truly knew all the responsibilities she carried on her back.

Like 33-year-old Julia Lathrop, who quickly became Jane Addams' right hand.

- [Stacy] Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop had an incredible deep and abiding friendship.

They are little power duo, those two.

- [Narrator] As a volunteer for the state's Board of Charities, Lathrop toured each of the state's 102 institutions including its jails, and reported her findings.

She told Addams about the horrors she had discovered there.

- Lathrop is quite shocked and concerned about the fact that boys were in adult jails.

You don't want children exposed to the criminality of hardened folks in jail.

- [Narrator] Children as young as 10 were being arrested for minor crimes like petty theft and vagrancy, and tried in court as adults.

Most of the kids were immigrants.

If found guilty, their parents were issued a fine, which most could not afford to pay.

As a result, more than 250 children were sitting in the Cook County Jail alongside violent criminals.

- [Miriam] These children needed more time in school.

They needed more wholesome recreation.

They need better community services to the families.

- [Narrator] Addams and Lathrop knew there was a better way and pushed to establish a juvenile court, a first in the nation.

- [Miriam] The purpose was not to punish these kids, but to help them.

Lathrop believed if you expose the facts, then you can get public opinion.

So she did a great deal of publicizing and exposing to put pressure on the governor to get behind it.

- [Narrator] Lathrop built a coalition of support for a juvenile court that included judges and wardens.

Even though the women of Hull House had success lobbying for child labor legislation a few years earlier, Addams knew the all-male state legislature would be reluctant to support a bill brought by a woman.

- [Louise] Jane Addams understood the patriarchy.

She understood the power of men.

- [Miriam] Julia Lathrop had a huge role in drafting the bill, but she said this will never go if it's considered a woman's bill.

And so, she enlisted the Chicago Bar Association.

- [Narrator] In 1889, their efforts paid off.

The Cook County Juvenile Court, the first of its kind took root in Chicago, right across the street from Hull House.

A crucial part of Lathrop's plan depended on the women of Hull House.

- [Stacy] The women agreed to be the probation officers.

- For the first seven, eight years, there was no funding for these probation officers.

It was the probation officers, Lathrop herself, early on, was sitting with judges and helping them adjudicate the situation.

If possible, the solution would then be not to put these kids in jail, but to keep them in their homes.

- [Narrator] The volunteer probation officers visited the children and helped them access social services.

Today, we know these advocates as case managers.

By 1925, almost every state in the nation had adopted some form of the juvenile court system founded by the women of Hull House.