On April 20, 1684, Louis XIV declared that any Parisian child, male or female, of the honorable poor under the age of twenty-five who mistreated his or her parents by refusing to work, by engaging in libertine activities, or by becoming a prostitute would be subject to imprisonment at either Bicêtre or La Salpêtrière hospital in newly constructed maisons de correction, or juvenile detention centers. This article argues that detention centers targeted rebellious youths from a select subsection of Paris’s lower sorts, including those with trained and artisanal backgrounds, in order to reeducate and rehabilitate them. As part of eighteenth-century experiments in socialized care, the juvenile detention centers and the families that petitioned them sought to reestablish patriarchal control, both in the household and in the larger community, through rigorous physical punishment and intense vocational training. © 2019 by Society for French Historical Studies
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