Penal-welfare and youth pockets: A historical case study of the indeterminate youth prison sanction in Denmark

Introduction

In a 1924 parliamentary speech, former Danish Minister of Justice, K.K. Steincke, outlined the principles for a new Danish Penal Code emphasising the need for a more comprehensive approach to addressing crime and social deprivation. ¹ One of the key innovations of the new Penal Code, passed in 1930, was the YPS – a prison sentence for young men aged 15–21, deemed to exhibit ‘criminal tendencies’ or ‘inclination toward idleness or seeking bad company’ (Borgerlig Straffelov, 1930: Section 41). Unlike ordinary fixed-term sentences determined by the nature and severity of the alleged offence, the YPS was a relatively indeterminate sanction based on the young prisoners’ individual progression and behaviour during sentencing. Irrespective of the offence, the YPS entailed a term of minimum one and up to 3 years, followed by conditional parole with the possibility of re-incarceration for up to one year (Borgerlig Straffelov, 1930: Section 42; Fransen, 2009). The duration of the sentence and probation period was administratively determined by a new Prison Board in each individual case (Borgerlig Straffelov, 1930: Section 42). These young prisoners thus faced persistent uncertainty about sentence and parole length and timing.

This article responds to the themed issue's invitation to explore the conceptual utility of ‘pockets of punitiveness’ by analysing the historical origins of the ideals and practices underpinning the YPS. It does so by focusing first on how the YPS evolved and gained support, and second, by examining the conditions under which its confinement practices were reformed and reproduced. The article brings studies of punishment into dialogue with welfare-historical research on the Nordics in order to broaden the understanding of ‘coercive confinement’(O'Donnell and O'Sullivan, 2020; O'Sullivan and O'Donnell, 2007) of youth in this region. In addition, I engage with youth history scholarship to situate the YPS within the growing attention to youth at the turn of the twentieth century. Empirically, the study draws on a comprehensive selection of archival and published material extending from the first drafting of a special youth sanction in the 1890s to the implementation of the YPS in the 1930s. Analysing these primary sources within the broader context of Danish welfare state history allows me to examine the historical origins of the YPS, its transformations, and its resilient features.

My analysis highlights that the intensive penal practices of the YPS – such as indeterminate imprisonment, disproportional sanctioning, and limited legal protection – were integral to the broader institutional framework of early Danish welfare state formation emerging in the late nineteenth century, where increased investment in governing and protecting children and youth formed a constitutive element (see e.g., Bjerre, 2022; Løkke, 1991; Petersen, 2011 ). This connection endowed the YPS with promises of being meaningful, effective, and modern, which contributed to the resilience of its underlying principles even beyond its abolition in 1973. Based on these findings, the article goes on to discuss the concept of pockets of punitiveness in relation to the YPS. First, I contend that since the sancion's penal practices were partly veiled by their association with prevailing principles of child welfare, the sanction at first sight could seem to resemble a pocket. However, building on insights from influencial Nordic welfare-historical studies, I argue that the punitiveness of the YPS was not an unintended effect or deviation from an otherwise humane penal norm. Rather, the YPS aligned with penal-welfare amalgamations integral to child welfare governance and considered to be modern and benevolent by contemporary reformers. These insights prompt questions about where the cloth ends, and the pocket begins. Lastly, I propose that it might be fruitful to understand youth deemed a(t) risk as a pocket within the broader fabric of welfare governance (the cloth). From this discussion, the article highlights that such pockets, then, are not static exceptions, but dynamic features, composed of multiple layers of persistent, shifting, and recursive patterns.

The article proceeds by reviewing key literature on welfare, punishment, and youth history, aiming to integrate these scholarly fields into a unified model for historical analysis, followed by a section outlining the methodological approach. In the subsequent analytical sections, I trace the historical roots and resilience of the YPS, and finally, I discuss the study's findings in relation to pockets of punitiveness.

Coercive confinement at the intersection of welfare, prison, and youth studies

As Garland (1985) famously argued for the British case, what came to be known as the welfare state in the mid-twentieth century derived from penal-welfare strategies emerging in the late nineteenth century. However, while studies of Nordic penal systems draw extensively on the sociology of punishment, they engage less with Nordic welfare historiography, leaving the emergence and expansion of coercive confinement in criminal justice within Nordic welfare contexts largely underexplored (important exceptions are e.g., Barker, 2013; Brinkgaard, 2022; Smith, 2012).

As youth historians have emphasised, temporal boundaries of youth are not merely natural biological facts but historically contingent, and thus constituted through historically specific political, economic, social, and cultural contexts (e.g., Gillis, 1974; Hendrick, 1990; Mintz, 2008). Although concerns about ‘delinquent youth’ have a longer history (Shore, 2018), they gained renewed urgency as industrialisation and urbanisation brought ‘the social question’ to the fore across most Western societies (Dumortier, 2018; Gillis, 1974; Petersen, 2011). During this period, expanding expertise within social sciences such as criminology, psychology, and education, together with young people themselves, defined and categorised youth in new ways – imbued with potential, vulnerability, but also potential danger (Pomfret and Syrett, 2023: 20ff.). The conflation of these new forms of knowledge with prevailling child-rearing approaches supported and constituted new regulatory frameworks and institutions, including schooling, youth organisations, juvenile courts, and other age-based legislation invested in governing the transition from childhood to adulthood, in locally adapted ways (see e.g., Bjerre, 2022; Hendrick, 1990; Lesko, 2000). ²

In this context, specialised juvenile courts developed rapidly across most of the Western world to replace ordinary courts in cases against children and young people (Bush and Tanenhaus, 2018). The Nordic countries, however, developed a distinct model. Following the first Nordic Child Welfare Acts, passed around 1900, decisions concerning children below the age of criminal responsibility (in Denmark raised from 10 to 14 years in 1905) were assigned to municipal boards within the social welfare system, primarily composed of non-professional laypersons, rather than specialised juvenile courts (Andresen et al., 2011: 24; Bjerre, 2022: 533). The absence of juvenile courts entailed that young people aged 15–17 (and often up to 21) were processed through the adult criminal justice system, the child welfare system, or a combination of both (Lappi-Seppälä, 2015: 64).

Given this specific Nordic trajectory, youth crime control in the Nordics is often portrayed as exceptionally mild, leaving pockets of punitiveness largely hidden in both plain sight and in prison statistics (see also Henriksen and Prieur, 2019; Lappi-Seppälä, 2015). However, welfare historians have shown that despite institutional differences, the Nordic child welfare model in many respects echoed international trends in juvenile justice and emerging penal-welfare governance, shaped by ideas frome.g. child-saving movements and criminology circulating across international expert networks (e.g., Andresen et al., 2011; Bjerre, 2022; Dahl, 1992). As such, the first Danish Child Welfare Act of 1905 (CWA; Børneloven) reflected these broader trends by institutionalising longstanding voluntary and philanthropic practices within state-driven child welfare and by combining principles of protection and control (Bjerre, 2023: 20ff.; Petersen, 2011: 738). As Danish historian Cecilie Bjerre (2022: 538) notes, such insights tell ‘a different story of the Nordic welfare states than does the conventional narrative of a strong state with a large public sector’.

Moreover, Nordic historians have revealed highly interventionist measures employed for welfare purposes (e.g., indeterminate institutionalisation, isolation, forced removals, and involuntary sterilisations) directed at population groups deemed in or a danger in specific historical contexts (e.g., ‘unruly boys’, ‘promiscuous girls’, citizens with disabilities, and indigenous populations) (e.g., Jensen et al., 2025; Kirkebæk, 2004; Koch, 1996). Yet prisons and the criminal justice system – and thus the YPS – have largely remained outside canonical Danish welfare historiography. The article draws on insights from influential Nordic welfare historiography while also contributing to the field by integrating the prison as analytical object. Importantly, in Denmark youth continued(/-s) to appear before the same courts and serve prison sentences. Thus, the study expands the conventional conceptualisation of the welfare state by incorporating the penal system into Nordic welfare historiography.

By contrast, penal studies have examined the Danish YPS, interpreting its historical trajectory through criminological paradigms that situate it within the rise and decline of the rehabilitation ideology (Fransen, 2009; Kyvsgaard, 2004; Lappi-Seppälä and Storgaard, 2014). Moreover, studies have identified important shifts in contemporary Danish youth crime control since the 1990s, often interpreted as a departure from a previous state where social and penal legislation were separated, towards a punitive turn involving increasing incorporation of punitivel approaches into the social system and/or a return to previous rehabilitation approaches (e.g., Henriksen et al., 2024; Larsen et al., 2023; Storgaard, 2009). While ‘the social’ and ‘the penal’ may traditionally be opposites in legal terms, and while it remains crucial to illuminate recent punitive shifts in Danish youth crime control, merely paradigmatic readings risk obscuring the complex historical continuity of penal-welfare entanglements (Churchill, 2019). While excellent studies have already demonstrated the blurred lines between punishment and protection in contemporary youth confinement in Denmark (e.g., Henriksen and Prieur, 2019; Storgaard, 2022), this study seeks to draw attention to enduring historical roots of these practices.

Using the YPS as a case study, the article examines ‘coercive confinement’ (O’Donnell and O'Sullivan, 2020; O'Sullivan and O’Donnell, 2007) of youth in the Danish welfare state by foregrounding inter-institutional connections between social and penal systems from a longitudinal perspective (O’Donnell and O'Sullivan, 2020: 2). I argue that this approach deepens our understanding of how coercive youth confinement in Denmark is shaped by enduring penal-welfare entanglements, continuously negotiated across institutional sites and temporal registers.

Notes on methodology

The analysis draws on archival and published sources – including youth case files from the first Youth Prison, Søbysøgaard, ministerial case files, commission reports, parliamentary debates, and academic journals – spanning from the initial drafting of a special youth sanction in connection with the first Danish CWA in the 1890s to its implementation in the Penal Code in the 1930s.

Reliance on official records carries inherent limitations, as they predominantly reflect adult and expert perspectives (Maynes, 2008; Seidelin and Larsen, 2021). Accordingly, this material tends to reveal less about lived experiences of youth than about how norms for youth's desirable or deviant behaviour were observed, assessed, and inscribed by contemporary adults. Nevertheless, even young people's ‘silence’ in official records can sometimes speak when approached with critical and reflexive attention to the complexies shaping their experiences (Hall, 2017; Spyrou, 2011). In this view, young people's experiences are understood as historically, culturally, and relationally constituted (Alexander et al., 2023; Maynes, 2008; Olsen et al., 2024). In this study, I treat the official sources as historicised reflections of prevailing norms, while also tracing how mediated and institutionally shaped youth experiences contributed to shaping legal and regulatory frameworks. During my archival research in the Danish Ministry of Justice case files at the Danish National Archives, I coincidentally came across a single 1973 handwritten letter addressed to the Minister of Justice from a young man serving a YPS sentence. This unique document provides a more direct insight into how indeterminate sentencing was experienced. Taken together, the selected empirical material enables me to trace tensions between reformative ideals of the YPS and youth experiences. My study thus aims to move beyond a narrow focus on power versus agency, foregrounding the entangled and mutually constitutive interplay of youth crime governance ideals and young people's experiences (Gleason, 2016; Olsen et al., 2024).

In order to analyse these dynamics in relation to the concept of pockets of punitiveness, the study adopts a pluralistic conception of historical time (see e.g., Braudel, 1980; Koselleck, 2002, 2004), which suggests that ‘any given “now” is composed of multiple “layers” of historical time – from surface occurrences to deep structures, from linear trajectories to recursive dynamics’ (Churchill et al., 2022: 27). This approach allows me to unfold confluences of continuity and change, linking the YPS to its past and future by situating contemporary developments within deeper structures of welfare governance in the Danish context.

Coercive upbringing and youth confinement

Returning to Steincke's speech in the introduction, the ambitions of the new Penal Code in its preparatory phase reflected a reconfiguration of the ‘crime problem’ as well as its envisaged solutions. But although the YPS was not formally introduced until the 1930 Penal Code, its principles were already developed during the preparatory work of the first Danish CWA in the 1890s.

In the wording of the CWA of 1905, the law addressed both so-called neglected (forsømte) and deviant (forbryderske) children and youth, placing them under the remit of the same legislation and practices within the child welfare system (Bjerre, 2023: 4f., 21; Løkke, 1991). Nevertheless, while a separate juvenile justice system was not implemented in Denmark, the commission report preceding the CWA shows that leading criminologists and legal experts actively sought to establish a special prison sanction for young people above the age of criminal responsibility, which the commission wished to raise to 15 (Betænkning fra Kommissionen Angaaende Statstilsyn med Børneopdragelsen; BKSB, 1895: 36). According to the commission, creating a special prison sanction for young people above the age of criminal responsibility was ‘a natural, almost necessary supplement’ to the commission's work on child welfare as it was ‘based on exactly the same considerations’ (BKSB, 1895: 101). This call was motivated by broader criticisms of the existing 1866 Penal Code voiced by reform-oriented criminologists, with children and youth as their primary concern (BKSB, 1985: 101ff. See also Kyvsgaard, 2001: 109).

One of the commission members, criminal law Professor and President of The Danish Criminology Association (DCA; Dansk Kriminalistforening), Carl Torp, was entrusted with drafting the Proposal for a Law on Punishments for Young Offenders (BKSB, 1895: 101–122). Torp and his colleagues in DCA considered the existing practice of reducing sentences (most often by half) for young offenders to be ‘wholly unsuitable’ (ganske uskikket) and even ‘harmful’ (skadelig) (BKSB, 1895: 37. See also Bjerre, 2022: 534). In the view of the commission's legal members, it was precisely young people's age and perceived moral immaturity that made them stress how crucial it was that the state did not simply ‘let go of young people’ upon reaching the age of 15 (BKSB, 1895: 36). Rather, they argued that the state should extend institutional measures to include longer, individually determined prison sentences for young people above this age (BKSB, 1895: 103–104). Thus, the purpose of introducing significantly increased prison sentences was not to impose stricter punishment. Rather, extended institutionalisation combined with coercive upbringing and training was consistent with modern criminological ideas, as well as with renewed concerns and investments in children and youth (see also Bjerre, 2023; Kyvsgaard, 2001; Petersen, 2011). The legal commission members argued that, without such measures, the CWA would effectively abandon adolescents over 15 at the most critical life stage (BKSB, 1895: 37).

While a Penal Code amendment introduced non-prosecution and suspended sentences for the 14- to 18-year-olds in lieu of (at times forced) participation in child welfare measures in 1905 (Skjerbæk, 1936: 103), a youth prison sanction wasn’t adopted until the 1930 Penal Code. Instead, and quite contrary to the proposal's objectives, a youth unit was established at Nyborg State Prison in 1913, providing shorter sentences for young people (Fransen, 2009: 303). Thus while reform-minded criminologists’ greatly influenced the formations of the CWA, as thoroughly demonstrated by welfare historians (Bjerre, 2022; Løkke, 1991; Petersen, 2011), the penal system was not yet ready for a dedicated youth prison sanction.

Those who offended their way to freedom

Instead of a youth prison sanction, the CWA mandated two state reformatories – Bråskovgård for boys, and Vejstrup for girls, established in 1908 – for youths above the age of 16 (sometimes 15) (Bjerre, 2023: 22-23; Larsen, 2020). These new reformatories primarily housed young people who had received suspended sentences for serious or repeated offences with conditions of long-term placement in child welfare institutions, or absconded from social institutions (Nielsen, 1986: 63ff.). As in much of Western Europe and North America privately initiated and philanthropically run reformatories were prevalent in Denmark throughout the 1800s (Shore, 2018; Sköld, 2015; Løkke, 1991) - a tradition the Danish CWA largely formalised (Bjerre, 2022; Petersen, 2011: 703ff.). Bråskovgård and Vejstrup, however, exemplified the state's expanding involvement in youth delinquency (Nielsen, 1986: 62ff.). Although formally embedded within the child welfare system, Bråskovgård was a prison-like institution with closed wards, where young people spent their leisure time in cells and attended school in a so-called ‘punishment class’ (straffeklasse) (see also Bjerre, 2023: 22–23; Nielsen, 1986: 73f.; Skjerbæk, 1936: 111).

In 1918, a commission was appointed by the Ministry of Justice to revise the provisions of the CWA (Betænkning fra Udvalget til Revision af Børneloven og Plejebørnsloven; BURBP, 1920). The commission members generally recommended increased use of such closed wards, with a further advice to establish even more due to increased pressure on the social institutions following the implementation of the CWA. However, as the closed units were limited to five-month disciplinary measures, directors of the these institutions pleaded for a distinct facility designed for long-term placement of young ‘incorrigibles’ (uopdragelige) (Larsen, 2020) who were deemed unfit for placements in open facilities within the child welfare system (BURBP, 1920: 137. See also Larsen, 2020: 254).

A particular problem had arisen with so-called escapees (rømmere) who fled child welfare institutions to commit petty crime while they were out. This practice was described as young people's attempt to ‘offend their way to freedom’ (forbryde sig fri) (Skjerbæk, 1925: 230. See also Larsen, 2020: 189–190). And as commission members as well as directors of the social institutions, prison governors and judges recognised, these escapees deliberately attempted to transfer from indefinite child welfare placements to shorter, time-delimited prison sentences (Borgsmidt-Hansen, 1925: 69–70; Goll, 1912: 179–180). As Danish jurist and judge August Goll (1912: 180) stressed: ‘[t]hey simply reason as follows: both are deprivation of liberty, but punishment is shorter and therefore preferable’. The leading figures within both the child welfare and criminal justice systems were thus well aware that young people experienced the measures taken by the social welfare system as being far more intrusive than those taken by the existing criminal justice system.

While these practices reveal how young people experienced and navigated coercive institutional power, they cannot be reduced to portrayals of youth acting as ‘heroes of their own lives’ (Gordon, 1988). Rather, quite contrary to the escapees’ intentions, staff and lawmakers reappropriated these acts to justify legislation which substantially expanded youth imprisonment. The need to establish a longer-term closed facility within the penal apparatus was explicitly voiced by key actors within the child welfare system with the purpose of addressing the problem posed by youth who offended their way to freedom. Bråskovgård's director, J. Schou, appealed to the commission revising the CWA to establish a reformatory youth prison with sentences matching child welfare placements. He argued that this would resolve the issue, as ‘it would soon become evident that the juveniles’ desire to offend their way to freedom would diminish, once it was clear that imprisonment under the penal system was just as long-lasting as placement under the child welfare system’ (BURBP, 1920: 137). Schou further reasoned that since a revision of the Penal Code was already underway, any reluctance to establish a closed facility, encircled by a perimeter wall, within the child welfare system could be resolved in the same sweep (BURBP, 1920: 138). The practical realities of the child welfare system had sparked concerns that it had too punitive a character (Faye Jacobsen, 1989: 261). Accordingly, questions concerning establishing fully closed institutions within the child welfare system were not unproblematic. A special youth prison sanction was therefore proposed once again to alleviate pressure on social institutions (Straffelovskommissionen, 1923: 122).

Moreover, suggestions of significantly extending youth confinement was legitimised by the ethos of the best interest of youth, which was regarded consistent with the interests of the state (see also Løkke, 1991: 101; Nilsson, 2017: 53). As Goll (1912: 188) argued, society as a whole would benefit from introducing a new youth prison sanction ‘where discipline and order go hand in hand with humanity and concern for the future welfare of young people’. Following the designation of youth as a specific category of concern, lengthy, individualised imprisonment was thus deemed consistent with modern penal-welfare principles rather than contradicting humane reform. Those who offended their way to freedom were considered the most serious problem, compromising not only their own morals and those of their peers, but also the social order both within and outside the social institutions. Goll (1912: 180) argued that the escapees undermined effective state care and warned that ‘the stream of slander against the leaders of the institution and life there’ would further spread to the rest of society. From this perspective, those who offended their way to freedom eroded both youth morality and the legitimacy of state-assigned coercive upbringing, and thereby the state itself.

Moving young men from the social to the penal system

Leading reformers broadly agreed on establishing a youth institution based on the British Borstal model, adapted to local conditions. The main debate centred on whether such a facility should fall under the child welfare or criminal justice system. While England and Norway excluded such provisions from ordinary penal jurisdictions (Borgsmidt-Hansen, 1929: 253), the Danish YPS was incorporated into the 1930 Penal Code. And while British Borstals mandated a 2-year minimum, the Danish Criminal Law Commission (CLC; Straffelovskommissionen) opted for 1 year. Not because shorter sentences were regarded as more benevolent, but (quite contrary) due to concerns that Danish courts would otherwise continue to impose regular, shorter prison sentences for youth and restrict YPS to only the most serious cases (CLC, 1923: 123–124). According to the commission, this would run directly counter to the purpose of the suggested YPS, which needed to be applied preventively to young men deemed at risk of becoming so-called habitual offenders, even ‘without the offences they have committed necessarily being of a particularly serious nature’ (CLC, 1923: 124).

The 1930 Penal Code was largely based on the 1923 report prepared by the CLC consisting of entirely of DCA members. In many ways, the 1930 Code expanded upon and refined the principles of coercive upbringing of youth, as developed in the 1890s, into the penal system. Torp's 1895-proposal was further advanced with strong suggestions to establish a special reception unit, concrete provisions of indeterminacy and parole, and outlines of the concrete prison facility (Justitsministeriet, 1931). Moreover, the Penal Code of 1930 finally raised the age of criminal responsibility to 15, as was first proposed by the CWA-commission in 1895 (Borgerlig Straffelov, 1930: Section 15). Thus, the understanding of youth as a critical life stage was formally codified in the Penal Code of 1930. As the CLC emphasised, intervention was considered particularly urgent for youth aged 15 to 21, while ‘they are still quite young and mentally and physically receptive to development, seeking to make them useful to society and its life through favourable influence, whereas without such influence they will inevitably sink into the ranks of the most dangerous and anti-social habitual offenders’ (CLC, 1923: 123).

In addition to being modelled on the British Borstals (Fransen, 2009: 302), the YPS also reflects the Nordic child welfare model's strong legacy by prioritising local, day-to-day supervision and social relations over standardised procedures (see e.g., Bjerre, 2022, 2023; Petersen, 2011). Although the YPS was embedded within the penal system and sentences were imposed by the courts, the CLC was reluctant to allow the courts to assess the young men's sentence and parole lenght. Accordingly, the 1930 Penal Code introduced a new Prison Board, comprising a judge, the Prison Service director, a psychiatrist, and child welfare representatives, tasked with providing individualised assessments of release from indeterminate sentences, including workhouse, secure detention, and the YPS (Fransen, 2009: 298–299). Although this independent expert body was entrusted with decision-making authority over all the new indeterminate special measures of the 1930 Penal Code, its role was considered particularly important in relation to the YPS, where specialised knowledge of the young men's personal background and ongoing monitoring of their work ability was especially essential, due to their symbolic value as bearers of the future (CLC, 1923: 437).

Unlike court rulings, the Prison Board's decisions were final and did not allow for judicial review, transparency, appeal, or complaint (Borgerlig Straffelov, 1930: Section 12). The Prison Board's decisions on sentence length and parole conditions depended primarily on the prison governor's recommendations, based on his ongoing assessments of the young men's behaviour, progress, and life course. While on parole, for instance, the young men were required to maintain regular written contact with the governor, who monitored whether parole was proceeding as intended. ³ As the Governor of the Youth Prison at Søbysøgaard wrote in a letter to a young man granted 1 year of parole in 1936:

Now that you have finally written to me, you shall receive your money. But do be sensible and write to me from time to time. You ought to do so out of common courtesy, because it is required of you by the Resolution, and because a situation could arise where it might be asked whether you have complied with the obligations imposed on you. ⁴

As can be seen, the prison governor's evaluations often combined concern for the inmates’ wellbeing with authority over potential re-incarceration. As the governor's assessments were in essence highly subjective, normative, and informal, this arrangement carried inherent risks of arbitrariness, disproportionality, and inconsistency (see also Heckscher, 1980). In some cases, these correspondences also indicate that the discretionary model could, occasionally, permit greater leniency, as the governor was able to exercise flexibility at his own discretion. ⁵ The consistent unpredictability, however, remained constant, leaving the prison governor's subjective assessments of what was in young men's best interests as the ultimate authority. The young men's parents would occasionally also write to the prison governor, seeking clarity on their son's prospective release date and, perhaps, hoping their appeal might positively influence his assessments. Such hopes, however, rarely materialised. As the governor at Søbysøgaard replied to a mother in 1936: ‘However things may turn out, I ask you to trust that we act in accordance with what we believe to be in [name]'s best interests’. ⁶

Rooted in the Danish CWA, the YPS derived legitimacy from prevailing international trends in social science and modern governance principles, adapted to the local context with discretion and ‘labour of love’ emphasised as a core democratic ideal (Bjerre, 2022: 525, 537). Yet despite benevolent intentions, this model significantly challenged principles of equality before the law and proportionality (Heckscher, 1980; Storgaard, 2004; Vestergaard, 2017). Moreover, although juveniles sentenced to YPS were primarily placed in open facilities, indeterminacy clearly structured their experience while sentencing. Just a few months before the abolition of the YPS in 1973, a young inmate sent a handwritten letter to the Minister of Justice, K. Axel Nielsen. He wrote:

Since I am serving time in youth prison, I would like to ask if you could inform me how things are progressing with the new proposal to abolish youth imprisonment. It's an enormous pressure to be here without knowing when I will be released. ⁷

The letter was written during the protracted legislative process leading to the abolition of the YPS, of which the young inmate was clearly aware. Although the original letter contains a few spelling errors, the handwriting is clear, and the tone is formal, presumably reflective of the young man's attempt to conform to ministerial correspondence conventions. This letter illustrates how experience (e.g., of indeterminate imprisonment by a young man in the 1970s) must be conceived as inherently performative, mediated, and relational (Alexander et al., 2023; Olsen et al., 2024). Despite its mediated character, it provides a rare insight into the first-hand voices of young prisoners, otherwise largely absent from official archives (Seidelin and Larsen, 2021). Moreover, assembling these experiences with firsthand accounts of youth in social institutions during this period (e.g., in Bjerre, 2023: 23; Nielsen, 1986) and those who allegedly offended their way to freedom (as highlighted above), underscores that indeterminate coercive confinement was experienced as highly intrusive irrespective of institutional affiliation. These testimonies thus reveal clear discrepancies between reformative ideals and lived experiences. Derived from the ‘Nordic model’ of child welfare, such descriptions highlight the inter-institutional nature of coercive youth confinement in Denmark. The discretionary authority of child welfare thereby extended into criminal justice, where ‘the best interest of youth’ tended to override legal safeguards which, for the case of the YPS, resulted in lengthier confinement compared to adult offenders.

Expanding the category of youth

The debate surrounding the rise of the criminal age of responsibility during the preparatory work of the CWA (which was raised from 10 to 14 years through an amendment to the Penal Code in 1905, although 15 was proposed by the CWA commission) was pivotal in defining youth as a social category in new distinctive ways. Raising the criminal age of responsibility to 14 years formally extended the category of childhood, and further reflected broader transformations in the understanding of youth as a formative stage of life warranting intensified attention to its welfare, discipline, and moral development (Hendrick, 1990; Mintz, 2008; Pomfret and Syrett, 2023). With reference to these young people's lack of ‘moral maturity’ (BKSB, 1895: 115), the CWA-commission deemed youth unsuitable for fixed-term sentences and in need of coercive forms of upbringing. Referring to youth aged 15–18, ‘whose character has not yet fully developed’ (BKSB, 1895: 36), Torp's proposal highlighted that, ‘For this age group, the principle applies more than for any other that one should delay punishment as long as possible, but when one punishes, it must be felt’ (BKSB, 1895: 36).

The recognition of youth as a distinct life stage in Denmark was influenced by international research in criminology, child psychology, and education (De Coninck-Smith, 1999; Løkke, 1991: 103; Petersen, 2011: 755). Danish reformers drew particularly on German research, while key works, such as G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence (1904), were not translated into Danish (De Coninck-Smith, 1999: 661–662). Nevertheless, even though most contemporary Danish Penal Code reformers did not explicitly cite Hall's work, his core idea of adolescence as a universal life stage – vulnerable and uniquely malleable (Pomfret and Syrett, 2023: 34; Romesburg, 2013: 235) – clearly resonated with their reformist ambitions.

Though universalised, the modern concept of adolescence, as shaped by Hall and his contemporaries, was constructed along gendered, class-based, and racial lines (Alexander and Sleight, 2023: 4; Lesko, 2000). Whereas male youth were primarily understood in relation to the public sphere (e.g., workplaces, streets, factories, and social life), perceptions of young girls were more often attached to notions of domesticity (e.g., marriage and motherhood) (Dyhouse, 1981; Hendrick, 1990: 5; Lesko, 2000). In broad terms, deviant youth in Denmark was associated with perceived lack of discipline, morality, and improper maturity, yet these perceptions were further organised around social class and traditional binary gender lines. Contemporary Danish reformers primarily linked young women's deviance to ostensibly ‘promiscuous’ and sexually ‘transgressive’ behaviour, rendering them more susceptible to irreversible interventions, including forced sterilisation, driven by concerns about their capacity to bear so-called degenerate children (Kirkebæk, 2004; Larsen, 2020; Smed and Grønbæk Jensen, 2024). Conversely, the YPS reformers viewed young men as amenable to physical and moral training suited for wage labour and independent civic participation (see also Nilsson, 2017 on the Swedish case).

Accordingly, the rationale for establishing the YPS was primarily framed from a male perspective, centred on what Harry Hendrick (1990: 6) has called the ‘boy labour problem’, frequently treated as synonymous with broader working-class anxieties, which shaped and legitimised several reforms targeting adolescence at the turn of the twentieth century (Bjerre, 2023: 6; De Coninck-Smith, 1999; Løkke, 1991). In principle, young women could also be sentenced to YPS, but reformers referred to them only casually, considering such cases extremely rare, if not inconceivable. Accordingly, the reformers maintained that establishing a dedicated YPS facility for girls was unnecessary and that, if such cases ever arose, it would be sufficient to place them in separate units within ordinary prisons (Justitsministeriet, 1931: 5). The YPS's architecture and reformative objectives were thus designed exclusively for young men – not only because they constituted the majority in official crime records, but also because male and female deviance was perceived in distinct ways.

This gendered and class-based understanding of youth was key to the very design of the YPS, which placed ‘special emphasis on the prisoner's spiritual and personal development through education, physical exercise and outdoor work, as well as training for a job that will allow them to support themselves after release’ (Justitsministeriet, 1931: 6). Furthermore, these priorities were reflected in framings of young people's perceived (practical and mental) skill deficits. Judge Goll (1912: 181), for instance, presented an illustrative image of young men in need of more comprehensive reform than the child welfare system provided:

[A]ny young boy whose upbringing society perhaps sacrifices far more than it can afford, [who] considers it a human right that he cannot remove his hands from his pockets, walk ten steps, or carry out the work that is required of him at residential institutions for the sake of his own future, without receiving ample, resounding payment for his sacrifices of personal laziness and independence (…).

The reform of young men within the YPS was thus built upon a middle-class image of the worker who, in addition to benefiting from coercive upbringing, ought to contribute usefully to society (CLC, 1923: 123). It was therefore considered essential that the new prison facility provided access to workshops surrounded by agricultural land (Justitsministeriet, 1931. See also Fransen, 2009), with a rural environment commonly idealised for the period (Løkke, 1991: 121f.; Sköld, 2015: 78f.).

In Denmark, Hall's adolescence also gained eugenic inflections, strongly endorsed by leading psychiatrists such as Christian Geill and August Wimmer, who were both leading members of the DCA (see e.g., Geill, 1915; Wimmer, 1909). In the case of children and young people deemed ‘degenerated’, they argued, institutional placement should continue ‘for as long as deemed necessary’, and possibly beyond the age of 18 or 21 (Wimmer, 1909: 258). In his book, Degenerated Children (1909), which had a significant influence on the extensive Danish sterilisation laws, ⁸ Wimmer cited Hall's work on schoolchildren, benchmarking them against the so-called degenerated child (Wimmer, 1909: 82, 88). Moreover, in his forensic psychiatric lectures (1927: 333), Wimmer drew on European scholars influenced by Hall's Adolescence. ⁹ The very category of youth also served as a legitimising factor in the designation of indeterminate placement. As Wimmer (1909: 258) explained: ‘[t]here is something inconsistent about releasing these semi-adults into society during puberty, a time when their resilience is further diminished’. As in most Western societies at the turn of the twentieth century, neglected and delinquent youth were often perceived to threaten and destabilise existing social morality and hierarchies (Hendrick, 2003: 7ff.; Løkke, 1991). Influenced by prevailing criminological schools – particularly the teachings of Lombroso, Ferri, and Listz – Wimmer and Geill linked mental deficiencies in ‘pubescent criminals’ to broader social realities:

Even though mental degeneration is far from solely responsible for the ever-growing army of child criminals, and even though social conditions of various kinds may play the primary role, it is nevertheless certain that mentally degenerate children and adolescents supply a very large number of recruits to the criminal ranks. The highest percentage comes from intellectually disabled and morally degenerate children (Wimmer, 1909: 142).

Accordingly, concerns for the so-called degenerated young lawbreakers was closely tied to fears of societal decline if no preventive measures were taken. Goll (1912: 180) reasoned that these young people were characterised by a profound disrespect for authorities and ‘hatred of the so-called upper class’. In this way, it became crucial for the reformers to intervene preventively towards youth who would otherwise risk becoming serious offenders and threats to social coherence. In this regard, the historical roots of the YPS and its eventual introduction in 1930 both reflected and helped delineate youth as a distinct social category, constituting new, age-based boundaries for, and scope of, adolescence, particularly targeting its problematised offspring of delinquency (Alexander and Sleight, 2023: 4).

Resilient coercive confinement of youth

Despite early 1930s reformers envisaging only a single youth prison facility, the YPS system expanded significantly alongside welfare state growth in the post-war years. During the 1950s and early 1960s, both the use and capacity of the YPS increased, with more facilities established across the country. Accordingly, whereas the YPS accounted for 1.6% of all sentences in 1950, it peaked at 7.5% by 1963 (Fransen, 2009: 301–302). But while the indeterminate aspect of the YPS was widely supported and expanded in the early and golden days of the welfare state (with its critique mainly voiced by certain leading jurists in the 1950s), it was exactly this indeterminacy that gradually lost legitimacy and became widely criticised by academics, practitioners, criminal justice organisations, protest movements, and politicians across the political spectrum from the late 1960s (Fransen, 2009: 352–356). This shift in legitimacy, culminating in the abolition of the YPS in 1973, was shaped by international rights-oriented trends (Fransen and Smith, 2022), which also conflated with emerging welfare critique. ¹⁰

Despite broad criticism, however, strikingly analogous coercive confinement practices endured in the social welfare system, as the former YPS clientele remained a particular concern (Bryderup, 2005). While the Criminal Code Council (CCC; Straffelovrådet, the new title of the CLC) recommended abolishing the YPS due to its indeterminate character and limited legal safeguards, it also expressed concern that its abolition would result in relatively short custodial sentences (3 to 8 months), rendering rehabilitative measures impossible for delinquent youth (CCC, 1972: 125). Consequently, the CCC proposed that child welfare authorities assume responsibility for this particularly vulnerable group in secure facilities following YPS’ abolition (CCC, 1972: 361). Although the social authorities shared the view that prison sentences for minors should be avoided, they met this proposal with reluctance. In a 1972 letter to the CCC, the National Board of Social Affairs (Socialstyrelsen, under the Ministry of Social Affairs) stressed that accommodating this group would undesirably exceed existing secure capacity, and that operating child welfare institutions as closed, prison-like facilities would be too burdensome and wholly unacceptable (CCC, 1972: 362). However, the practical realities took a different course in the following decades.