Defective Delinquency
In 2022 students were handed a box containing hundreds of files of people who had been designated, by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as “Defective Delinquents.”
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The designation did not require due process and could result in indefinite confinement. Few have ever heard of the story of “defective delinquency” and no one had seen these files before. Our students were going to be doing original historical work.
When asked what they wanted to do, the students responded that they wanted to learn more about what defective delinquency was and about the human beings who were confined under that designation. And they wanted the world to know about this story. They would build a museum to do just that.
Click on the image above to see the exhibits the students created for their museum on Defective Delinquency.