Social Work Innovations in Progressive Era Policing & Imprisonment: Lola Baldwin’s Legacy

Overview: This paper uses archival research to explore Lola Baldwin’s relationship to social work and the ways her preferred identity as a social worker enabled her to pioneer a new form of preventative policing. Baldwin, based in Portland, Oregon, became the first municipal policewoman in the United States in 1908.Proposal text:

Overview: In this paper, I explore the work of Lola Baldwin, who in 1908 became the first municipal policewoman in the United States. Specifically, I use archival research to explore Baldwin’s relationship to social work and the ways her preferred identity as a social worker enabled her to pioneer a new form of preventative policing that would significantly expand the scope and power of law enforcement in the late 20th century. Additionally, I excavate the writings and labor of those who resisted Baldwin’s work, including judges, attorneys, and other progressive reformers.
Learning objectives:
Participants will be able to identify three ways in which Progressive Era social work was instrumental in increasing the size, scope, and power of the prison industrial complex.
Participants will draw connections between Progressive Era social workers-turned-police and modern police social workers.

Background: The social work profession in the US developed alongside and within the professionalization of policing and corrections. Progressive Era social workers accomplished many “firsts” in corrections - among the first policewomen, probation officers, and child prison wardens. Even social work’s earliest professional organization, the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, amalgamated social welfare and corrections. An interesting case of this amalgamation can be found in the life and work of Lola Baldwin Greene. Before becoming a police woman, Baldwin worked as a teacher, volunteered at agencies serving “wayward” girls, and directed a chapter of the Traveler’s Aid Association.

Methods: I reviewed primary sources including the Oregon Historical Society (e.g., personal correspondence, public testimony, War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities reports), Portland Police Bureau Women’s Protective Division reports), and the Portland Police Historical Society (e.g., daily activity reports); and secondary sources (e.g., Gloria Myers’ 1995 book, A Municipal Mother: Portland’s Lola Greene Baldwin; Peggy Pascoe’s 1990 book, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939).
Results &

Conclusion: While Baldwin had and exercised arrest powers, she concealed her police identity to gain access to the intimate lives of “wayward” women and girls. She used this power to collect and share personal information that would later be used to imprison women in county jails, wartime internment camps, and medical detention facilities. When the cities she operated in (primarily Portland, Oregon) refused to detain the women she arrested, she successfully advocated for new prisons for women and girls (which inevitably included trans men and gender non-conforming people). Her work, spanning innovative forms of policing to prison design, would be held up as a model and replicated by many cities and states throughout her lifetime. Baldwin’s legacy provides critical insights into social work’s early contributions to the US prison industrial complex. Her work can inform modern discussions about the ethics and future directions of police social work.
References
Myers, G. E. (1995). A municipal mother: Portland's Lola Greene Baldwin, America’s first policewoman. Oregon State University Press.
Pascoe, P. (1990). Relations of rescue: The search for female moral authority in the American West, 1874-1939. Oxford University Press.