BRITISH LIBRARY 
OF POLITICAL AND 
ECONOMIC SCIENCE 


LONDON SCHOOL OF 
ECONOMICS AND 
POLITICAL SCIENCE 


lO,PORTUGAL STREET, 
LONDON WC2A 2HD 


Tel. Ol-405 7686 


fabian tract 472 
justice, welfare and juvenile 
delinquents. 

chapter 1. 
2 
introduction 
historical review 
1 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6 
welfare and justirce 
Warwickshire-a oase studyconstructing 1a sociaHst p'enal 
pol-icy for youngsters 
summary of proposals 
6 
8 
14 
20 

the author: 
John May spent seven years doing rresearch :in local authority
Social 'Servi'ces Departments, the last five in Warwickshire. 
During this time with Warwickshire Social S'ervices he carried 
out a two year study of the effects of social work intervention 
in delinquency, and has 1published three p~apers on this work. 
He is currently employed ~in the Corporate Planning Unit of 
Hampshire 'County ~council. 


The views ·expressed in this pamphlet •are his own and nOit those 
of either Warwickshire or Hampshire County Councils. 


acknowledgements : 
I am grateful to the many people in Warwickshire who helped
in the research I undertook into the 1969 Children and Young
Persons Act and its impact on delinquents. Also to those who 
encouraged me to ·embark on writing a ·Fabian ,pamphlet, to 
Margaret Kealy .for typing it and to ~Bob ·Bessell for awakening 
my interest in the subject in the first place. 


this pamphlet, like all publications of the Fabian Society, 
represents not the collective view of the Society but only the 
views .of the individual who prepared it. The ·responsibility ·of 
the Society is limited to approving publications it issues 
as worthy of consideration within the Labour movement. 
Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1 H 9BN. 
December 1980 I·SSN 0307 7535 ISBN 7163 0472 4 



H-v 

1. introduction 
914(:, 

~4-.b 

Why should socialists in particutar be 
concerned with delinquents? Humanitarian 
reformers have a long and honourable 
tradition of concern for people in 
prison and the humanitarian stra:in is an 
essential part df the socialist ma:ke up.
Without the reformer~S' efforts we mightstill be using prison hulks moored in 
major rivers to con·tain our youngoffenders. 

Marxists too can legitimately point to 
the overwhelming evidence of class bias 
in the treatment of young~Sters who indulge 
in anti-social acti~ity. The workingclass and black youngsters-those at the 
bo'ttom of our society's heap-are the 
ones who figure mo!jt prominently in the 
criminal statistics. 

·At the opposite end of the political 
spectrum, the Tory .Riight with their 
obsessional demands for more "Jaw and 
order", to say nothing of the ritual caH 
for bringing back the birch, also recognise 
that many criminals have graduated 
to adult crimes from juvenile delinquency. 
Their remedy, immortalised 'by Mr 
Whitelaw's phrase "the short sharpshock", is intended to intervene in the 
process of maturing from delinquencyinto crime. Whatever else one may say 
a~bout the 1979 election result, there can 
be httle doubt that for ·once a traditiona•l 
Tory tune found an electorate willing 
to sing it. At this level, too, socialists 
need to be concerned with the treatment 
of young offenders since we need 
to be able to challenge Tory policies on 
every front and not just on economic 
issues. 

A further reason for sociaol:is't concern 
is that a socialist society must surely be 
one in which every effort is made to 
allow each individual a full and equalshare in that society, in which youngsters 
are not denied their share by beingwritten off as casualties of modern liofe 
but are helped to retain or regain their 
all too often precarious membership of 
that society. 

It should a-lso be said that the waysociety, any society, behaves tCJIWards its 
youngsters when they break the la,w pro


vides -an imight in•to the fundamental 
principle on which that society is based. 
l1f a socialist society js to be fundamentally 
different from what we have now, 
its penal policy will have to be different 
too. Political discrn;sion has to be about 
aH the members of our society, including 
those who break the mles, if it is 
to be worth any•th·ing at all. 

This pamphlet will descri-be some of the 
immedia:te steps that should be taken to 
ensure that delinquents are dealt with 
according to socialist principles, for no 
society we are ever likely to see wiH be 
free from delinquency or crime. It begins 
with a bri'elf historical review to set the 
scene and then outlines the two main 
principles which have dominated penalpohcy and thirrking for a very long time 
and which we need to move beyond in 
develop·ing a socia•list approach to delinquents. 


The fourth chapter consists of a case 
study of one part of the country, Warwickshire, 
and one group of delinquents 
---1:hose for whom the 1969 Children and 
Young Pel'\Sons Act introduced new 
measures. With supporting evidence from 
a variety of other sources, this chapter 
is the one which provides ·a critique of 
present practice and also points the way 
forward. The final chapter puts forward 
some proposals for a new policy for 
dealing with del1inquents. 


2. historical review 
The main statute relating to the treatment 
of juvenile offenders and those in 
need of care and control (in England 
and Wales) is the Children and Young 
Persons Act 1969, which, despite its tittle, 
did not come into force until 1 January 
1971, and even then only in part. Since 
1971 various changes have been made 
to the 1969 Act but it is stU! the main 
statute. It is instructive to trace some of 
the history lying behind this Act, in par· 
ticular the principle of abolishing the 
distinction between chiLdren who were 
officially classified as delinquent and 
other children in need or in trouble-
the distinction being the depraved and 
the deprived, as it has been succinctly, 
if inaccurately, put. 

The early nineteenth century is as good 
a starting point as any for this brief 
history. England was like most other 
countries in that the prison system played 
host both to child offenders, to children 
awaiting trial and to a:dul<t offenders. 
Eliza!beth Fry the prison reformer and 
Mary Carpenter who founded the first 
reformatory school can be said to have 
begun the change in attitude to and 
treatment of delinquency which has 
brought us to the present. There were 
some concessions to the special circumstances 
of young children in those days ; 
for example those under seven were 
deemed to be incapable of forming guilty 
intent a,nd could therefore not be tried, 
while the 7-13 year olds were shielded 
to some extent by the requirement that 
the prosecution prove that the chiU 
knew he was doing wrong. Also the P·arkhurst 
Act of 1838 had created a separate 
penitentiary for juvenile offenders. 

In 1854 an Act was passed Which empowered 
(but did not compel) criminal 
courts to send young offenders to a 
reformatory school-three had been 
founded between 1849 and 1853. However, 
in an interesting forerunner of Mr 
Whitelaw's "short sharp shock" everychild had to serve 14 days in (an adult) 
prison before going to one of these 
schools. The climate of opinion must 
have been right for a change, because in 
the four years following the 1854 Act 
reformatories had been opened in nearly 

all English counties. Not, as it happens, 
by the State, hut by a vaviety of religiouscommunities and private individuals, so 
that the voluntary sector, as it would be 
known today, was ahead of the public 
sector in its provision. Not for the last 
time, this led the government to take an 
interest and in 1860 the Home Office 
took on responsibil·ity for the supervision 
df the reformatories. 

In 1861 the Home Office aiso accepted 
respons1biJ.1ty for the " indus'trial schools " 
which had been established !for the 
maintenance and educaHon of children 
under the Poor Law. Thus the first step 
was taken towards bringing together two 
strands of child care, the " justice " 
strand and the "welfare " strand, with 
the two categovies of residential estab-
lishment being administered by the same 
government department. Later on the 
two were to merge under the name oif 
"approved schools ", although they are 
now known as Community Homes with 
Education on the premises, or CHES for 
short. 

Various other developments culminated 
in the Children Act of 1908 (known as 
the ChB.dren's Charter) which set up 
separate jurvenile courts to deal with 
young offenders under 16 years of age. 
The courts' jurisdiction was both civil 
and criminal, covering both those in 
need of care and protection and those in 
trouble with the criminal law. 1f the 
court found a child guilty of a criminal 
offence there were a range of both 
custodial and non~custodial sentences 
.availruble to it, since the Act did not 
set out to lesson a child's liability under 
the law in any way, but to mitigate the 
harsher elements of judicial practice as 
l!lpplred to children. Imprisonment for 
chlldren under 14 was now finally outlawed, 
and restrictions placed on the 
impr·isonment of 14-16 year olds. Youngsters 
remanded pending a final decision 
on their disposal were now to be sent 
to remand homes, not prison, and the 
public were to be exduded from 
proceedings. 

The introduction of separate juvenilecourts in England in 1908 was not unique. 


In the USA the separate trial df adul1 and 
juvenil-e offenders was introduced on a 
regular basis in a number of states from 
1870 onwards. Hlinois (Cooke County 
1899) estahl·ished the first modern stylejuvenile court and within 25 years nearly 
all the states had introduced laws to pro·
vide for something along the same tines. 
The Illinois Juvenile Court Act of 1899 
expressed that society's view that children 
should not be treated as cr·iminals, 
that welfare considerations were paramount 
and that a fuH underS'tanding of 
the child'IS background and circumstances 
was necessary and more important than 
the question of guilt or innocence. The 
problems of the child were to be the 
focus of the court. England had to wait 
another 34 years hefore the welfare 
principle became enshrined in law. 

Scandinavia, meanwhile, was also ahead 
of England. In 1896 Norway raised the 
age of criminal responsibi·li·ty to 14, while 
Sweden and Denmark raised it to 15 in 
1902 and 1905 respecti<vely. ('In 1980 bycontrast the age in England is 10.) Below 
the age of 14 or 15, Scandinavian children 
who committed offences were regarded 
a!S being in need of care and were 
dealt with by non-judicial panels which 
were instituted to meet the needs (including 
the education) of neglected chi-ldren 
rather than to punish offenders. Over the 
a~ge of 14/15 prosecution was possible, 
though the youngster would be referred 
to a panel by the public prosecutor.
These principles still form the basis of 
practice in those countries. 

the welfare principle 

The (English) 1-908 Children Act lasted 
until 1933, when the Children and Youn·gPersons Act was passed. This Act was 
concerned with a range of matters relating 
to children, including their protection 
against cruelty and exposure to moral and 
physica•l danger, but it also extended the 
jurisdiction of the juvenile court to the 
seventeenth birthday and (section 44) la,id 
down the welfare principle which governs 
proceedings concerned with juveniles:
"Every court, in dealing with a child or 
young person who is brought before it, 

either as an offender or other.wise, shaH 
have regard to the welfare CYf. the child 
or young person and shall in a proper 
case take steps for removing him from 
undesirable surroundings or for securing 
that proper provision is made for his 
education and train'ing ". 

The crucial six words are " either as 
an offender or otherwise ", which reflect 
the conclusion of the 1927 Departmental 
Committee on the Treatment of Young 
Offenders that there was little distinction 
b e t w e en neglected and delinquentchi·ldren. The wording of this Act lit 11. 
fuse which is still buming today. How 
can the same institution be both .a court 
and a wel<fare agency? If the two functions 
are separated how can anyone ensure 
that the one will pay any heed to 
the proper concerns of the other? The 
latest fl.are up of this dilemma is the 
justice versus welfare controversy which 
is going on at the present time. 

In addition to the welfare principle, the 
1933 Act also raised the age df criminal 
responsibility to eight years, requiredlocail authorities to provide remand 
homes in place of the ones provided bythe police under the 1908 Act and finally 
brought together the reformatory and 
industrial schools as approved schools. 

After 1933 it w.as 30 years before the 
law relating to juvenile offenders was 
directly altered in a major way. Meanwhile 
other changes were taking place. 
Two Acts of 1948, neither concerned 
directly with juvenile offenders, had an 
important bearing on what was to come. 

First, the Criminal Justice Act pl.aced 
further restrictions on the imprisonment 
of children ~but made up for it by establishing 
detention centres) and also 
abolished the power of the juvenile court 
to order the birch. Second, the 1948 
Children Act which was concerned with 
the care of children, not with the responsibilities 
of the juvenile courts. This was 
the Act which created local authorityChildren's Departments and laid uponlocal authorities the duty CYf. looking 111fter 
children who were without parents or 
were deprived c;f a normal home life. 


It would be wrong to give the impression, 
as this rapid run through 150 years 
of his~ory could easily do, that new laws 
popped up at intervals without longperiods of gestation first. In particular,
there were, during the 1960s, a number 
of reports and White Papers which both 
reflected a great deal olf thinking during 
that decade about juvenile offenders and 
led to major pieces of legislation. One 
such repmt was the Ingleby Report(Cmnd 1191 , 1960) which highlightedthe difficulty inherent in the wel'fare principle 
of the 1933 Act, the dilemma of 
the juvenile court which was required 
to consider a case on one ground-thecommission of an offence-and disposeolf it on another-the needs of the child. 
The lngleby Committee felt that the 
juvenile court was the best available safeguard 
of the righbs and liberties of the 
chi-ld and his parents and tried to avoid 
the justice/weLfare dilemma by recommending 
that the age of cri.minal responsi
·bility be raised to 14 years. (It will be 
recalled that Norway had done this in 
1896.) Below this age children should 
be subject only to care, protection or 
control proceedings, not criminal proceedings. 
The 1963 Children and YoungPersons Act, however, only raised the 
age to ten years, and its main thrust 
was the definition and widening of the 
powers and responsibilities of local 
authorities in relation to the care of 
children. 

Thus the history olf the Jaw from early 
in the 19th century up till the 1960s 
saw only a slight convergence of the twin 
desires to apply justice to children (above 
a certain age) but also to have regard to 
their welfare. The juvenile courts, from 
1933 on, had to take account of the 
welfare principle, but were essentially in 
the business of administering the criminal 
law. On the other hand there were slow 
developments in the care of children who 
were not offenders, and there was not 
much over-lap between the two strands. 

Then in 1965 came a White Paper (inspired 
by Lord Longford's report Crime 
-A Challenge to us All, Lrubour Party, 
1964) called The Child, the Family and the 
Young Offender (HMso). This resolved 

the justice/welfare dilemma in a trulyradical way, by proposing the abolition 
of the justice part a-ltogether. Juvenile 
Courts were to be done away with; the 
age of criminal responsibility raised to 
16; family councils composed of social 
workers and other suitaJbly experienced 
people were to deal with all undisputed 
cases involving children under 16 (offen· 
ders and non-offenders alike) according 
to their needs; cases of dispute were to 
go to family courts and offenders over 
16 years of age would be dealt with in 
young offenders courts operating conventional 
legal procedures. 

Looking back, one can applaud the desire 
to remove children from the ambit of 
the criminal law but there was a gooddeal of criticism at the time, which is 
still valid today, that in the attempt to 
place welfare considerations first the vital 
role of the court as defender of the 
individual's rights and liberties was being 
lost sight of. Consequently the 1965 
White Paper was followed by another 
one (Children in Trouble, HMSO 1968)
which advocated the retention of the 
juvenile court within certain limitations. 
Magistrates were still to have the responsibility 
for determining guilt m innocence 
but were no longer to have the power 
to decide on the appropriate treatment. 
It was the 1968 White Paper that la'id the 
foundations for the 1969 Children and 
Young Persons Act. 

the 1969 ·oh'i'ldren and 
young persons act 

This Act was concerned, first and foremost, 
to remove what its sponsors sa·w 
as an artificial distinction-the one between 
justice and weUare, or more particularly 
the distinction between the 
child who had come into conflict with 
the law and the one who was in need 
or trouble olf some other kind. There 
is a good deal of evidence to show that 
delinquency (that is the administrative 
classification of someone who comes into 
conflict with the law) is very often only 
one of the sea of troubles that beset the 
youngster. Not always, but very often. 
H was therefore absurd to pretend that 
offences could be dealt with in isolation 


from the total circumstances of the 
youngster and his family. In order to 
make the full resources of the child care 
system availaible to youngsters who had 
come to the notice of " the authorities " 
via the delinquency road, the 1969 Act 
included the commission of an offence 
as one of the primary conditions for 
bringing them before the juvenile court 
in care proceedings. Approved schools 
were brought within the child care 
system-more or less ; Borstal training, 
detention centre orders, attendance centre 
orders and the remand df juveniles to 
prison department estaJbli>shments under 
Certificates of Unruliness (because the 
local authority homes couldn't handle 
them) were aJ,l to be phased out. 

the act in practice 

Unfortunately it hasn't quite turned out 
like that. Sentences to Detention Centre 
can still be made, as they can ~o Borstal 
training (through the Crown Court, not 
the juvenile court). Remands to adul't 
prisons ca-n still occur as well. Meanwhile 
the expected development of noncustodial, 
humane treatment measures by 
Social Servi-ces Departments has proceeded 
only slowly. But the crucia·l weakness 
of the 1969 Act is that it also made 
provision for " secure accommodation " 
which has come to mean in many cases 
cases locking children up. There are 
enlightened secure units where containment 
is secondary to treatment and there 
is a high ratio of well qua\i.fied staff to 
youngs-ters. Yet eligihiJ.ity for this kind 
of intensive care is gained in practice by 
proving that one can break out (literaHy 
or metaphorically) of all other forms of 
care! And if even the l-ocal authority 
system cannot cope, there is al,ways the 
Youth Treatment Centre (provided bycentral government) as a backstop complete 
with aH kinds of fancy electronic 
security Cllpparatus. 

This one loophole, the small minorityof disturibed and difficult children who 
require " treatment in conditions . of 
security", is capa:ble of ruthless exptOltation 
by the law and order brigade, and 
is fast leading to devastati-ng conse


quences. As cash becomes more and 
more scarce for community based 
approaches to dealing with delinquents, 
so does cash become avail1able for creating 
tougher and tougher regimes for 
delinquents. As social workers find they 
have less and less time to spend with 
youngsters in trouble with the law, so 
they react by shunting them further a-nd 
further into the embraces of the penal 
system, and what can easily become its 
local authority counterpart, the residential 
chi·ld care system. What is truly frightening 
is the prospect of a complete polarisation, 
with magistrates being faced with 
a choice becween non-custodi-al penalties, 
such as fines or attendance centre orders 
on the one hand and junior prisons 
(under different names of course) on the 
other. This scenario, by no means far 
fetched, would represent a triumph for 
the justice side of the coin-and it can 
al-l be done in the name of the very Act 
which tried to put welfare on top. 

This historical review, sketchy though it 
is, brings out the main theme of the last 
150 years, the continual tension between 
the welfare of the youngster and the 
demand that youth be no excuse for 
criminal behaviour. It may seem that 
welfare has gradually gained the upperhand, but the way we treat youngstershas not altered very much at a:ll. The 
reason for this is that the advocates of 
" welfare" have constantly had to have 
regard to the strength of the " justice " 
camp, and have had to make concessions 
which, while apparently innocuous, have 
virtually undermined the gains that were 
made. Since the two principles of justice 
and welfare are so central to the whole 
debate, the next chapter looks at them 
in some detail. 


3. welfare and justice 
Current practice in this country is a 
mixture of these two principles or models 
and it is rare to find either being advocated 
in its pure form. Nevertheless, 
many magistrates take the view that they 
are thwarted in their attempts to carry 
out justice by the refusal of welfare-
minded social workers to accept that 
justice has any further part to play once 
the finding of guilt has been made. 

two models 

Now a summary of the main features 
of each of the two models of thinkinga;bout and dealing with young offenders, 
adapted from the recent Report of the 
Children and Young Persons Review 
Group (HMSO, 1979) which considered 
legislation and services for children and 
young persons in Northern Ireland. Pirst 
the justice model: 

* Delinquency is a matter of opportunity 
and choice. 
* Insofar as a person is responsible fm 
his actions, he should be accountable for 
them. 
* Proof df commission of an off-ence 
should be the sole justification for intervention 
by society and the sole basis of 
punishment. 
* Society has the right to declare certain 
behaviour as unacceptalbl·e and to impose 
sanctions and controls for deviant be-
havi·our. 
* The court has a dual roJe-saJfeguarding 
society by imposing sanctions, but 
also protecting the delinquent to the 
extent that his rights as a citizen, 
especially his right to liber-ty, are onlyinfringed by judicial process. 
"' There should be proportionality between 
the seriousness of the delinquent 
behaviour and society's response, bet-ween 
the offence and the sentence. 

Next the welfare model: 

• Delinquent, dependent and neglected 
children are all products of an adverse 
environment. All forms of disadvantage 
are relevant considerations. 

"' Delinquency is a pathological condition. 


"' Delinquents can therefore not be held 
responsible for their actions-they need 
treatment and not punishment. 

* Treatment is possible. 
* Because we are thinking of treatment 
and not punishment there must be a high 
degree of flexibility and discretion in its 
application. 
* Treatment has no harmlful side effects. 
* The child and his welfare are paramount 
though considerations of publicprotection cannot be ignored. 
counter claims 

The Northern Ireland rep·ort goes on to 
outline the counter claims that are often 
put formard in rebuttal of these two 
models. The welfare model, for instance, 
is criticised for its underlying hypocrisy 
-offering the promise of help for a 
pathological condition but in fact beingconcerned with social control. Anyonewho breaks society's rules must be sick 
and should therefore be subjected to 
assessment diagnos·is and treatment. H 
the treatment doesn't work at first, it 
indicates that a different sort olf treatment 
is needed, not that the concepts 
o'f health and si-ckness might have been 
inappropriate'ly applied. Also, since the 
welfare model takes delinquency out of 
the legal sphere and into the medical one, 
different standards of individua•l rightsand li-berties apply, usually much .Jess 
strict standards so that the rwelfu.re agencycan exercise an astonishing degree of control 
over the youngster. For example, a 
youngster on a Care Order might well 
remain in care until his eighteenth birth-
day-the court cannot unilaterally revoke 
the order before then, or set a prior •lim'it 
on its length. The !welfare aJgency on the 
other hand can apply to the oourt for an 


early discharge of the order, but the 
youngster cannot do so on the grounds 
that he dedines to be treated, even though 
(with certain exceptions in psychiatriccase) the ordinary citizen and the adult 
offender both have the freedom to dec'line 
medical treatment ~f they Wi'Sh. 

The welfare model is al·so criticised for 
paying too much attention tQ the needs 
of the de~inquent youngster and not 
enough to society's need to he protected 
'from his behavLour, 'for 1being " solft on 
young thugs". It is also criticised [or not 
being effecti.ve in preventing repetition 
of offending and not being able to deal 
with the serious, persistent offender. 

On the other hand the -justice model is 

. said to be wiLfully blind to the realities 
of disadvantage and to impose the standards 
of behaviour which are acceptable 
to comfortable middle class society on 
youngsters against whom the dice have 
been loaded from the beginning. In more 
formal terms, for the majority of y.oungsters 
appearing in court, complete responsibility 
for one's ·actions is an unre~li:stic 
assumption. Furvhermore, the vast 
majority of cases do not inv,olve anydispute over the bets and hence, the 
argument goes, the judicia1 process is 
redundant in these ca11es. ALl that is 
needed is a decision on how !best to deal 
with the youngster involved. 

Another criticism is that while the welfare 
model might erode civil liberties t>o 
some extent, the justice model is too 
legalistic, trapping and confusing youngster 
and parent alike in the unintelligible 
formalities of the l~w. 

Finally, the justice model is crit>ici11ed for 
not being effective in preventing repetition 
of offending and not being able to deal 
with serious and persistent offenders-a 
criticism also applying to the welifare 
model. 

The proposals in chapter five dependultimately on a model !which is neither 
justice or welifare, although it contains 
elements of lboth. As 1!o the effectiveness 
of these proposals, at the least ·they •wiH 
perform no worse than the present 

arrangements, while there are also 
grounds for believing that they wi'IJ 
actually reduce recidivism to some extent. 


4. Warwickshire-a case 
study 


It may be helpful, having sketched out 
the historical background and described 
the phi1osophical co n c e p t s which 
underline current thinking, legislation 
and practice, to turn to a case study. It 
should be stressed 'that the interpretation 
and the conclusions dra-wn :from bhis study 
are the author's and not necessarily those 
CYf the Social Servi.ces Department for 
whom the research wa·s carried out. 

Cri'ticism of the 1969 Act, whether lfrom 
the welfare or justice positions, began as 
sonn as parts of the Act were implemented 
in 1971. However, this criticism 
did not seem to he accompanied by verymuch factua·l evidence on the Act's workings. 
It was with the intention of providing 
some factual evidence that Warwickshire 
Social Services Departmentbegan to study the y.oungsters in its area 
on whom either a Care ·or SupervisionOrder was imposed during the period1971 to 1976. 

Care and Supervision Orders were introduced 
for offenders, in the 1969 Act. A 
care order, as the name implies, commi'ts 
the youngster to the care <Jf the local 
authority, giving the local authority the 
power and duties of a parent. In practicethis gives the authority the power to 
determine where and with whom the 
youngster will reside, with no facility for 
appeal. There is a stabutory duty on 
the local authority to review the case 
every six months to consider whether 
to discharge the order, but the courts 
play no part in this review unless an 
application f or discharge is made to them 
by the authority or the youngster'sparent. Once a care order has been made 
the local authority and the whole child 
care system cease to distinguish between 
the offender and the non-offender. Care 
orders last (unless discharged) until the 
youngster's eighteenth birthday, or nineteenth 
if he was aged 16 at the time 
the order was made. 

Supervision orders closely resemble probation 
orders for alder (17 +) offenders, 
but the supervision may be undertaken byeither the local authority Social Services 
Department •or by a probation officer. 
This type of order carries no power CYf 

removal 1from home at the discretion of 
the supervising agency, although the court 
may impose a condition of residence at a 
specified address. Supervisi.on •orders are 
for fixed periods of up to three years, 
and may be discharged early ilf application 
is made hy the supervising agency to 
the cour't. 

In all, 875 offenders were included in the 
survey, full details of which are available 
elsewhere ("Can Social Work Intervention 
Affect Delinquency? ", Social Work 
Today, 18 September 1979 and Youngsters 
in Court, Warwickshire Social Services 
Department 1977 and 1978). 

This research concentrated on Care and 
Supervision Orders because these are the 
means whereby the court can direct a 
youngster into the Social Services (orProbation) domain. Bu't the value of the 
study goes 'beyond this narr:o<w, agency-
based perspective. Y·oungsters receivingthis type of sentence form a sizeable 
minority of the total !found guil'ty of 
indictable offences-31 per cent of those 
aged 10 and under 17 in 1971, 22 per 
cent in 1978 •(Statistics of Criminal Justice 
System, England and Wales, 1968-78, 
HMSO, 1979) which in itself makes them 
worth attention. 

In additi·on, though, i't is these youngsers 
on whom the welfare model had its 
greatest impact since they were dealt 
with in ways which were not possiblebefore the introduction of the 1969 Act. 
If the model is correct in regarding the 
majority of youngsters who offend as 
casualties of the society in which theylive, then action aimed a't repairing the 
damage they have suffered should prove 
to be no less effective then if they were 
treated as common criminals, with no 
heed being given to their social needs. 

The procedure f:ol·lowed in the Warwick-
shire research was to trace the records 
of the youngsters for a period of two 
years after the Care or Supervision Order 
was made, to see whether there was any 
further finding of guilt during this period. 
For various reasons which are described 
in the research reports, the number f-or 
whom it was possible to do this fotlow



up was 462, of whom 41 per cent were 
in fact reconvicted. 

causes of reconviction 

The real focus of the research, though, 
was not so. much on ~the rate of reconvicti
·on as on the reasons for it. The reasons 
for reconviction need to 'be teased out 
if any progress in making a rational 
choice between the welfare and justice 
model·s is 'to be made-lbebween two 
approaches to dealing with youngsterswho offend-and thence t·o construct the 
framework ;for a new penal policy for 
youngsters. 

The delinquency literature is full of 
similar attempts to identify the causes 
'of conviction and reconviction, and the 
results have passed into the realm of 
common knowledge. The key to the 1969 
Act indeed, the abol'ition of the distinction 
between the deprived and the depraved, 
has its origin in the recurrent 
finding that delinquent youngsters tend 
to be those who are already disadvantaged 
in various ways. Even the advocates 
af the justice model do not disputethis. 

The Warwickshire research examined 
three sets of p·ossible " causes " O!f reconviction. 
In any individual case ~here will 
of course 1be many many contributingfactors, and it is highly unlikely that any 
amount of research could positivelyidentid'y all the causes of a delinquentaction. It is a different story, however, 
when one is considering a large number 
of actions (and youngsters). On the large 
scale, statistical regularities may begin 
to appear, and i't is on the la11ge scale 
that penal policies have to be framed. 

The three <large scale sets o'f possibleinfluences on reconviction, then, ·were 
classified as "pre-treatment" variables, 
"sentence" variables and "treatment" 
varialbles. 

The "pre-treatment" variables were the 
sex of the youngster ; his or her age ; the 
Social Services team which assumed 
responsibility !for him or her, and the 

number and types of offences of which 
he had been found guilty. 

The "sentence " variables ·were the 
various orders--Care Order, Supervision 
Order with a social worker doing the 
supervising, Supervision Order with a 
probation officer doing the supervising. 

The third set were rather more complica'ted, 
since they attempted to mea•sure 
the na:ture of the response made iby the 
social agency, and in particular to look 
at the use made of the powers of removal 
from home. This set comprised measures 
of the stability of the placement pattern 
following the making of the order and 
the types O!f placement. 

These factors, and many others which 
could not be taken into account, interact 
in very complex ways. However, some 
findings can be distilled which point the 
way forward. WaJ1Wickshire youngstersappearing lbefore the juvenile courts f·or 
offences are not untypical of their peers 
elsewhere, in terms of age and sex distribution. 
As to the number and nature 
of the .offences for which the Warwick-
shire youngsters received Care or Supervision 
Orders, the following ta;ble makes 
several impmtant points which have 
national as well as local relevance: 

FREQUENCY OF TYPES OF 

OFFENCE 
average offences 
per youngster 

type of offence number per cent 
involving violence 
sexual offences 
0.09 
0.03 
2 
0.9 
property offences 
other .offences 
3.20 
0.17 
92 
5 
total 3.49 100 

First, the table shows that offences involving 
v'iolence (including both actual 
and grievous lbodily harm, one case of 
manslaughter, assault, robbery and 
others) were rare. It may be of course 
that the majority df young violent 
offenders became the responsibility of the 
penal rather than the social work 
agencies, hut the available evidence suggests 
otherwise. National statistics (which 


are not strict·ly comparll!ble 'in fact for 
technical reasons) indicate that offences 
of violence again·st the per&on by ten-
sixteen year old males made up Jess than 
4 per cent of all indictable offences bythis age group in England and Wales 
in 1978. Apparently, whatever else the 
typical young offender is, he is not 
violent, despite the popular image of 
young thugs r.oam'ing the streets. Youngthugs do exist, hut they are very much 
'the exception. 

The second point the table makes is that 
sexual offences are even more rare. Again, 
the national statistics support this conclusion, 
with under 2 per cent of all indictaJble 
offences by males aged 10-16 
(England and Wales, 19~8) falling into 
this category. When ·One examines the 
case records of the sexual offenders, it 
is transparently clear that many of these 
youngsters are in need of psychiatric or 
other medical help in addition to anyother action the court may see fit to 
take. 

The next conclusion to be drawn from 
the table is that the lbulk of the offences 
are .connected with property-theft, burglary, 
damage being the most common 
in {act, although there were several 
others. The proportion this time is a 
massive 92 per cent, and the national 
~'ltistic which is rbroadly compara;ble is 
9-~ per cent (males 10-16, Eng·!and and 
Wales, 1978). I do not wish to playdown the emotional distress that victims 
of burglary in particular 'feel, but it is 
important to get juvenile offending into 
perspective-the vast majority of offences 
do not involve personal injury to the 
victim. 

The Warwickshire study concluded that 
the influence of " pre-treatment" charac


teristics on the probll!bility of reconviction 
within uwo years was very small, a finding 
which is in line with a major Home Office 
study {IF Simon, " Prediction Methods 
in Criminol-ogy", Home Office Research 
Study 2, HMSO, 1971). 

As to the second set o'f factors that mightinfluence the probahiJiity of reconviction, 
the different types o.f order, it was found 
in the Warwickshire research that .there 
were significant differences in their relative 
effectiveness. The following table 
gives the figures. In this table the two 
year actual reconviction rate is the percentage 
reconvicted within two years of 
the making of the care or supervisionorder (Details are gi·ven in Youngstersin Court, ibid). The standardised rate 
is a statistical construct to remove the 
effects of the "pre-treatment " characteris
·tics as far as possible, so that the 
specific influence of the type of order 
can be more clearly seen. 

The fact that standardisation doesn't 
change the rates much simply reflects 
the earlier statement that the pre-treatment 
characteristics do not make much 
difference to the probability of reconviction 
within tWo years. Olearly, though, 
the 'type of order impose·d on a youngster 
does make a difference to the likelihood 
that he will be reconvicted within two 
years, irrespective of h'i's characteristics 
and those of his offences. The questionof why there should be such differences 
in the effectiveness of these three ways 
of dealing with youngsters ·who offend 
is a fascinating and very complex one. 
which involves looking at the effects of 
sending youngsters to detention centres 
or Borstal as well as examin'ing the role 
of the Social Services Department and 
the Probation Service in this field. The 
fact that ·~he question needs t·o be asked 

ACTUAL AND STANDAR'OISED TWO YEAR RECONVICTION RATES 

actual standardised 
reconviction reconviction number of 
type of order rate '(per cent) rate (per cent) cases 
local authority supervision 
care order 
46 
29 
49 
31 
120 
84 

probation supervision 4'2. 40 258 
per cent average 41 41 


at all is itself very encoura,ging, since it 
suggests that we need not ibe fatalistic 
in our approach to delinquency and do 
nothing jn the hope that " they :will grO>W 
out of it". Apparently it is possible to 
do something, albeit ·With limited success, 
to make an impact Qn a youngster'sdelinquency. 

It is often said that it is the residential 
component of the Care Order which 
makes it work, that sending a youngster 
away from home is what reforms him. 
A spell in a CHE '(approved school) can 
be seen as deprivation of liberty in .order 
to punish-if y-ou sub~ibe to the justice 
model-or as an opportunity to 
remove the youngster ,from his criminogenic 
env'ironment and expose him to 
professional help-if you support the 

'welfare model. '(The community home 
itself will pr-obably steer an unea·sy course 
between the t-wo concepts of why its 
inmates are there and of :what, as a 
result, it should 'be doing with them_)
Either way, removal !from home is seen 
as the key. 

deprivation of liberty 

Further down the delinquency road the 
same difference re-emerge, in the form 
of the Detention Centre and Borstal 
training. The Detention Centre is " punitive 
and deterrent rather than reformati
·ve " and 'it ·was al-ways intended to be 
so. The 1948 Criminal Justice Act introduced 
" an avowedly strict regime of 
detention" in order to effect "the aboliti
·on of corporal punishment and of 
middle range prison sentences if.or under 
17s" (J.a.in Crow, The Detention Centre 
Experiment, NACRO, 1979). Borsta1 tra·ining, 
on the other hand, was intended to 
be precisely that-a period (of semi-
indeterminate length) of training .to provide 
constructive alternatives to crime. 

H, however, we look at the Prison uepartment's 
official figures for two yearreconvict'ion rates, we find that neither 
Detention Centres nor Borstals have a 
particularly good record. The figures are 
not stricUy comparaJble ·with the Warwickshire 
·anes, hut they are relevant 

nevertheless. For Detention Centres, 73 
per cent of those under 17 dischargedin 1974 were reconvicted within two 
years, while for 'Borstals the equivalent 
figure was 81 per cent. Hardly very 
very impressive, although it •Would be 
wrong to .Jeap to the conclus'ion that 
Care and Supervision Orders are twice as 
effective a'S Deten·tion Centres ·or Borstal 
-the two sets .of figures are based on 
different populations. Nevertheless, these 
figures do cast some doulbt on the effectiveness 
c;f deprivation of liberty, :whether 
the purpose be punishment or help, and 
they also strongly suggest that Detention 
Centres and Borstal are especially ineffective. 


Investigation of the Warw'iokshire Care 
Order cases produces sadly inconclusive 
results regarding the effectiveness of 
residential care, a milder form of deprivation 
of liberty. One of the features 
associated wi~h residential placementsunder a Care Order is .that they tend to 
be interspersed With periods .at home, S·O 
that for a youngster to spend the •whole 
of a two year period ifollOIWing the 
imposition oof the Care Order actuallyin residential care is .fairly unusual. 
Allowing for this type c;f complication, 
though, the results .of the War;wickshire 
study are still str'ictly speaking inconclusive, 
·in that they ·offer no support at 
all for the thesis that placement in a 
residential child care establishment 
diminishes the likelihood that a younsgter 
will be reconvicted within ~wo years. 
Indeed a study by Corn'i'Sh and Clarke 
for the Home Office research unit, concluded 
that residential treatment or training 
fails to have a signi,fica·nt reformatory 
effect (Residential treatment and its 
effects on delinquency, HMSO, 1975). 

And yet despite aU ~he evidence, we 
keep on using these ineffective, expensive 
measures! As a recent Briefing Paper 
by the group New Approaches to Juvenile 
Crime points out : "Since 1968 there 
has 1been a particularly marked increase 
in the use of Borstals and detention 
centres. The use of Care Orders and 
Supervision Orders has declined" (No. 
3, 1980). The pervers•ity of this is well 
illustrated by the fact that the Home 


Office young offender psychology unit 
found that a 'third of the fi'fteen-sixteen 
year olcls going into closed Borstal do 
so directly from some tform of socia·l 
services contact and that in some juni.ordetention centres approximately 50 per 
cent of the lboys are subject to a care 
order. As Professor Tutt comments "It 
begins to look, therefore, as thoughprison department esta:bli·shments ... are 
becoming part of the repertoire of placements 
for children on a care order" 
(Social Work Today, 4 April, 1978). In 
other word , i.f resident'ial treatment 
doesn't work, try some more residential 
treatment! One may perhaps :be !forgivenfor wondering what would happen if the 

ocial services departments responsiblefor the e youngsters had to pay directly 
for the use ()If thi accommodation? 

At best, then, residential settings are ineffective 
for dealing with youngsters who 
commit offences, and yet both the courts 
-representing society, and the socia·l 
work agencies, representing the young ter 
-connive at their use. It is very ull'fortunate 
indeed that deprivation of liberty 
can at one and the same time symbolisepuni hment for the justice model and 
treatment opportun'ity for the welfare 
one. Without this deceptive coexi tence 
of I wo opposin·g concepts •in the arne 

ubject, the fundamental differences between 
'the two models would surely have 
destroyed long ago the present unsatisfactory 
compromise which satisfie 
neither camp and which damages a lot 
of young ters caught in the cross'fire. 

But there is ano•ther line of argumentwhich need's to be !brought to bear on 
the use of re ident'ial placements, and 
that i their haphazard nature. Tt is this 
above all that exposes the danger of 
all owi ng the welfare model to slide into 
a p eudo-medical model, as can all too 
ea ily happen. The as umption df delinquency 
a being a pathological condition 
leads to the idea of a ses ment, diagnosis 
and treatment. What this can mean in 
practice i that a young ter on a care 
order goe to an " observation and as essment 
centre" where his condition will 
be diagno eel and appropriate treatment 
pre cribed. However, except in a very 

small minority of cases, this treatment 
has nothing to do with medicine and 
everything to do with finding accommodation. 
One may well ask why a spellin an expensive institution, staffed byhighly trained people, costing over £13R 
per week on average in 1979, is necessary'to find accommodat'ion? 

A study of an assessment centre tby the 
Portsmouth Polytechnic Social Services 
Research and Intelligence Unit concluded 
that the eventual recommenda'tions 
of the sophisticated and long drawn out 
assessment process could have been predicted 
.from a handful of basic tfacts 
about the youngster, without even seeing 
him I Apparently, then, assessment makes 
precious little difference to the type of 
residential placement used, wh'ich veryoften comes down in 'the end .to a question 
of which institution has a placeavailable at the right time. Far from the 
use of residential care !being part of a 
deliberate treatment plan, as the welfare-
medical model would seem to require,
it is quite haphazard in reality. Thus, 
residential care for delinquents would not 
seem to fulfil any of Vhe dbjectives prescri
·bed ifor it, 'by either 'the justice or 
the welfare sides of the argument (FirstYear at Fairfield Lodge, Portsmouth 
Polytechnic, 1976). 

So what is it about care orders that 
makes them work? We have seen that 
" pre-treatment" •factors don't appear to 
be very important, and that residential 
care is a very doubtful contender. What 
the Warwick hire study found ·was that 
one aspect of vhe care order pmcessstood out above a·ll others for the strength 
of 'its association with reconviction within 
two years. 

This a pect was the stability of the placement 
pattern: the fewer changes of 
placement there were and the longer each 
placement Ia ted the lower was ~he probability 
of reconviction within two years. 

The nature of the placement, whether at 
home or in an in titution, whether in a 
children' home or in an approved school, 
did not matter nearly as much as the 
stability of that placement. The impli



cations o.f this key finding are tremendous, 
especially when linked in with the 
other evidence I have presented on the 
effectiveness of Detention Centre and 
Borstal, and with evidence still to come 
from the " Massachusetts experiment " 
in the United States and even from a 
country whose general Mtitude to law 
and order 'is usually regarded as beingfar tougher than ours-France. 

So now we have three things to take into 
account when looking at why it is that 
some youngsters 'become recidivists while 
others do not. These three are the pattern<Yf relative effectiveness shown by the 
three type of " social agency order " (theCare Order, Supervision by the Probati
·on Service and Supervision by Soc'ial 
Se,rvices), the irrelevance of residential 
care and the importance of the stabilityof the placement pattern. The common 
factor in these three is the presence or 
a·bsence of sustained and close contact 
with a concerned an·d eaTing adult. 

a concerned and caring adult 

First, the pattern of relative effect'iveness. 
Although no dir·ect measurement of contact 
between social a:gency staff and 
youngster was possible in the Warwick-
shire study, it was overwhelmingly 
apparent 'from reading over one thousand 
case files that there was a definite hierarchy 
of frequency of contact, which 
exactly paTalleled the relative effectiveness 
<Yf the three types df order. Studies 
of Birm'ingham and Berkshire Social 
Services Departments, while not completely 
comparruble with the Warwick-
shire research, also confirm that youngsters 
on care orders will see more of ~heir 
social workers than youngsters who are 
being supervised by socia·l workers, while 
it is generally accepted that the Probation 
Service adopt a different style olf 
superv'ision which includes more regular 
contact than social workers are usuallyable to provide. 

home. The result is that although there 
is intensive contact !between youngsterand adult, it is rare for this to be 
sustained. 

Third the stability of the placement 
pattern. Research has shown that it is 
not the nature of .the placements '(•whether 
at home or in institutions of different 
kinds) that matters so much as the speed 
with which they change. Each change 
means that the youngster ha:s to break 
off one set <Yf relationships and construct 
a new one. A cycle of mak'ing and breaking 
relationships with concerned and 
caring adults means that there can be 
no continuity, no opportunity for developing 
a close relationship and therefore 
no real chance orf making an effecof 
preventing recidivism (Youngsters in. 
Court, ibid). 

Second, the question of residential care 
which is characterised lby a succession 
of placements to which might be added 
the problem of turnover of staff in the 


5. constructing a socialist 
penal policy for youngsters 
In the last analysis a society's penalpolicy reflects the society itself and the 
same might ·be sa'id of the ideal 
approaches outhned earlier under the 
headings of the weHare and the justicemodels. It could lbe argued that the welfare 
model reflects a collectivist view of 
society, in which the delinquent is not 
an individual but part of a greater whole. 
Just as it is senseless to punish an organ 
of the body {or misbehaviour, hut 
sensible to treat it, so the medical mo·del 
of pathology and treatment can legitimately 
be applied to a memlber oif societywhose actions are unacceptable by the 
dominant standards. Inasmuch a:s the 
collectivist v'iew in economic and political 
matters is characteristic of the Left, so 
it is only to be expected that the wellfare 
model tends to be as·sociated with the 
Left. 

On the other hand the justice model can 
be said to reflect an individualist view 
df society, one in which we are all set 
in competition one against another like 
animal•s in a jung·le. There is only one 
law, the law oif survival, breaches of 
which lead to inescapable and unpleasant 
consequences. Similarly the criminal law 
i·s as a!bsolute and inevi.ta,ble as anynatural law. and although the penalties 
may not be so harsh, compliance with it 
is as much a preconditi.on of survival in 
society as compliance with any natural 
la,w is a precondition of existence in the 
physical world. Thus retribution for 
breaches of the criminal law is not a 
question oif ·what is deserved lbut a ques tion 
of what must inevitably !follow fr.om 
the nature of society itself. And insofar 
as the individualist view in econom"il: 
and political matters is a characteri:stic 
of the R•ight, so we see the proponents 
oif the justice model lined up on the 
Right. 

Despite the influence of these two extreme 
views, progress has already been 
made towards development df a new way 
w'ith the introduction of " intermediate 
treatment", which sets out to create precisely 
the kind of sustained and close 
contact •with a concerned and caringadult which I have already put forward 
as the key to successful •intervention in 

a delinquent's career. One way of doing 
this has been described by Professor Tutt 
as using " an activity on which the adult 
through experience i·s obviously an 
authority, for example motor cycle main· 
tenance. A chi·ld will ibe interested 'in the 
activity and li:sten to and acknowledgethe experience of the adult. The child 
may weH ·then come to accept the adult's 
advice and authority in {)ther more 
important and intimate are·as d.f his 
life" ("Intermediate Trea,tment ", Social 
W ark Service, DHSS, Octdber 1976). 

What sort of controlling principle for 
society does this approach reflect? 
Neither the inhumanity olf .the collectivist 
nor the ferocity .df the individua,list, but 
the fratern'ity of the socialist. 11.t is worth 
noting in passing that fraternity is the 
least often mentioned member of the 
soci'alist trinity .of liberty, equality and 
fraternity, yet it is surely the most important 
in any discussion of a socialist penal 
policy. 

Fraternity, 1in the context of a penalpolicy ifor youngsters, recognises that the 
delinquent 'is a person and as such worth 
just as much as any df the rest olf us. 
Coercion, which devalues the individual, 
is therefore ruled out. Control, which 
does not devalue the individual, is not 
however to be ruled out, and .the problem 
is to find a method olf social control 
which does not devalue, ·whether byregarding the youngsters as a diseased 
organism to which it is legitimate to 
apply drugs {the extreme ·olf the welfare 
model), or a•s an animal .to which physical 
force can 'be applied {the ex·treme of the 
justice model). 

Looked at in .this hght-control and not 
coercion-the problem really solves itself. 
What is needed is for the youngster Wh{)
has offended, who ha·s broken the rules, 
to accept that the rules apply to him as 
well, and .to persuade him to acceptthese rules .for the sake c;f the rest of 
us. Easier said than done! While it is 
not difficult for a well-off, white, middle 
class youngster to see himself as parto>f the ruling '(in .the sense df rule making) 
class, and therefore as having a vested 
interest in the preservation of whatever 


it is these rules are desi:gned to maintain, 
the view is very different ifrom the bottom 
of the heap. The importance of fraternity 
now is that unless the youngster from 
the bottom of the heap can find a con· 
cerned and caring adult who aligns himself 
with at least the ·better values of 
society as a whole and, having found 
him or her, can relate to this adult in 
a fraternal not authoritarian manner, 
then without this relationship he stands 
precious little chance of relating to and 
becoming part of that s·ociety, let alone 
df accepting its rules. 

supporting fraternity 

This probably sounds like a very chancy 
business. As to putring something as 
mysterious and del-icate as a personalrel·ationship at the centre of a penalpolicy ifor youngsters, this is somethingwhich, it must be admitted, is risky,
since personal relationships-perhapsespecially those between child and adult 
-are notoriously unpredictable. Nonetheless, 
it is possible to 1buttress this 
element in the policy with others that 
are less delicate and .Jess controversial. 

These elements-decarceration, diversion, 
decriminalisation and the reduction 
of opportunity crime-must play a partin a socialist penal policy for youngsters, 
which is why they are mentioned 
here. However, these topi·cs have been 
extensively written about elsewhere and 
those interested in taking them further 
can obtain additional information from 
the group "New Approaches to Juvenile 
Crime" {169 Clapham Rload, London 
sw9, 01-582 6500) since only a brief 
outline will be given here. 

The previous chapter referred to 
evidence to be presented from France 
and from the " Massachusetts experiment 
" 'in the United States. This evidence 
is connected with what has 'been called 
the strategy of " decarceratlon ", the 
opposite df incarceration or locking 
up. Borstals and detention centres are 
.Jess than effective in persuading their 
charges to accept society's rules. Theyare also expensive establishments and we 

are told that public expenditure is run· 
ning at too high a rate. One would have 
thiought that costly failure·s would be the 
first to go ·in any public sector cut"back, 
·but apparently not. 

The French adopt a different approach 
to us. As far back as 1945, a judicialorder •Was made which states that young 
people under 17 shall never 'be incarcerated 
unless " exceptional circumstances 
the the personality of the minor requiresit". In 1970 the Children 'in Dan:ger Act 
went !further, declaring it to be illegal 
to imprison a min1or under sixteen 
" except to prevent a crime or if it is 
impossible to do anything else" (quotedby Anne Corbett ·in The Guardian, 26 
February, 1980). And unlike us, the 
French appear to mean what they say 
when they commit themselves to a policy 
of decarceration. 

In Massachusetts the location df one of 
the most famous experiments in the control 
of delinquency, and easily the most 
radical, the State junior prison systemwas practically dismantled in a very short 
space of time. A·bout 750 places in five 
residential institutions •Were shut down 
and replaced by some 200 different community 
programmes. Across the State as 
a whole there has not 1been an increase 
in recidi·vism as a result, according to the 
Harvard University research team which 
has been monitoring the experiment.
While it may 1be true that the energyand enthusiasm poured into the alternatives 
to prison have led to some chaotic 
results, this only pJ1oves that it is difficult 
to move <fast in this area, not that 
it is impossible .to move at all, and it 
certainly does not detract from the value 
of the experiment ·in showing that decarcerahon 
does not equal disaster. 

Decarceration then has to be be an 
element in the new penal policy for 
youngsters. There are others includingdiversion from the court system especially 
'by the greater use of cautioning by 
the police instead df court proceedings.
The great advantage of cautioning ·is that 
it keeps the penal sancti·on on a personal 
level, however embryonic th•is level might 
'be and therefore keeps it far closer to 


the ideal of a relationship with an adult 
tha:n the incomprehensible formalities of 
the law can ever do. (It is precisely the 
same personal basis that makes cautioning 
a potential threat to justice by removing 
the safeguards that are supposed to 
be built into the legal process ; so 
cautioning needs to 'be carefully watched.) 

There are two other buttresses to the 
fragile relationship between youngsterand adult which need to be mentioned, 
although my personal view is that theyhave only a limited scope. One is "decriminalisation 
", or declaring certain 
actions to be no longer illegal. The 
legalisation of cannabis, 'for example, 
has often lbeen put forward as a candidate 
for this treatment. Much more relevant 
to the rea'lities of youth crime would 
be the abolition of the "sus .. law, whereby 
youngsters-in practice ·often black 
youngsters-can be prosecuted for tbeing"suspected persons". A1bolition of this 
law would cut the crime statistics at an 
administrative stroke, 1but it would also 
go some way towards improving relati,onships 
between black youngsters and 
society. Decriminalisation in generaloffers some scope ifor reducing crime, by 
redefining ·it, but it can never make a 
major contribution. Still, it is worth 
pursuing. 

The other buttress is a 'bundle of mea'Sures 
which would need to 'be taken 'by a 
variety of people and organisations.
There is evidence to sug.gest that at any 
rate a proportion of ·offences by youngsters 
are " opportunity crime " rather 
than premeditated acti,ons, and can be 
prevented 1by removing the opportunity.
The classic case af this was the West 
German experience of making the fitting 
of steering wheel locks on cars compulsory. 
This led to a dramatic decrease 
in the number of cases of taking and 
driving away of cars. As with decriminalisation, 
however, the effects •df removing 
opportunity will only be comparativelymarginal. 

To return to fraternity, it is now possible 
to set out some policy proptosals for the 
new penal policy advocated in this 
pamphlet. Some df these proposals are 

straightforward, needin·g only politicalwill and courage to put into effect. Others 
can be ll!O more than pointers at present,
needing carefully monitored experimentsto establish the best way oif implementingthem. Only one would require the 
creation of a new form of disposal, the 
rest involve extending or abolishing existing 
provisions. Th·is new one is the SJ}onsorship 
Order. 

sponsorship orders 

The central role played by fraternityleads stra·ight to a new kind of provisionfor delinquent youngsters-or at least 
the comparatively small proportion who 
at present receive Detenti'on Centre or 
Borstal sentences or Care Orders (16 percent of males C~Jged fourteen-sixteen convicted 
of indicta!ble .offences •in 1978 and 
a similar percentage ·in the precedingyears). It has been argued that what 
should be provided /for them is " fraternity 
", in the sense of a close and susta
·ined relationship with a concerned and 
caring adul-t and it has also been al'gued 
that this does not happen wi.thin any kind 
of residential setting, whether its purpose 
be punishment or reform. It has 
been shown, too, ·that there are grounds 
for ·believing that this kind of relationshipactually works. It is recognised that it 
is quite imposs·i,ble for ·any court or welfare 
agency .to ·order such a relationship 
into existence. It should however, be 
within the power of the juvenile court 
to admit the possibility of such a relationship 
existing, and of giving this 
possibility official recognition as an 
appropriate solution to the welfare / 
justice dilemma. It should also be within 
the power of the welfare Cl!gencies to 
provide profess·ional support to both 
parties ·in this relationship and to providepractical support as well when required. 

To bring this albout •we need a new kind 
of order, which could be called a Sponsorship 
Order. By sponsorship is meant 
a kind of cross between intermediate 
treatment (which is a group activity)
supervision (which is one-to-one with a 
professional but sporadic) and fostering 
(which involves providing a substitute 


family). Sponsorship would not •be a sub· 
stitute •for any of these types of provision,
but would supply the hub for the wheel 
of which at present we have only the 
spokes and rim. 

How would such a ~cheme .operate? The 
details will have to be worked out byexperiment rather than spelt out here 
and now. After all, the unsuccessful 
Borstal tnrining concept has been with 
us since 1902, and the history of punitive 
detention for youngsters stretches 
much further back. Intermediate treatment, 
at least under that name, is still 
in i~ infancy by comparison, and the 
basic concepts are still being worked out. 
The Sponsorship Order would have something 
in common with existing schemes 
for befriending youngsters in trouble with 
the lacw, such as that run by the Cheshire 
police, but the distinctive features of the 
Sponsorship Order would be its basis In 
juvenile court proceedings and its recogniti•
on in law as a valid and appropriateform of court disposal. A new Order 
is required, rather .than simply an exhor· 
tation to make more use of existing provisions, 
both because it would symbolise 
a shift ·in society's attitudes towards 
delinquency and 'for .the more mundane 
reason that exhortations have alreadybeen tried and have largely fa·iled. 

the sponsorship order 
outlined 

The outlines of a Sponsorship Order 
scheme can be set down quite simply. 
First, the Sponsorship Order would complement 
purely punitive sancti•ons, and 
not replace them. The juvenile court 
would still have the duty to 'indicate 
society's displeasure 'but in a civilised 
manner. This could be by absolute or 
conditional discharge or impo~ing a fine 
(related to the offenders' .ability to pay) 
or by requiring the sacrifice of some 
free time at an attendance centre or in 
community service, or •by making an 
order for compensation or restitution. 
What the court would not have the right 
to do would be ~o subject a youngstereither .to "treatment" or to locking up, 
unless there were clear medical grounds 
for the fint or the offence was so grave 

as to warrant the second-murder for 
example. Whether or not a Sponsorship 
Order should be considered in a particular 
case is something that should lbe determined 
partly on a tariff basis, that is 
according to the gravity of the offence 
and partly by the availa·tlility of a sponsor. 
The na.ture of the tariff would hav.e to 
be ·worked out in consultation with magistrates 
and others, 'but it should roughlyspeaking correspond to the offences which 
qualify juveniles for Detention Centre, 
Borstal or a Care Order today. 

Second, the sponsor will ·be a volunteer, 
and almost invariably ruot a paid welfare 
worker. Advertising and recruitment ·campaigns 
will be necessary to top up the 
supply, but the first recourse should oe 
to adults already known to -the youngster. 
The present system df remanding for 
social enquiry reports by pwbati.onofficers or social workers could easilybe ada:pted to allow time f•or approaches 
to be made to likely people. 

Third, the court will have to be satisfied 
that the prospective sponsor is likely to 
be around for l•ong enough to providecontinuity of relationship, that he or she 
is willing to become a sponsor, and that 
the youngster is willing to accept him or 
her. 

Fourth, the court will make an order 
that the youngster will meet the sponsor 
at least once a fortnight (holidays, sickness 
etc., permitting), for a period not 
exceeding three years-the length .of 
time to 'be at .the discretion of the court 
but in any event predetermined. Persistent 
failure to keep appointments wiJ.l have 
to ·be reported .to the court, who will 
decide whether to 'impose one of the 
penalties available ·for minor criminal 
offences, or to change the sponsor. 

Fifth, the court will also make an order 
that a recognised welfare agency will 
provide professional support to the sponsor 
and the offender, principally •in the 
form of counselling in all probability. 
The court may also make a probation,
supervision, •or intermediate .treatment 
order at its discretion, -to run concurrently 
with the Sponsorship Order. 


Sixth, the welfare agencies will be expected 
.to provide whatever level and type 
df support to the youngster they would 
have provided had no Sponsorship Order 
been provided. The relationship of sponsor 
and agency should therefore be the 
same as the ideal relationship !between 
foster parent and agency-partners, not 
alternatives. 

Seventh, there may very well be a case 
for payment of a fixed allowance to 
sponsors, in recognition of the possrbility 
that their commitment might involve 
them in extra expense, al-though there 
would be no question of the sponsorbeing held to he responsible for the 
actions of the youngster. Sponsoringwould not be the same as providing a 
surely. 

What then are the sponsor and the 
youngster supposed to do at their regularmeetings? The answer is .that it will be 
up to them, with help .from the welfare 
agency at least to start with. And there 
is little more that can be said until sponsorship 
ha:s ·been tried and experimented 
with and ex·perience has •been !built up. 

One more .thing needs to be sa:id a1bout 
sponsorship. It is to stress that it is not 
intended to be seen ·in isolation .from 
other tforms of proVision, such as intermediate 
treatment {with which i.t mightprofitably in many, ·if not most, cases 
be combined). The whole point of sponsorship 
is tCI provide the close and sustained 
relationsh•ip with a concerned and 
caring adult, the expression df fratern'ity 
at an individual level, which most of 1our 
attempts to deal with youngsters who 
commi't offences hitherto have either 
ignored or !failed to achieve. Will it work? 
A ifa:ilure rate in the 70-80 per cent region 
is tolerated for Detention Centres and 
Borstal, compared to this sponsorshipmust be a safe bet l 

related policy proposals 

In addition .to the introduction CYf the 
Sponsor hip Order, there are other propo 
al which stem from the same conidel1ation 
of putting fraternity at the 

centre of a socialist penal policy f.or 
youngsters : 

First, aboi'ish all Detention Centres and 
Borstals. They accompllish neither punish· 
ment nor treatment and have no placein the ,fraternity model either. They are 
ineffective and expensive and .the savings 
made by putting this proposal 'into effect 
could !be used to pay ifor the other 
p!1oposals. 

Second, a•bol·ish commission of an offence 

a:s a .ground for applying for a Care 
Order. It ·is high .time that the inV'idious 
confusion of wel.fare and justice created 
by the use of Care Orders for youngsters 
who offend was cleared up, and 
this is the only '\%y to do it. Care Orders 
for youngsters who are ·thought, by the 
court, to need local authority care should 
continue, hut commission of an offence 
should not be regarded as sufficient proofin itself of the need :for care and control. 
Third, make greater use of •the short· 
term, non-custodial sentences alreadyavailable. This means in effect recognising 
that most juvenile crime is fairlytrivial, and avoids .the kind of over-
rea,ction that led in the past to .the imposition 
of a Care Order on a youngsterwho had stolen a bottle of milk. Sentencing 
policy, despite the pronouncements 
•of successive Lord Chancellors, 
is largely a maHer for ·individual benches 
of magistrates, and it is therefore within 
their power to do this. The purpose of 
sentences of this kind is :to •indicate 
society's disapproval af certain tforms of 
behaviour without devaluing the offender 
by coercion, whether the motive be retribution 
or treatment. 

Fourth, convert all Community Homes 
with Education on the premises into 
centres for <intermediate treatment (IT)
and expand IT itself. This will need both 
legislation and a change oaf heart by a 
number of local authorities-the former 
being easier to achieve than the latter. 
A short-stay residential tlacility will pro-
b'ably •be a feature of many df these 
centres, in recognition df the fact that 
some youngsters who •offend will want to 
spend some time away from home--or 


indeed have no home to go to. Residence 
would however, :be at the request of the 
youngster and ·not at the discretiton of 
either court or ·local ·authority. 

Fitf.th, devel·op professional ·fostering to 
repliace residential care for the small 
minority of de~inquents d'or whom no 
other non-custodial provision can be 
rnade. " Professional " ifos•terin•g means 
paying a salary, not just the usual aUowances, 
to people who are prepared to 
offer a substitute home to a youngsterwho •would O'the.!1Wise end up in a residential 
institution. Aayment is 'in r·ecogn'ition 
of the exceptionally demanding 
nature df this kind ·of fostering, which 
would ·only lbe relevant, once ·again, to 
a small minority of delinquents. 

Sixth, pr.oV'ide "junior prisons " tfor the 
very rare youngster who ·commits the 
most serious offences. 1978 figures show 
that 20 youngsters under the age of seventeen 
were detained rfor life that year, 12 
of them for !IIlurder. Only one was under 
fourteen. The Youth Treatment Centres 
which are currently provided at a cost 
of nearly £500 per place per week could 
be used to oonta1in these youngstersinstead of their present inmates who have 
supposedly reached the end of the child 
care line. This proposal is really an 
admi•ssion of defeat, an admission that 
we just don't know how to cope with 
this kind of youngster. Locking them upshould 1be only the start, but what 
follows? Perhaps the success of the Barlinnie 
Special Un•it in coping with 
hardened adult criminals in Scotland 
points :the way. The philosophy 00' this 
unit is essentially thalt within the context 
of deprivation of liberty "if they are 
treated as responsible people they will 
try to respond as such " (Scottish Prisons 
and the Special Unit, Scottish Council 
for OiV'il L'i'ber.ties, 1978). 


6. summary of proposals 
This summary sets out the proposals 'in 
two groups-those rwhich require changes 
in current practice and those ·whi·ch need 
legisla6on. The first group are especially 
addressed to magistrates, social workers, 
probation officers, police and others 
connected with child care and youthcrime. The second group are addressed 
to the next L'albour government. Both 
groups of proposals need .to be seen as 
parts of the same package, :though, and 
the package itself as s•imply another step 
along the road to a social·ist penal policy. 

proposals requiring· changes 
in current practice 

1. Make greater use of the short-term, 
non-cus·todial sentences already availalble. 
2. Convert all Community Homes With 
Education on the premises into centres 
postcript 

young offenders : the Tory 
White Paper of October 
1980 

The Conservative government waited 18 
months before producing what was 
intended to tbe .their first major poliocy 
statement on delinquents (YoungOffenders, HMSO, 1980). Not \Surprisingly,
it turned out to 'be the 'familiar Toryshuffle-one step !forward, three stepsback. Ending remands to prison for fourteen 
year old !boys and 'bringing down 
the age 'foor Community Service Orders 
to sixteen const>itute a step forward. 

The steps back are that the opportunities 
for a radical rethink of how we regard 
young offenders ·and rfor getting rid of 
nearly all custody for under eighteenshave 'been missed. The ibiggest step hack 
of all is thtat the polarisation pred~cted 
<lit the end of chapter two df -this pam


for Intermediate Treatment, and expand 
Intermediate Trea-tment provision. 

3. Develop professional fostering to replace 
r-esidential care of delinquents. 
proposals requiring changes 
in the law 

1. Introduce Sponsorship Orders to replace 
Care Orders rfollowing the commission 
of an offence, Detention Centre and 
Borstal sentences. 
2. Abolish Detention C en t r e s and 
Bors-tals. 
3. Provide junior prisons for the very 
rare Y'Oungster who commits the most 
serious offences. 
4. Abolish comm1ission of ran offence as 
a ground for applying for a Care Order. 
phlet has come a lot nearer. Despite the 
lip service paid to intermediate treatment, 
the practical effect of the White Paper's 
proposals w.ill he to condemn more 
youngsters to sterile, oounter productive, 
unjustifill'ble periods of custody, whether 
in Borstals, Den~ion Centres or residential 
child care establishments. As past experience 
has shown over and ·over again if 
the courts are ,given the opportunity to 
lock more people up they will do so, 
and then clamour rfar more insti•tutions 
to put more people •in. Reducing the 
length of Detention Centre sentences will 
merely serve to increase the .turnover of 
these establishments and that means more 
youngsters going inside. 

Young Offenders amply illustrates the 
bankruptcy 'Oif .the Tory approach to 
delinquents. Let us now show what we 
can offer in its place. 


recent fabian pamphlets 


research series 

331 Chris Ralph The picket and the law 60p334 Carl Wilms Wright Transnational corporations 7Sp33S Vincent Cable Import controls : the case against 70p336 Christopher Parsons Finance for development or sUI"V'ival ? 7S·p337 Robin Cook, Dan Smith What future in NATO? 7Sp338 Alan Fox Socialism and shop floor power 60p340 Deepak Lal Poverty, power and prejudice 7Sp341 Tom Sheriff A deindustrialised Britain ? 60p342 David Scott Bell Eurocommunism 80p343 J. Goode, D. Roy, A. Sedgewick Energy policy : a reappraisal 80p344 A Fabian group Can tenants run housing ? 70p34S David Taylor India : the poiJ.itics of change 7Sp346 Robert Taylor The crisis of American labour 70p 

------------------~~~~------~-----------------------------


tracts 

4S1 Dianne Hayter 
4S3 Nicholas Falk 
4S5 David Watkins 
457 Tom Crowe, John H. Jones 
458 Robert Taylor460 Walter Jaehnig 
461 A Fabian Group462 Bryan Gould and others 
463 Austin Mitchell 
464 Giles Radice 
465 Peter Scott 
466 C. Pond, L. Burghes, B. Smith 
467 Trevor Barnes 
468 Evan Luard 
469 Peter Hall ( ed) 
470 Roger Carroll 
471 John Bowers, Suzanne Franks 

young fabian pamphlets 

The labour party : crisis and prospects 60pThink small : enterprise and the economy 75p 
Industrial common ownership 65pThe computer and society SOpLabour and the social contract 65pFamily service for mentally handicapped 60pCreating a caring community 65pThe poHtics of monetarism 60pCan Labour win again ? 7SpCommunity socialism 6SpWhat future for higher education ? 70pTaxing wealth inequalities 6SpOpen up! 6SpSocialism at the grass roots 6SpA radical agenda for London £1.00 
The ~o wage worker 6SpR'ace and affirmative action 7Sp 

42 Martin Smith Gypsies : where now ? 40p44 Melvyn Westlake World poverty : the growing conflict 70p4S Geoff Harris A wider Europe SOp46 David Elliott The Lucas Aerospace workers' campaign 60p47 Tom Schuller Education through life 6Sp48 Mark Swift A regional policy for Europe 70p49 Mark Goyder Socialism tomorrow 80p

~------------~~~~~~~~~~~~~------------------~ 

books 

R. H. S. Crossman and others New Fabian Essays cased £1.7S 
Brian Abel-Smith and others Socialism and affluence paper £0.60 
Peter Townsend and others The fifth social service paper £2.50 
George Cunningham (ed) Britain and the world in the 1970s cased £3.00 

justice, w~lfare and juvenile delinquents 

The struggle to construct a socialist society must include a socialist policy 
for dealing with delinquents. ·The way a society reacts to youngsters in 
trouble wnh the law casts a very revealing light on the princip·les that 
society is based on. ifwo main principles have governed the last 150 years 
or so of the history of measures for dealing wi·th delinquency in this country 
-justice and welfare. 

Using research into juvenile delinquency in Warwickshire as a case study, 
this pamphlet shows how neither principle is satisfactory and how a new 
concept, fraternity, needs to be placed at the centre of socialist policies 
for delinquency. ,A set of practical proposals are put forward for making 
some progress towards a policy based on fraternity including the abolition 
of ·Borstal and Detention Centres and the introduction of a new type of 
court disposal. the " sponsorship order " . 

John May is under no illusion that his proposals will be enough to create 
a fully socialist policy for delinquents, but believes that the arguments and 
ideas put forward will bring such a ·policy a few steps nearer. The law and 
order lobby must and can be countered with firm evidence as well as 
ideological conviction. 

fabian society 

The Fabian Society exists to further socialist education and research. It Is 
affiliated to the labour Party, both nationally and locally, and embraces all 
shades of socialist opinion within its ranks -left, right and centre. 
Since 1884 the Fabian Society has enrolled thoughtful socialists who are 
prepared to discuss the essential questions of democratic socialism and 
relate them to practical plans for building socialism in a changing world. 
Beyond this the Society has no collective policy. It puts forward no resolutions 
of a political character. The Society's members are active in their 
labour parties, trade unions and co-operatives. They are representative 
of the labour movement practical people concerned to study and discuss 
problems that matter. 

The Society is organised nationally and locally. The national Society. 
directed by an elected Executive Committee, publishes pamphlets and 
holds schools and conferences of many kinds. Local Societies-there are 
one hundred of them-are self governing and are lively centres of discussion 
and also undertake research. 

December 1980 
Cover design by Dick 'Leadbetter ·Printed by 1Civic •Press limited (T.U), 
·Civic Street, ·Glasgow G4 9RH fSBN 7163 0472 4 JSSIN 0307 7535