From the nineteenth century to the present day, youth and youth justice policies have been rooted in the adult world, have reflected adult concerns with the threat of youth and have been constructed to allay adult fears." (Brown, 1998). Discuss.

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“Through the twists and turns of youth justice policy we see a recurring and ongoing preoccupation with the perceived threat to social stability posed by unregulated, undisciplined and disorderly youth outside adult control. […] From the nineteenth century to the present day, youth and youth justice policies have been rooted in the adult world, have reflected adult concerns with the threat of youth and have been constructed to allay adult fears.” (Brown, 1998). Discuss.

“By 1851 ‘juvenile delinquency’ was established among journal-reading, servant-employing Britons as a major problem in the condition of England. It was, wrote J.S. More, a professor of civil law, ‘next to slavery…perhaps the greatest strain on our country. Matthew Davenport Hill, recorder of Birmingham, described it as ‘the head-spring of that ever-flowing river of crime, which spreads its corrupt and corrupting waters through the land’. Dickens pictured it as a ‘bog’, and prophesied that its ‘seed of evil’ would yield a ‘field of ruin…that shall be gathered in, and garnered up, and sown again…until regions are overspread with wickedness enough to raise the waters of another deluge’” (Magarey 2002 p115)

The question that remains is, to what extent are youth justice policies the government’s reaction to adult fears of the growing rates of juvenile crime, this can be extended to the investigations into crime rates carried out by professionals, how reliable are these statistics when they are provided by the source of these fears?

Juvenile delinquency was first recognized with the production of the Youthful Offenders Act, 1854. This Act created a separate category for juvenile crimes, the legislation defined the extended childhood (prior to the Act only children under the age of 7 were presumed to be incapable of criminal intent) as ‘different’, this reinforced the view that children were not free agents and drew attention to the child-parent relationship with the latter being expected to exercise control and discipline; and emphasized the danger of those in need of ‘care and protection’ becoming delinquents. (Hendrick 2002 p29). The creation of this Act was influenced greatly by the 1st published statistics on juvenile crime in 1843, according to these statistics; crime had increased by 600% between 1805 and 1842. Anxious and frequently confused use of statistics generated the intense public alarm which was a major force behind the acceptance of new measures. (May 2002 p103)

This Act set the scene for further legislation and the continuing focus on juvenile crime and its affect on society that has continued to the present day. Three years after the Youthful Offenders Act came into practice Reformatory and Industrial Schools were established, these were initially intended to be part of the educational system rather than the penal system, however they housed children aged between seven and fourteen who had been convicted of vagrancy. (Newburn 2002 p549). The schools were responsible for helping children ‘forget their vicious habits and be restored as respectable and useful members of society’ (Clarke 2002 p128).

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However, evidence has suggested that there were other motives involved in the Reformatory and Industrial schools. It has to be remembered that the school was an increasingly popular method of class control, the writings of reformers at the time were the products of deeply held and widely debated convictions about the nature of the social order at a time when the middle class was anxious about what it deemed to be the rebellious and aggressive attitudes and behaviour of those young people (Hendrick 2002 p30). This point can be related back to the question of how reliable are the ...

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