What could be more "liberal" than believing in society's responsibility for crime--that crime is less the product of free will than of poverty and other social forces beyond the individual's control? And what could be more "progressive" than the belief that the law should aim for social, not merely individual, justice? This work of social, cultural, and legal history uncovers the contested origins and paradoxical consequences of the two protean concepts in the cosmopolitan cities of industrial America at the turn of the twentieth century.

Part I. Transformations: 1. The price of justice; 2. A managerial revolution; 3. Rethinking responsibility for a social age; 4. Socializing the law; Part II. Practices: Interlude: Socialized Law in Action; 5. 'Keep sober, work, and support his family': the court of domestic relations; 6. 'To protect her from the greed as well as the passions of man': the morals court; 7. 'Upon the threshold of manhood': the boys' court; 8. 'Keep the life stream pure': the psychopathic laboratory; Part III. Misgivings: 9. America's first war on crime; Afterword.