The Aarburg reformatory, founded in 1893, had the primary purpose of detaining juvenile offenders separately from adults. However, the share of administrative placements accounted for about half of all admissions from the very beginning. Competence conflicts shortly after the institution's opening, allegations of mistreatment, and the suicides of two youths around the time of World War I, the media-driven criticism of the institution in 1936, and finally the home campaign around 1970 are the focal points of this book. It attempts to understand the actions of the actors within the institutional and political context, thus going beyond the scope of a simple institutional history. The source-based case analyses provide a nuanced picture of the daily life in the institution across different decades and the uncertainties of interpersonal relationships in permanence.