile justice system and was effective only insofar as it met the ambitions and interests of juvenile justice officials on the ground and could be integrated into broader child protection discourses. Finally we shall show that even if, later in the century, certain expert knowledge and practices - such as psychology and sociology - tended to promote giving a degree of autonomy to young people in conflict with the law through a discourse of individualization and responsibilization, it has to be observed that the power of the expert kept these young persons in a subalternate position, more objects than subjects of expertise.This chapter focuses on the influence of experts and various forms of scientific expertise on the Belgian juvenile justice system and child welfare policies in the 20th century. Within this specific context - the institutions devoted to the disciplinary reeducation of 'criminal' and 'deviant' subjects - expertise takes on the particular form of a procedure which introduces the authority of science into the exercise of state power, through complex technological modalities of risk assessment, but also through the philosophical primacy of reason and its relation to truth as a form of legitimization. The 1912 Belgian Child Protection Act is interesting in this respect, since it introduced the instrument of social and medical-psychological inquiry into the judicial treatment of delinquent youth. Not only did this reflect a significant shift in the problem-definition of juvenile delinquency, it also created an important new, formal and institutional 'space for experts' within the juvenile justice system. This development was part of a larger movement in which several forms of expert knowledge served to formulate a new set of doctrines and ideas about child welfare policies. In the first part of this chapter, we discuss how firstly judicial and criminological knowledge, then medical, psychological and pedagogical knowledge and, finally, sociological knowledge entered reform debates in this field. In the second part of the chapter, we try to assess the actual role allotted to, and taken by, expert diagnostic practices and power within the Belgian child protection-cum-juvenile justice system. We examine the organisation and importance of 'scientific' observation of juvenile delinquents or 'child guidance' within the central state observation centres for boys (Mol) and for girls (Saint-Servais) from 1913 to the 1950s.We aim to demonstrate how the practice of expert diagnostic observation of 'problem children' contributed first to a medicalization and later to a psychologization of both the definitions of juvenile delinquency and the responses of disciplinary reeducation. Further, we argue that through this performance of expertise and the prism of this specific expert gaze, expertise came to play a crucial role in the construction of juvenile justice cases and the shaping of juveniles' individual trajectories through the system. At the same time, however, we try to indicate that the experts' power and their disciplinary discourse did not reign supreme, but rather involved 'negotation' with other forms and actors of power: it remained largely confined to the inside of the juvenile justice system and was effective only insofar as it met the ambitions and interests of juvenile justice officials on the ground and could be integrated into broader child protection discourses. Finally we shall show that even if, later in the century, certain expert knowledge and practices - such as psychology and sociology - tended to promote giving a degree of autonomy to young people in conflict with the law through a discourse of individualization and responsibilization, it has to be observed that the power of the expert kept these young persons in a subalternate position, more objects than subjects of expertise.B