NCJ Number
94773
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 24 Issue: 2 Dated: (April 1984) Pages: 168-184
Date Published
1984
Length
17 pages
Annotation
An historical review of English police policy regarding the handling of juveniles is presented, with a focus on police discretionary practices and formal policies from 1893 to 1931.
Abstract
A review of general orders pertaining to juveniles and arrest data for 1893 to 1935 points to a period of leniency as a police policy. During the 1880's and 1890's, the movement to curtail and finally abolish the confinement of children and to reduce the extensive use of reformatories and industrial groups received significant support from reform groups and Home Office political and civil officials. This more lenient correctional policy was based on a rejection of the asylum theory for handling children in trouble with the law. The disenchantment with juvenile correctional facilities also was associated with questioning the treatment of all juvenile offenses as grave and juvenile offenders as willful. A policy of police warnings and cautioning was increasingly used with first-time offenders. In the absence of special juvenile courts, police performed these admonishing and diversionary functions; after courts were organized, they continued to perform these functions in the absence of any changes in correctional policy. The end of this lenient period came in 1931 when a new Home Secretary and his advisors decided that too many London juveniles genuinely in need of reformative treatment were being kept out of court. Harris, Trenchard, and the Molony Committee, key figures in this shift in policy, believed in the rehabilitative efficacy and caring functions of the revised approved schools, thus justifying nondiversionary handling of first offenders. Officials like Harris also had access to national political authority. In addition to promoting, drafting, and implementing new legislation, Home Office officials were able to use their discretionary authority to change police, magistrates', and correctional operational policies from those of de facto deinstitutionalization to a proinstitutional policy.