Policing Disorderly Homes: The FBI, the Mann Act, and the Family, 1919–41

In 1921, Carrie Crook took her children and fled from her abusive husband. Within two months, federal authorities tracked her down—returning her and the couple’s children to their father. Her husband claimed the government’s assistance by calling on the power of the Mann Act. Though passed to protect women from forced prostitution, the Crook case reveals that citizens and federal officials viewed the Mann Act in broader terms, using it to police disorderly private homes as well as disorderly public houses. In doing so, the Mann Act reinforced developing and existent immigration and welfare policies that upheld the male-headed household as the lynchpin to US society.

The Mann Act made it illegal to take a woman or girl over state lines for prostitution or “any other immoral purpose,” thus every case was predicated on movement—boundary crossing—but at the heart of investigations, for the FBI, stood the home. Protecting ‘normative’ homes, promoting ‘proper’ family relations, convincing errant family members to return to their ‘appropriate’ domestic roles, and punishing those who refused to do so formed the foundation for most Mann Act investigations. By examining how these investigations upheld patriarchal privileges and defended normative white domesticity, this paper reveals how private behavior became subjected to public law enforcement policy. The bureau’s policy of supporting families made the Mann Act one of the first pieces of “family values” legislation. Moreover, the Mann Act ensured that policies ‘protecting’ the moral and racial integrity of the US at the borders extended into the heart of the country. Furthermore, this paper illustrates how criminal justice bureaucracies shored up the values enshrined in welfare and immigration policies that reward gendered social roles—illuminating the gendered foundations of the state.