Existing reformatories, or "senior home office schools" as they are
officially styled, in England numbered 44 in 1907. They receive all
juvenile offenders, up to the age of sixteen, who have been convicted of
an offence punishable with penal servitude or imprisonment. The number
of these during the years between 1894 and 1906 constantly varied, but
the figure of the earliest date, 6604, was never exceeded, and in some
years it was considerably less, while in 1906 it was no more than 5586,
though the general population had increased by several millions in the
period. These figures, in comparison with those of 1854, must be deemed
highly satisfactory, even when we take into account that the latter went
up to the age of seventeen. Older offenders, between sixteen and
twenty-one, come within the category of juvenile adults and are dealt
with differently (see _Borstal Scheme_ below).
Other schools must be classed with the reformatory, although they have
no connexion with prisons and deal with youths who are only potential
criminals. The first in importance are the industrial schools. When the
newly devised reformatories were doing excellent service it was realized
that many of the rising generation might some day lapse into evil ways
but were still on the right side and might with proper precautions be
kept there. They wanted preventive, not punitive treatment, and for them
industrial schools were instituted. The germ of these establishments
existed in the Ragged Schools, "intended to educate destitute children
and save them from vagrancy and crime." They had been invented by John
Pounds (1766-1839), a Portsmouth shoemaker, who, early in the 19th
century, was moved with sympathy for these little outcasts and devoted
himself to this good work. The ragged school movement found powerful
support in active philanthropists when public attention was aroused to
the prevalence of juvenile delinquency. The first Industrial School Act
was passed in 1856 and applied only to Scotland. Next year its
provisions were extended to England, and their growth was rapid. There
were 45 schools in the beginning; in 1878 the number had more than been
doubled; in 1907 there were 102 in England and Wales and 31 in Scotland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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