In the early twenty first century juvenile crime has become a matter of widespread social and political concern and debate. Young Offenders examines the way in which attitudes – and the law itself – have evolved in dealing with juvenile wrongdoing from the early eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth. By the use of court and prison records, parliamentary papers, newspapers, the writings of reformers and other records, such as those covering transportation and life in the overseas penal colonies, it considers the way in which the punishment of the young and the definition of delinquency itself have developed. The gender difference between boys’ misdeeds, often involving theft and violence, and girls’ offending, which frequently relates to sexual and moral matters, is also considered. The book shows how attempts at reforming offenders by the creation of purpose‐built institutions have met with disillusion and discouragement and have been followed by a reversion to harsher treatment.

The reminisces of youngsters who have passed through the criminal justice system over the years adds a personal dimension to the debate. Juvenile delinquency became a subject of special interest and concern to the wider public from the late nineteenth century; in this connection the book considers the validity of current claims that British society is ‘broken’ because of the activities of a few young thugs. As is pointed out, there has never been a ‘golden age’ of order and security of the kind some nostalgic commentators suggest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Pamela Horn lectured in economic and social history at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University) for over twenty years. She has now retired but still lectures to family history and local history groups. She has written extensively on social history topics covering the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. That includes several books on child life and schooling during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It was this which led her to turn her attention to juvenile offending and the way in which attitudes to that difficult question have evolved over almost three centuries.