## Facts

- Illinois’s 1863 Reform School Act authorized commitment of children ages six to sixteen deemed “destitute of proper parental care” or otherwise at risk (e.g., vagrancy), based on a judicial finding that commitment served the child’s “moral welfare” and the “good of society.”
- Commitment did not require conviction of a criminal offense and could last until age twenty-one or earlier release at the institution’s discretion.
- Daniel O’Connell (about fourteen to fifteen) was committed to the Chicago reform school by mittimus issued from the Superior Court of Cook County after an evidentiary finding that he was a “proper subject for commitment.”
- Daniel had not been convicted of any crime; the commitment was premised on his being in danger of becoming delinquent.
- Daniel worked at a paper factory earning about $4 per week; his father Michael O’Connell was very poor and asserted the boy’s wages were necessary to the family.
- Michael sought a writ of habeas corpus in the Illinois Supreme Court, alleging Daniel was unlawfully restrained without conviction; the superintendent justified detention solely by the mittimus and statute.

## Issues

1. Whether the state may confine a minor in a reform school for potentially years, without any criminal conviction, based only on a finding that commitment is for the child’s “moral welfare” and the “good of society.”
2. Whether parens patriae or “best interests” rationales can justify custodial confinement that functions as punishment without the procedural protections associated with criminal process.

## Decision

- The Illinois Supreme Court held Daniel O’Connell’s confinement was unlawful and ordered his discharge.
- The Court treated the reform school commitment as a serious restraint on liberty in substance, not saved by the institution’s benevolent label.
- Because the commitment authorized long-term involuntary confinement without criminal charge, conviction, or the safeguards of ordinary legal process, it violated constitutional protections of personal liberty and due process.

## Legal Principles

- Substantial, involuntary confinement constitutes a deprivation of liberty that requires due process of law, even when the proceeding is framed as rehabilitative or civil.
- The state may not impose what is effectively penal restraint on a child without the procedural protections that ordinarily attend imprisonment for crime.
- Parens patriae authority and “good of society” justifications do not permit indefinite or extended institutional confinement of minors absent constitutionally adequate process.
- Courts assess the practical effect of restraint on liberty rather than the statutory or institutional label used to describe it.

## Conclusion

The court granted habeas relief, holding that committing a child to a reform school without any criminal conviction and without due process was an unconstitutional deprivation of liberty, and ordered the child released.


People ex rel. O'Connell v. Turner, 55 Ill. 280 (Ill. 1870)