Justin Chauvette holds a bachelor’s degree in history from UQTR (2022). He is currently a master’s candidate in history at UQÀM under the supervision of Martin Petitclerc and Jonas Campion. His research project “In order to protect youth”: The relationship between the police and the Social Welfare Court in the regulation of juvenile delinquency in Trois-Rivières, 1950-1955 focuses on the interactions between young people and the police in the process of arrest and appearance in the Social Welfare Court of Trois-Rivières.
As part of his research, he wants to highlight police practices through perspectives of socio-history of police systems, social construction of risk and dangerousness, the organization of public assistance in Quebec in the 20th century, contemporary social issues in the region, while linking these perspectives to an approach in the history of juvenile justice and its institutions, and this, within the theoretical framework of social regulations and in the Mauricie region. In addition, Justin will complete a thesis, in the fall of 2025, which aims to produce a historical analysis of the deindustrialization of the city of Shawinigan, limiting himself to the Saint-Marc district, an area recognized today as the “old working-class district” of the city and the most disadvantaged in the region.
Project Statement:
“In Order to Protect Youth”: The Relationship Between the Police and the Social Welfare Court in the Regulation of Juvenile Delinquency in Trois-Rivières, 1950-1955
I am conducting a research project that focuses on the interactions between young people and the police in the arrest and appearance process within the Social Welfare Court (CBES) of Trois-Rivières between 1950 and 1955. This court was granted the power to judge young offenders under the age of 18, according to the provisions of the Juvenile Delinquents Act. The objective of my project is to analyze the establishment and role of this court in the management of criminalized youth in the city of Trois-Rivières while comparing this experience with that of similar courts established in Quebec. I will especially place great importance on the analysis of interactions between the police and the court. Thus, the research project will shed light on and deepen the links between the growth of police concerns about youth and the transformation of the management of juvenile delinquency cases by the CBES of the Trois-Rivières district. The study of the interaction between justice and the police will also help me to understand the social (and gendered) construction of delinquent youth considered as a category of the discourse of insecurity during the 1950s. Based mainly on the files of the CBES of Trois-Rivières, and since criminalized youth in Mauricie have never been analyzed by historiography, this study allows me to produce original research important to the social history of Quebec.
