@drmaryfraser
By March 1916
the British Home Office was sufficiently concerned about youth crime that a
letter was sent to Chief Constables in 18 Constabularies across England and
Wales asking for statistical returns on the number of offences “committed by
children and young persons under 16 years of age” and the increase over the
previous year, along with the manner in which Justices had dealt with offenders
in the previous six months. The letter also asked for the Chief Constable's
opinions on the causes of the increase, mentioning that films “depicting crimes
and exciting adventures” shown in the cinema, automatic gambling machines and
air guns were influencing juveniles to commit crimes. Even for locations where
an increase had not been noticed, this encouraged further investigation,
leading some cities to also acknowledging that they had a problem.
The discourse
of youth crime spread into religious, social welfare and voluntary
organisations across Britain and allowed international comparisons. A month
after the Chief Constable's statistical returns, juvenile crime was portrayed
to have significantly increased by a general rise of 34% and the increase in
thefts was nearly 50%. The situation is not confined to any one area. The
concern was that juvenile lawlessness had spread through the country like a
plague.
In 17 of the
largest towns surveyed, comparing December and February in 1915 with 1916 the
number of offenders rose from 2,686 to 3,596 cases which included larceny,
malicious damage, gaming and offences under the Education Acts. The reasons
were categorised as not only the influences of the cinema, gambling machines
and the dangers of air guns, but also the loss of Boys’ Clubs with the lack of
these good influences on the boys. Justices were requested to “induce suitable
people to engage in this work” where boys could go in the evenings to keep them
off the street. Juvenile crime was gendered, so that boys were seen as mainly
responsible, with girls very seldom involved.
The Home
Office set up the Juvenile Organisations Committee in December 1916 “to
consider, in view of the officially reported increases in juvenile delinquency,
what steps could be taken to strengthen and extend the work of voluntary
agencies concerned with the welfare of boys and girls” as healthy recreation
was seen to prevent juvenile delinquency. The Home Office further investigated
the causes of juvenile delinquency in more detail by requiring the courts in 4
towns to complete statistical returns on 7,000 cases asking for information on
the parent’s occupations and income, the number of family members by sex and
whether they were over or under 16 years of age, and the youth organisations
attended by the offender. For school children information was required on the
school attended, any paid work undertaken, with the number of hours worked per
week and the income. For youths having left school: their age on leaving and
the standard they had reached, past and present employment with hours worked
and income. The results involved the use of psychology to show that those
children from families where the income was said to be below the poverty line
had “an additional temptation to dishonesty” with more than 78% of youth from
these homes said to be in poverty, committing theft. This confirmed for the
police and other public service bodies, such as social work, that the youth who
were most likely to commit crimes were from poor families. The role of these
organisations was to instill middle-class ‘character’ into the boys so that
they would demonstrate self-control, stamina, sobriety and thrift. By making
them into good citizens, they would develop into upright men able to hold down
a good working class job to support a wife and family.
However,
after the war the rate of juvenile crime diminished to its pre-war level, and
so it retreated in importance while other pressing social problems arose with
demobilisation.
Further
reading
Beaven, B.
(2005) Leisure,
citizenship and working-class men in Britain, 1850-1954. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Childs, M.J.
(1992) Labour’s
Apprentices: Working-Class Lads in Late Victorian and Edwardian England.
London: The Hambledon Press
Fraser, M.
(2019) Policing the Home Front 1914-1918: The control
of the British population at war. Routledge, research monograph
Henrick, H.
(1990) Images of
Youth: Age, Class and the Male Youth Problem, 1880-1920. Oxford: Clarendon
Press
Mahood. L.
(1995) Policing
gender, class and family: Britain, 1850-1940. London: UCL Press
Springall, J.
(1986) Coming of
Age: Adolescence in Britain 1860-1960. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan
@drmaryfraser
No comments:
Post a Comment