Saga - 2020, Page 137

Abstract
agnes jónasóttir
THE ‘SITUATION GIRL’ AS A JUVENILE DELINQUENT
Law enforcement, protection and surveillance in times of war
On 10 May 1940, British forces occupied Iceland. Almost immediately, public
debate about women and teenage girls displaying inappropriate behavior
towards the soldiers sprang up and all contact between Icelandic women and for-
eign soldiers became suspect. The public discourse led to the enactment of a new
youth Surveillance Act.
The act was meant to deal with the ‘the Situation’, as relationships between
Icelandic women and soldiers were referred to, by extending the time a young
person could be under the supervision of the local child-welfare committee. The
act also provided for the establishment of a juvenile court and the first state-run
homes for juvenile delinquents to deal with the Situation. The act was worded in
such a way as to make it possible to assume that it should apply to girls and boys
equally but, in reality, the new law was used almost exclusively to police the inter-
actions of girls with soldiers. In addition to the provisions of the act, a special
youth Surveillance Agency was established within the Reykjavik Police Depart -
ment.
This article deals with the relationship between these new government agen-
cies and the child-welfare system already in place at the start of the occupation,
as well as asking if the girls involved could be classified as juvenile delinquents,
as Joan Sangster, Lisa Pasco and others have used the term.
The youth Surveillance Act was enforced rather harshly in Reykjavik, where
the juvenile court ruled in 42 cases that were brought by the youth Surveillance
Agency involving girls who were thought to have inappropriate relationships
with soldiers. These cases were investigated by the Agency and, it seems, without
involvement from the child-welfare committee. This lack of involvement seems
to have led to a distinct lack of child-welfare measures taken to deal with the
Situation and enforced a punitive approach.
A majority of the girls brought to court were in a precarious social position,
as they were usually young, working-class and without family support in the city.
This was often the case with delinquent girls in the English-speaking world where
female delinquency was defined by the authorities based on racialized and
classist ideas of female sexuality. The article therefore finds that the Icelandic
‘Situation girl’ has a lot in common with the delinquent girls of other countries
and can be viewed as such.
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