Starting in the late 19th century and reaching an apex in the 1930s and 1940s, a new full-fledged conceptual and discursive construction of childhood prevailed in Egypt, that did not only view the child as the responsibility of his family, but rather the moral and ethical responsibility of society as a whole and, perhaps more importantly, the legal responsibility of the state. The visibility of vagrant, mendicant, and other varying categories of “deviant” children in the streets of Egypt’s big cities, mainly Cairo and Alexandria, created a heterotopia that was perceived by Egyptian nationalists and professional experts as undermining Egypt’s image in the eyes of foreigners and colonial officials and did not only pose a threat to public health, order, and security but also to Egypt’s international image and reputation. This non-conforming child while seen as worthy of sympathy and rescuing was also perceived as a potential physical and moral threat, a social pariah deemed in need of care and restraint (in both physical and moral sense). For that purpose, such children had to be removed from the public eyes and space and receive the necessary reform. This presentation attempts to trace the laws promulgated and the institutions designed to discipline, incarcerate, educate, and rehabilitate various categories of deviant or deprived children – reformatories and juvenile colonies; industrial schools; homes for wayward girls; orphanages, etc.- that formed the core, between 1883- 1950, of what Michele Foucault referred to as the “carceral archipelago.” Placing the child at the center of state policies, reflected the shift in the raison d’état of the Egyptian state in dealing with children, and acting as parens patriae.