Juvenile Delinquency and the Limits of Western Influence, 1850–2000

Juvenile convicts and their colonial familial lives

“…Indeed, convict lives have been increasingly sought (Frost and Maxwell-Stewart, 2001), but there has been a concentration on adult convicts, and juvenile lives are only lightly touched on. That is not to say juveniles have been ignored, as Godfrey, Cox, Shore, and Alker (2017) pointed out, works include: administrative histories of judicial and penal reform covering new statutory measures for children (Radzinowicz and Hood, 1990;Bailey, 1987); more social and culturally based studies on juvenile delinquency (Pinchbeck & Hewitt, 1973;King, 1998 and2006;Shore, 1999Shore, & 2011Pearson, 1983;Ellis, 2014); studies of juvenile institutions (Stack, 1992;Cox, 2003;Cale, 1993), studies of juvenile policing (Jackson and Bartie, 2014), and studies of juvenile court records (Bradley, 2007;. However, the whole lives of offenders convicted as juveniles, from their lives before, during, and after crime have scarcely been explored.…”

Inventing the ‘normal’ child

“…Although public and professional disquiet peaked in the 1950s (Bessant, 1991), the term itself gained currency in the preceding century and the behaviours that were codified as such have, of course, a much longer history (King, 2006). 3 As Ellis (2014: 5) and others argue, delinquent youth are a ‘transhistorical phenomenon’ (Griffiths, 2002). What changed during the early to mid-twentieth century was, therefore, not so much the nature of the transgressions of youthful populations; rather, it was the construction of juvenile delinquency as a psychological problem, as nineteenth century notions of delinquency arising from physical difference or mental inferiority were replaced by concepts of personal and social maladjustment.…”

“…(Report of the Committee Appointed to Inquire into Delinquent and Other Children in State Care, cited in Cashen, 1985: 73–4)Australian concerns during this period echoed and were fuelled by wider international unease (cf. Ellis, 2014), as delinquency was depicted as a global social problem of modernity. In Australia, scholarly publications, newspaper articles and public inquiry reports commonly looked to the United States and Britain, but examples of problem youth and crime rates in countries closer to home, such as New Zealand and Japan, were also drawn upon (Barry, Stoller and Barrett, 1956).…”