In 1970, the Welfare Office (renamed 1971 as the Social Services Office) of the City of Zurich opened its annual report with an explanation of what the Office termed «juvenile issues». Young people, they wrote, move in «anti-establishment subcultures» and are typically «apathetic and neglected». The task of social workers, it was argued, was to find solutions to these problems.

Contents

At the beginning of the 1970s, the Office of Social Services and the Guardianship Authority of the City of Zurich justified the use of juvenile detention by taking reference to what was termed «neglect». A sampling of the sources shows how the Social Services Office at that time communicated its own current thinking on juveniles to the public. Public officials explained that they believed there was a need to take action. These sources, however, do not provide any information as to the official grounds considered by the authorities as warranting an order for administrative detention in 1970. Those can be discovered only by examining the individual case files.

 

Use of sources

The annual reports prepared by the Social Services Office provide a statistical overview of the use of administrative detention in the City of Zurich. At the same time, they also provide an indication of the way the authorities perceived the issues. With the help of such annual reports we are better able to put the authorities’ actions into context as we review individual case files.

 

N. Ramsauer/Translation

 

Source

Stadt Zürich: Geschäftsbericht des Stadtrates, Zürich 1970.
Signature: Zentralbibliothek Zürich (ZB): LK 824 (1930 bis 2005).