Wild Arabs and savages: A history of juvenile justice in Ireland 9781526112378

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The system emerged in many forms, such as the industrial and reformatory schools, Borstal, probation, community initiatives, crime prevention, youth work and social work initiatives. This unique and original work examines the technologies employed to govern young people, outlining the specific disciplinary and pastoral initiatives that constitute the present system. These technologies include detention schools, special care units, diversion and early intervention projects. The book also considers the various forms of childhood identity that are employed to govern or regulate young people. From the figure of the ‘delinquent child’ that began to emerge in the mid-nineteenth century to the ‘psychological child’ and ‘at risk child’ that emerged in the late twentieth century and the ‘child as the bearer of rights’ that has emerged in the early twenty-first century. The book uses a wide range of sources including previously neglected historical material to chart the emergence of the modern ‘youth justice’ system in Ireland. This unique and original study will appeal to those with an interest in juvenile justice, history and social policy, legal scholars and criminologists. Paul Sargent is a Research Associate at the School of Social Work and Social Policy, University of Dublin, Trinity College

Cover image reproduced courtesy of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Cover design by Darren Watts

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www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Wild Arabs and savages   Sargent

This book is the first history of the Irish juvenile justice system. It charts the emergence of the system from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Written from a governmentality perspective, it draws from a wide range of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ sources exploring key rationalities that have underpinned the development of the juvenile justice system in Ireland.

Wild Arabs and savages A history of juvenile justice in Ireland

Paul Sargent

Wild Arabs and savages

Wild Arabs and savages A history of juvenile justice in Ireland

Paul Sargent

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

Copyright © Paul Sargent 2014 The right of Paul Sargent to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN  978 0 7190 8916 9 hardback First published 2014 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of figures vi Prefacevii Acknowledgementsix Chronologyx 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction1 From penitentiary to community 12 How the system became visible 50 Rationalities underpinning the system 92 The technologies employed to govern 125 The forms of childhood identity employed to govern 155 Conclusion190

Bibliography198 Index219

Figures

2.1 Numbers of children cautioned by An Garda Síochána, 1968 to 2010 2.2 Numbers committed to borstal, 1922 to 1956 3.1 Numbers committed to industrial schools, 1923 to 1969

24 28 61

Preface

The Irish juvenile justice system underwent unprecedented changes in the first decade of the twenty-­first century. These changes are reflected somewhat in the language used to describe the system and certain elements of it. The term ‘youth justice’ is commonly used to refer to the present system and appears to embody developments as diverse as diversion, restorative justice, high support and special care, along with more traditional elements such as detention. In an attempt to understand how we have come to speak about youth justice, this book looks at the key historical developments that resulted in the emergence of the youth justice system. Although the origins of juvenile justice can be traced back over two hundred years, there has been no attempt to write a complete history of juvenile justice in Ireland. Some aspects of the system have been accounted for, such as the emergence of the borstal institution and the large network of industrial schools, but these provide only partial glimpses rather than an overall context within which to locate such historical developments. When looking back over the history of juvenile justice in Ireland one is struck by the overall lack of co-­ordination and the general ad hoc manner in which the system emerged. What is also striking about the emergence of the Irish system is the relatively minor role played by the state in its development and management from the mid-­nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. In this regard, the state abdicated its responsibilities mainly to Catholic religious organisations. In stark contrast, the state has now taken centre stage in managing the newly emerging youth justice system. Evidence of this can be seen in the establishment of both the Irish Youth Justice Service and the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. Utilising a wide range of previously unused primary and secondary sources, this book charts the development of the Irish juvenile justice system from its inception at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The book does not attempt to evaluate the system in terms of its effectiveness or its compliance with international standards. Rather, it attempts to open up the ‘youth justice’ space along four separate lines of enquiry: how the system became visible; the

viii

Preface

rationalities underlying the system; the techniques used to govern the child and young person; and the forms of childhood identity employed by those governing. In this sense, the book is not a traditional history but an attempt to do two things at once: unsettle the taken-­for-­granted nature of the discourse on juvenile justice and map previously unmapped territory. It is hoped that the book, having broken new ground, will inspire others to undertake further research in this area.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my deepest thanks to Anna, Grace and Clara whose patience and support made it possible for me to write this book. Special thanks are also due to my parents, who have always supported me. Thanks also go to the staff of Manchester University Press for their constant assistance and expertise. I am indebted to Eoin O’Sullivan for his inspiration and guidance over a number of years. His support and encouragement through all the stages of this project is deeply appreciated. His willingness to share his knowledge and experience has shaped my understanding of juvenile justice and child welfare in Ireland. Likewise special thanks are due to Helen Buckley, who has been another source of great support and inspiration, and Shane Kilcommins for his generous encouragement. I am also grateful for the support of my colleagues and the staff in the Department of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin, which enabled me to complete this project. I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to the following people, whose expertise, help and encouragement have been invaluable in the completion of this book: my former colleague and friend Jim McGuirke; Brendan Mangan; Seamus Fitzpatrick; Siobhan Young; Nicola Carr; Bronagh Gibson; Jennifer Armstrong; Teresa Whittington of the Central Catholic Library; the staff of Milltown Park Library; Donal Fenlon, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland; Elizabeth Flynn of Cúnamh, formerly the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland; the staff of the National Library of Ireland; and the staff of the Library at Trinity College Dublin.

Chronology

1801 Smithfield Penitentiary established in Dublin for juveniles awaiting transportation 1853 Report of the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles 1858 Reformatory Schools (Ireland) Act 1858. First reformatory school for Roman Catholic girls opens at High Park, near Drumcondra, Dublin 1859 First reformatory school for boys opens at Glencree, County Wicklow 1868 Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act 1868 1869 First industrial school certified at Lakelands, near Sandymount, Dublin 1884 Report of the (Aberdare) Commission on Industrial and Reformatory Schools 1895 Report of the Departmental Committee on Prisons (Gladstone Report) 1906 First borstal institution in Ireland opens at Clonmel, County Tipperary 1908 Children Act 1908 1924 Responsibility for administration and supervision of reformatory and industrial schools passes to the Minister for Education 1936 Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory School and Industrial School System 1941 Children Act 1941 1944 St Anne’s, Stillorgan, County Dublin certified as a reformatory and industrial school. Marlborough House, Glasnevin, Dublin opens 1949 Children (Amendment) Act 1949 1951 Report of the Commission on Youth Unemployment 1953 An Garda Síochána introduces cautioning scheme for first-­time offenders 1956 Borstal institution transferred from Clonmel to St Patrick’s Institution, Dublin 1958 Report of the Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency



Chronologyxi

1960 Criminal Justice Act 1960 establishes St Patrick’s Institution as a place of detention 1962 Inter-­Departmental Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders established by Minister for Justice, Charles Haughey 1963 Garda Juvenile Liaison Officer Scheme established 1968 Shanganagh Castle, Shankill, County Dublin opens 1970 Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems (Kennedy Report) 1971 Probation and Welfare Service formally established 1972 St Laurence’s School, Finglas, Dublin opens. Marlborough House closes. Loughan House, Blacklion, County Cavan opens for male juveniles aged between sixteen and twenty-­one 1973 St Conleth’s, Daingean, County Offaly closes and is replaced by Scoil Ard Mhuire, Lusk, County Dublin. St Michael’s Assessment Unit, Finglas, Dublin opens 1974 Letterfrack Industrial School, County Galway closes 1975 First and Second Interim Reports of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons. Interim Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services 1977 Loughan House closes 1978 Loughan House opens for male juveniles aged between twelve and sixteen 1980 Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services. Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Irish Penal System 1983 Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act 1983. First purpose-­built secure unit for young offenders outside the prison system opens at Trinity House School, Lusk, County Dublin. Loughan House closes 1985 Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System (Whitaker Report). Fort Mitchell (Spike Island), County Cork opens. Scoil Ard Mhuire closes 1988 First purpose-­built Children Court opens at Smithfield, Dublin 1991 Child Care Act 1991. Garda National Juvenile Liaison Office established. First Garda ‘Special Project’ established 1992 Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder 1999 Cloverhill Prison, Clondalkin, Dublin opens 2001 Children Act 2001 2002 Shanganagh Castle closes 2003 Special Residential Services Board established 2004 Fort Mitchell (Spike Island) closes. Office of the Ombudsman for Children established

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Chronology

2005 Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs established 2006 Criminal Justice Act 2006 enacted amending parts of the Children Act 2001. Report on the Youth Justice Review. Irish Youth Justice Service established 2007 Irish Youth Justice Service assumes responsibility for detention schools. Health Information and Quality Authority established under the Health Act, 2007. Cuan Beag Girls Remand and Assessment Unit opens at Oberstown, Lusk, County Dublin. Children Acts Advisory Board (CAAB) established 2008 Irish Youth Justice Service publishes its first National Youth Justice Strategy 2009 Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse 2010 Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre closes 2011 Child Care (Amendment) Act 2011 2012 Minister for Children and Youth Affairs announces government approval for the funding of a National Children Detention Facility at Oberstown, Lusk, County Dublin. From 1 May 2012, all newly remanded or sentenced 16-­year-­olds to be detained in the children’s detention facilities at Oberstown

1

Introduction

On 8 July 2001 Dáil Éireann enacted the Children Act 2001 replacing the Children Act 1908, which had been the primary legislation underpinning the juvenile justice system in Ireland for almost one hundred years. The objective of the 2001 Act was to ‘make further provision in relation to the care, protection and control of children’. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O’Donoghue, described the legislation as the ‘distillation of the accumulated wisdom and the best practice worldwide in the area of juvenile justice’ (Dáil Debates, vol. 517, 29 March 2000). The Act provides a new statutory framework for the juvenile justice system in Ireland and its 271 sections cover the areas of justice, education, health, child protection and welfare. This development was the state’s response to a widespread consensus that reform of the juvenile justice system was long overdue and that there was a need for a more humane system that would better meet the needs of the children it catered for. Two years earlier, on 11 May 1999, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, while apologising to the victims of child abuse for the state’s ‘collective failure’, announced a number of measures, including the establishment of a Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. The Commission, chaired by a judge of the High Court, Ms Justice Mary Laffoy, was formally established on 23 May 2000 pursuant to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000. This Act was subsequently amended by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Amendment) Act, 2005. The Commission, which eventually issued its final report in 2009 under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Sean Ryan, catalogued a litany of abuses of children in the state’s institutions, most of which formed part of the juvenile justice system. The report also described the systems of management, administration, operation, supervision, inspection and regulation of these institutions. The report found that physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect were features of these institutions, with children often subjected to severe and brutal regimes of discipline. Systems of inspection were found to be totally inadequate. Indeed, government officials had adopted a ‘deferential and

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Wild Arabs and savages

submissive’ attitude to the religious congregations that managed the schools, resulting in a failure to carry out their statutory duty and protect those children in their care. Initially established in the mid-­nineteenth century, the reformatory and industrial schools dominated the Irish juvenile system for almost one hundred years, their dominance only being seriously challenged in the second half of the twentieth century. The legislation that provided for the reformatory and industrial schools was finally replaced with the enactment of the Children Act 2001. The first reformatory school legislation was introduced in Ireland as a result of sustained lobbying from reformists in both Britain and Ireland. The National Reformatory Union, founded in 1856 to promote the cause of reformatory schools, counted among its ranks those employed within the criminal justice system and those with an interest in reforming the juvenile offender. One such advocate was P.J. Murray, a Dublin barrister who penned a series of articles supporting the Reformatory School Movement. He described those who founded the Union as ‘Prison Chaplains, hard working rectors, county magistrates, and other bucolic dreamers, backed by some lawyers, whose experience proved the utter absurdity and irreparable mischief, of committing juvenile criminals to common gaols’ (1856: 1). Murray would become the first inspector of reformatory schools in Ireland and his second annual report (1863) gives an insight into how children were viewed at this time. In outlining his suggested regime for reformatory schools in Ireland, he quotes from Mary Carpenter’s Essay on Food, Labour and Rest in Reformatories: These wild Arabs, as well as savages, often show great quickness of apprehension, and the power of great exertion on emergencies; but they have little capability or liking for patient, steady, mental application, or regular hard labour, carried on in obedience to the direction of another. These must be taught them. Hence mental work must be considered, as well as what is commonly called industrial occupation. (Inspector of Reformatory Schools of Ireland, 1863: 15; italics in original)

The history of juvenile justice in Ireland is remarkable for the lack of change and innovation in terms of both legislation and policy development when compared with other jurisdictions. Apart from some relatively minor pieces of legislation, the Children Act 1908, which consolidated a large amount of legislation relating to juvenile offending from the second half of the nineteenth century, remained the statutory framework upon which the system was based for almost one hundred years. In terms of provision, reformatory and industrial schools acted as clearing houses for most of the ‘troubled or troublesome’ juveniles in the country from the mid-­nineteenth century until the late twentieth century.



Introduction3

In essence there was little difference between the regimes that operated in both types of school. The reformatory school system was established in Ireland under the Reformatory Schools (Ireland) Act 1858 and a decade later the Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act 1868 provided for the establishment of industrial schools. The Children Act 1908 later amended both pieces of legislation. Section 44 of the 1908 Act defines an industrial school as a school for the industrial training of children, ‘in which they are lodged, clothed and fed, as well as taught’. Section 44 defines a reformatory school in the same terms, but substitutes ‘youthful offenders’ for ‘children’. The majority of children detained in these institutions were detained in industrial schools. Following Irish independence in 1922, most of these schools were run by Catholic religious organisations with the Christian Brothers operating the majority of industrial schools for boys and the Sisters of Mercy operating the majority of industrial schools for girls. While there was little or no change to the existing system in Ireland in the years following independence, in other jurisdictions one can see the emergence of new innovations in relation to the treatment of juvenile offenders and potential offenders. In England and Scotland in the 1930s legislation amending the Children Act 1908 heralded a new approach to the treatment of young offenders. Such a change in thinking about the way that young people were to be treated was reflected in England in the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and in Scotland in the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Acts 1932 and 1937. With these and subsequent enactments one can see a movement away from the institutional model as represented in the reformatory and industrial school system. In England this resulted in the eventual emergence of community-­based diversionary initiatives such as ‘intermediate treatment’, while in Scotland the Children’s Hearing System was established in the late 1960s following the publication of the Kilbrandon Report in 1964. There have been various explanations as to why similar legislative and policy developments did not occur in Ireland. These include the particular insularity of the country and the dominant influence of the Catholic Church on policy development, the failure of influential lobbying groups such as the trade unions to identify with the issue of juvenile justice reform, the Irish government’s subsidiary attitude to policy development in this area and the lack of criminological research in Ireland. This is despite the fact that there have been numerous reports, both from government and non-­governmental sources, calling for reform in this area. By the early 2000s there appeared to be a real appetite on the part of government for change with regard to the juvenile justice system. However, change came slowly. In October 2004 the government established a project team to examine how the state’s services could be rationalised and restructured in accordance with the new legislative basis, the Children Act 2001.

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Wild Arabs and savages

The Report on the Youth Justice Review (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2006), which was the product of the team’s deliberations, outlined a number of proposals that would lay the foundations for a ‘joined-­up’ approach to the area of juvenile justice. One of the most interesting aspects of this report is the language it employs. The juvenile justice system was rebranded the ‘youth justice system’ and described as providing, based on the Children Act 2001, a twin-­track, child welfare and justice approach. The report appeared to be heralding a new expanded territory, a ‘youth justice’ space where the child would be cared for and controlled as required. The emergence of this ‘new’ approach to governing children is the starting point for this book. The Report on the Youth Justice Review envisioned a blend of justice and welfare initiatives or more accurately a balance between the two. In response to the perceived lack of co-­ordination of services in the area of juvenile justice the report recommended the establishment of a Youth Justice Service, under the control of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, to oversee the implementation of a ‘unified model of service delivery’. This new Youth Justice Service would combine services for young offenders under one governance and management structure. Underpinning the unified governance structure recommended by the report is a particular conceptualisation of the young person as potentially ‘troubled and troublesome’. In this regard, the report envisages the development of a parallel structure in the Health Service Executive (the main statutory provider of health services in Ireland) that would facilitate the state’s governance of these troubled and troublesome children. The Irish Youth Justice Service (IYJS) was established in 2006 and according to its National Youth Justice Strategy (IYJS, 2008b: 2) is: guided by the principles of the Children Act, 2001 and is focused on … diverting children from crime and the criminal justice system, promoting restorative justice, enforcing community sanctions, facilitating rehabilitation and, as a last resort, providing for detention. The IYJS works with the criminal justice agencies, the Office of the Minister for Children … and other statutory and non-­ statutory bodies such as the Health Service Executive, and organisations in the community and voluntary sectors.

The IYJS now operates as an executive office within the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA), which was established in June 2011 to consolidate the functions of a number of government departments in key areas of policy and provision for children and young people. These include the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, the National Educational Welfare Board and the Family Support Agency.1 This book is not concerned with the degree to which the Irish juvenile



Introduction5

justice system is effective in terms of governance or outcomes. It aims to open up the space that is ‘youth justice’ and, by looking at its past, examine how we have come to speak about ‘youth justice’ itself. In essence, it aims to map the changing ‘mentalities’ that have been employed to govern children from the origins of the system in the mid-­nineteenth century to the present. So, for example, it will consider how notions of risk and diversion are increasingly utilised to govern children within the justice system without being concerned with the effectiveness or consequences of these approaches. In a similar fashion, it will consider how different innovations in law and policy are utilised to govern without being concerned with the merits or otherwise of such developments. That is not to say that these issues are not important, however, they are beyond the scope of this book. In adopting a governmentality approach, one avoids the pitfalls of grand theorisation and reductionism associated with revisionism allowing one to analyse the practices that are assembled to regulate the ‘child’ without assuming any prior theoretical position. Also, one can map the emergence of juvenile justice in Ireland without attempting to fit events into one neat theoretical explanation or describe events from a ‘presentist’ perspective. If the reader is left feeling that there are some questions left unanswered then this is not altogether unintended. In this regard, Rose, et al. note that governmentality studies should not be criticised for not doing what they never intended to do as, ‘the aim of such studies is critical, but not critique – to identify and describe differences and hence to help make criticism possible’ (2006: 101). It is in this sense that one is here aiming to ‘open up’ the youth justice space and facilitate future critique in this area without providing a critique of elements of the system or of the system as a whole. So, for example, although the emerging discourse on children’s rights is an important aspect of how the child is constructed ‘as a bearer of rights’, it is not intended to evaluate the current juvenile justice system from a rights perspective, this has been covered by others in the field. Likewise, it is not intended to critique the development of the formal justice system or speculate why a particular direction was chosen at a given time. In this regard, Mitchell Dean (2010: 267) defines governmentality as: how we think about governing others and ourselves in a wide variety of contexts. In a more limited sense, the different ways governing is thought about in the contemporary world and which in large part can be traced back to Western Europe from the sixteenth century.

At first glance the history of juvenile justice in Ireland would appear to be a relatively brief and uncomplicated one. One could conclude that following almost one hundred years of a repressive and unenlightened regime dominated by the reformatory and industrial schools, a more enlightened

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approach begins to emerge in the early 1970s, eventually culminating in the enactment of the Children Act 2001 and the establishment of a new ‘youth justice’ system. However, this simplistic or ‘whiggish’ version of history fails to capture the complex developments that resulted in the formation of the youth justice system. Utilising a ‘governmentality’ framework, this book seeks to unsettle the conditions of possibility that resulted in the emergence of the youth justice system. Rather than employing a state-­centred approach, this book disturbs the often progressive rhetoric that characterises much of the discourse on youth justice and asks what it is we mean when we use the term ‘youth justice’. It aims to open up the space that is ‘youth justice’ and unearth the underlying rationalities, technologies and forms of identity that are employed to govern the child and young person within the modern Irish juvenile justice system. Within the context of the Irish juvenile justice system, the state was to a large extent absent from the practicalities of regulating children for most of the twentieth century, abdicating its responsibilities to religious and voluntary organisations. Also, for almost a century there was little in the way of legislative or policy development in this area. With this in mind, it makes little sense to concentrate primarily on the state in order to explain how we arrived at the current youth justice system. By utilising a governmentality approach the book takes the focus away from an analysis of the ‘state’ and concentrates on an analysis of the ‘problematics’ of government. It is within this context that ‘governmentality’ as a methodological tool is utilised, engaging in a more localised form of enquiry, steering clear of grand theorisation. This approach involves an examination of key documents and pieces of legislation that emerged from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the early twenty-­first century. One can chart the changing mentalities or lines of government in a wide range of documents, including reports of inspectors of reformatory and industrial schools, reports from prison authorities, police reports, reports of commissions of inquiry, reports from lobbyists, individual testimonies, academic studies, policy or strategy documents, management guidelines and training and practice manuals. Following Dean (2010), one can, by attending to the various practices, techniques and forms of identity that operate to govern within the juvenile justice system, ask four types of question: First, how is the juvenile justice system made visible? This refers to the visible ways that the system seeks to govern: reformatory and industrial schools, borstal, open prisons, the Children Court, places of detention, secure units and community projects. By utilising a governmentality approach one can also make visible those aspects of the system that are less prominent. In particular, throughout the first half of the twentieth century one can see the emergence of an extensive regulatory grid mostly comprising initiatives spon-



Introduction7

sored by Catholic religious organisations and designed to regulate certain sections of the juvenile population. Second, how do the various forms of knowledge or rationalities of government that are employed to govern within this regime affect the practices of government? Such rationalities include restorative justice, rehabilitation, risk assessment, diversion, psychology, probation, social work, youth work and detention. Third, how and by what techniques is government achieved? This concerns the technical aspects or technologies of the system, including: counting, identification, targeting, practical form-­filling, categorising, management procedures, handbooks, the technical language employed, the vocabularies utilised to construct the subjects of government, forms of expertise and the physical architecture of containment. Fourth, how is young people’s identity conceptualised for the purpose of governing them within the ‘youth justice’ system? The effect that notions such as citizenship, employability, entrepreneurship, vulnerability, reformation, deprivation, risk and rights have in shaping the identity of the young person within the context of the juvenile justice system, resulting in formation of identities such as the ‘at risk child’, the ‘delinquent child’ or the ‘child as a bearer of rights’. By asking such questions one can trace the lines of government that exist within the juvenile justice system. These lines of government exist within the practical procedures that people working within the system use to record decisions, the different types of knowledge they employ to make their judgements and the programmes they adopt to achieve their aims. As such, information relating to how we govern is to be found not only in political rationalities but also in the practical nuts and bolts of the system itself. Having examined the system along these four distinct lines of enquiry the book describes how the state has become more enmeshed in the business of governing the juvenile offender and potential offender within the context of the ‘new’ youth justice system or the increasing governmentalisation of the state. In contrast to the previous two hundred years, in the 2000s the state took centre stage in terms of the delivery of juvenile justice. What one sees now is a largely state-­centred system. Dean (2010: 267) describes the governmentalisation of the state as the ‘long-­term trajectory by which the exercise of sovereignty comes to be articulated through the regulation of populations and individuals and the psychological, biological, sociological and economic processes that constitutes them’. So rather than viewing the ‘state’ as the origin of government one asks how the state at particular moments in history came to connect itself ‘to a diversity of forces and groups that in different ways had long tried to shape and administer the lives of individuals in pursuit of various goals’ (Rose et al., 2006: 87).

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Wild Arabs and savages

Outline of the book This introductory chapter has provided a brief overview of the development of the juvenile justice system in Ireland, highlighting the lack of legal and policy development throughout most of the twentieth century. Given the fact that there is no existing history of juvenile justice in Ireland, Chapter 2 provides a straightforward chronological review of some of the main developments that have occurred from the emergence of the Irish juvenile justice system in the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-­first century. It offers the reader a general overview of the key developments and provides a historical context for the main study without attempting any theoretical explanation. It also reviews some of the existing literature relating to the Irish juvenile justice system. The subsequent chapters are not linked by any narrative structure and could be read as stand-­alone pieces. They are aimed at analysing how the child and young person is governed within the context of the Irish juvenile justice system without following a progressive historical narrative. As such the reader is invited to look at the Irish juvenile justice system from four distinct perspectives. So, for example, the establishment of the borstal institution is initially considered from a historical perspective and located within the context of the overall historical development of the system. It is then considered from a visibility perspective, in terms of its underlying rationalities, as a technology of government and finally in the context of the forms of childhood identity employed to govern. It should also be noted that within each individual chapter a strict historical narrative is not adhered to, with the result that the reader’s attention is drawn to the practices of government, the technologies, the rationalities and the forms of identity employed rather than the evolution of juvenile justice policy in general.2 So rather than engaging in the debate as to whether the current system, with its emphasis on diversion, is more progressive or an exercise in net-­widening, the focus is on the practicalities of governing the troubled and troublesome child. Chapter 3 explains how the justice system became visible in Ireland. It highlights how the ‘problem’ of the juvenile delinquent emerged in the mid-­ nineteenth century. In Ireland, the category ‘juvenile offender’ and ‘juvenile crime’ first emerge in 1853 in the Thirty-­first Report of the Inspectors-­General on the State of the Prisons of Ireland. Both the problem of delinquency and its government are framed within various official reports by means of statistics. In addition, a new system of governing the delinquent population emerged in the form of the reformatory and later the industrial school and these regulatory sites supplemented existing sites such as the workhouse and the prison. From a governmentality perspective, the growth in bio-­political knowledge surrounding the child results in the greater classification of delinquency and



Introduction9

also results in a more refined calibration of the system itself.3 Although legislation providing for the borstal system and probation was later enacted, these initiatives never challenged the dominance of the reformatory and industrial school system and it was to be the early 1970s before this model began to be replaced. Around this time we see the emergence of a range of regulatory sites located within the ‘community’. However, it has to be acknowledged that prior to this a less visible regulatory grid existed in the various initiatives promoted by religious organisations from the late nineteenth century onwards. The juvenile justice system has since become less visible but more pervasive within a myriad of governmental spaces within the community that supplement the more visible institutional sites. Chapter 4 examines the diverse range of rationalities that underpin the juvenile justice system. By examining numerous official and unofficial reports as well as other relevant literature not accessed before in this context, this chapter unpicks the main governmental rationalities that occupy this space. Recent rationalities to emerge in this regard are those of ‘community’ and ‘citizenship’. The former seeks to enlist various alliances within the community in order to govern. The latter encourages the empowerment of young people to become active citizens and enhance their participation in ‘civic society’. Rationalities such as social work, probation and psychology began to gain prominence in the 1960s as the dominant religious discourses began to be challenged. An often neglected rationality of government is that of ‘youth work’, which has been present from the beginning of the twentieth century in Ireland. For most of the twentieth century it formed part of a socio-­spiritual discourse and was dominated by religious organisations. From the 1960s it began to become a more secularised activity, however, many of the religious organisations that were prominent in this field from the early twentieth century remain active today. Likewise although the reformatory and industrial school system has been replaced, the underlying rationality of reformation remains active within the juvenile justice field. Chapter 5 analyses the technologies that are employed within the juvenile justice system to govern young people. Following Nikolas Rose (1996a) these technologies are classified as either disciplinary or pastoral. Disciplinary technologies usually involve a specific regulation of time and space. This manifests itself in some form of panoptic architecture combined with the day-­ to-­ day regulation of time. They are embodied in detention centres, reformatory and industrial schools and special care units where strict regulations govern the organisation and movement of those contained within them. Pastoral technologies, on the other hand, are usually based on rituals of confession and self-­disclosure and entail some form of pastoral relationship with another person. They are generally found in community-­based programmes that encourage the young person to change their lifestyle, increase

10

Wild Arabs and savages

their self-­esteem or become active citizens. They are to be found in restorative justice initiatives, crime prevention initiatives, Youth Projects and Probation Projects. Disciplinary and pastoral techniques are not mutually exclusive and many pastoral technologies are employed in disciplinary settings. Until the early 1970s the juvenile justice system was dominated by disciplinary technologies epitomised by the reformatory and industrial schools. With the decline of the institutional model of regulation and the ascendancy of the diversionary model, pastoral technologies have come to dominate the justice system with large numbers of young people governed in ‘open’ sites within the ‘community’. Chapter 6 examines the specific forms of childhood identity that are employed in order to govern young people within the juvenile justice system. This chapter does not attempt a narrative history of ‘childhood identity’ but rather seeks to unsettle the various regimes of subjectification to which the concept of identity is linked. With this in mind, ‘identity’ is examined in terms of its function as a regulatory ideal rather than trying to construct a historical narrative of the subject. It is within this context that the chapter looks at the most prominent forms of identity that are employed to govern within the ‘youth justice’ space. Various forms of identity, such as the ‘delinquent’, the ‘reformable child’, the ‘psychological child’, the ‘at risk child’ and the ‘child as a bearer of rights’, are examined. These forms of identity are not employed in isolation but often complement each other in the process of governing the offender and potential offender. The book concludes by highlighting the manner in which the state has become enmeshed in the activity of governing children and young people. This increased governmentalisation of the state in the context of the development of the Irish juvenile justice system has gained significant momentum in the twenty-­first century with the ‘rationalisation and restructuring’ of services and the establishment of the Irish Youth Justice Service and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. In brief, this book aims to unsettle our understanding of the ‘juvenile offender’ and the juvenile justice system by providing a critical analysis of how they have emerged over the last two hundred years. Notes 1 The IYJS is staffed by officials from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the Department of Justice and Equality and responsibility for the implementation of the Children Act 2001 is shared by both departments. The former is responsible for the three detention schools at Oberstown, Lusk and the latter has responsibility for matters relating to An Garda Síochána, the Probation Service and the Irish Prison Service.



Introduction11

2 I have drawn inspiration here from the method employed by Nikolas Rose in Powers of Freedom. Rose notes that the chapters of his book are not linked by any narrative structure but describes each one as standing on its own, ‘as a little map or diagram of a certain set of problems and issues. Together I hope they amount to something like a partial glossary or a selection of entries from an imaginary and always unfinished encyclopaedia’ (1999: 12). 3 Bio-­politics is ‘a form of politics, conducted largely since the eighteenth century, concerned with the administration of the conditions of life of the population. The concept of population as a living entity composed of vital processes is essential to bio-­politics. Bio-­political interventions are made into the health, habitation, urban environment, working conditions and education of various populations’ (Dean, 2010: 266).

2

From penitentiary to community

‘thousands of miserable human beings’ Concern about the treatment of children within the prison system in Ireland can be traced back to the late eighteenth century. Following calls for the reform of the Irish prison system from prison reformers John Howard and Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, at the end of the eighteenth century a penitentiary was added to the Dublin House of Industry at St James’s Street, Dublin, to cater for juveniles and females.1 Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, physician and inspector of prisons in Ireland, had campaigned for reform of a prison system which did not distinguish between adult and child prisoners. Fitzpatrick, an advocate of the penitentiary system took charge of the first penitentiary in Ireland at St James’s Street in Dublin in 1790. Although this was a relatively short-­ lived ‘experiment’ it served as a blueprint for the Smithfield penitentiary in Dublin (MacDonagh, 1981). Smithfield, established in 1801, was originally aimed at offenders under fifteen years awaiting transportation who were to be reformed utilising a regime of penitentiary training. It also catered for convicted adult female prisoners. The provision of a penitentiary for boys at Smithfield was the first step towards improving the conditions of children within the prison system (Robins, 1980). In 1844 Smithfield was converted to a convict depot, a measure taken to relieve pressure on Kilmainham gaol.2 In Ireland the problem of overcrowding in the prison system became a critical one with the replacement of transportation, as a sentencing option, with penal servitude in 1853. The government had made a commitment to establish a separate penal reformatory for juveniles under sixteen years of age, however, this was being hampered by the lack of space within the system.3 A review of correspondence relevant to the administration of the convict prison system at this time indicates that the authorities in Ireland regarded the establishment of at least one juvenile reformatory institution a necessity. The juvenile prisoner population was estimated at this time to be approximately six hundred and a number of sites were being considered as suitable for the establishment of a juvenile reformatory. These included: the Curragh of



From penitentiary to community13

Kildare, Lullymore Island in the Bog of Allen and Castlereagh House in Mayo (House of Commons, 1854). However, an interim solution to the problem was reached by the directors of convict prisons when a decision was made to transfer all male juveniles under seventeen to Mountjoy and Philipstown prisons (House of Commons, 1855). In 1852 a Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, was appointed and its brief included recommending possible changes that might be desirable in the existing criminal justice system ‘in order to supply Industrial Training, and to combine Reformation with due correction of Juvenile Crime’ (House of Commons, 1853). Its report concluded that appropriate intervention in the lives of destitute, neglected and criminal children would result in their rescue from moral degradation and subsequently prevent a large amount of juvenile crime. The Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles noted: That it appears to this Committee to be established by the evidence, that a large proportion of the present aggregate of crime might be prevented, and thousands of miserable human beings, who have before them under our present system nothing but a hopeless career of wickedness and vice, might be converted into virtuous, honest, and industrious citizens, if due care were taken to rescue destitute, neglected and criminal children from the dangers and temptations incident to their position. (1853: iii)

The first Reformatory Schools Act was passed in Britain in 1854. This Act did not apply to Ireland but there existed a strong lobby demanding the implementation of similar legislation in Ireland. The Irish Quarterly Review and the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland provided the main forum for the campaign for reformatory schools in Ireland.4 ‘to humanize and train to industry and order’ Despite initial objections to the introduction of reformatory schools legislation in Ireland from Irish Catholic members of parliament a Bill was eventually passed into law in 1858 which overcame Catholic fears. The Reformatory Schools (Ireland) Act 1858 ensured that a child could only be sent to an institution exclusively run by persons of their own religious persuasion. It empowered the state to certify certain institutions for the reception of young offenders up to sixteen years of age convicted of an offence punishable by penal servitude.5 They could be detained for a period of not less than one year and not more than five years. The first reformatory school in Ireland, a school for Roman Catholic girls, opened at High Park, near Drumcondra, in Dublin on 21 December 1858. The first reformatory school for boys opened at Glencree in County Wicklow

14

Wild Arabs and savages

on 12 April 1859. A large proportion of the first inmates in these institutions came from a workhouse background. Following the introduction of the Reformatory Schools (Ireland) Act 1858 there were calls for the introduction of legislation to provide for industrial schools in Ireland. The Irish Quarterly Review and the Journal of the Dublin Statistical Society published numerous articles supporting the cause of the industrial school system. At this time the number of vagrant children in Ireland was twice that in Britain and Wales and after the introduction of reformatory schools there was a growing recognition that there was a need for a different kind of institution to deal with these children. John Lentaigne, an inspector of reformatory schools, describes how ‘towards the close of 1869 Sir Walter Crofton and Miss Carpenter brought the matter under the notice of the Irish public, and pointed out the advantages which must result from the establishment of institutions whose aim is prevention, and to humanize and train to industry and order the young waifs and strays of society, hitherto permitted to grow up in idleness and vice’ (Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in Ireland, 1871: 16).6 The first industrial school was certified in 1869 at Lakelands, near Sandymount in Dublin. It catered for Roman Catholic girls and was managed by the Irish Sisters of Charity. By the end of 1869 twenty-­two industrial schools had been certified. Twenty-­one of these schools were managed by Catholic religious organisations with one catering for Protestant girls. The Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act 1868 enabled the state to certify certain voluntary institutions for the reception of children deemed suitable by the courts. Section 13 of the Act provided that any child under twelve years who was charged with an offence punishable by imprisonment or a less punishment, but not convicted of a felony, could be sent to an industrial school. Most significantly, section 11 of the Act provided that anyone could bring before two justices or a magistrate a child appearing to be under fourteen years that was: found begging or receiving alms; being in any street or public place for the purpose of so begging or receiving alms; found wandering and not having a place of abode, proper guardian or visible means of subsistence; found destitute, either being an orphan or having a parent who was serving a term of penal servitude or imprisonment; frequenting the company of thieves. The above categories reflect the fact that the schools were intended to function as both a means to prevent crime and as facilities to cater for destitute and neglected children. ‘institutions for poor and deserted children’ The reality in the case of industrial schools in Ireland was that the managers of the schools were reluctant to accept children under section 13 of the Act. For



From penitentiary to community15

this reason the Irish system, unlike that in Britain, was primarily aimed at the destitute rather than the criminal child. The Report of the Reformatories and Industrial Schools Commission (1884: lx) noted that ‘the certified industrial schools in Ireland are regarded as institutions for poor and deserted children, rather than for those of a semi-­criminal class; and one result … is that the managers of many of these institutions refuse to take children who have been proved to have committed a criminal offence, and who might legally be convicted of that offence and sent to a reformatory’. By 1870 ten reformatory schools had been established, five for males and five for females. The numbers detained at these institutions continued to increase since their establishment. However, industrial schools were being established at a far faster rate. The Ninth Report of the Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in Ireland (1871) notes that by 31 December 1870, thirty-­two industrial schools had received certificates under the Act, three for boys, twenty-­five for girls and four mixed schools for young boys and girls, with 246 boys and 1,283 girls detained. One effect of the establishment of the reformatory schools was that there were fewer juveniles being committed to prison. The same report notes that during the previous seven years only seven males and one female were sentenced to penal servitude in Ireland. The character of these institutions was shaped by the organisation responsible for managing them. The congregations included: Sisters of Mercy; Sisters of Charity; Sisters of the Good Shepherd; Christian Brothers; Sisters of St Louis; Presentation Sisters; Oblate Fathers; Sisters of St Clare; Daughters of Charity; Presentation Brothers; Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge; Order of Charity. In the case of the industrial schools, each of the religious brotherhoods or sisterhoods utilised methods of classification unique to themselves. Raftery and O’Sullivan (1999) note that clear distinctions were made by these religious organisations between the poorer classes who were filtered into industrial schools and the middle classes who were directed towards orphanages. Within the context of child care provision in Ireland they note that the manner in which the Christian Brothers, in particular, operated their institutions for children clearly reflected distinct social classes within Irish society and helped perpetuate and entrench a rigid class system where upper middle class, middle class and working and lower class were catered for in separate types of institutions. The industrial and reformatory school system was the dominant means of dealing with offenders and potential offenders up to the age of sixteen years with those offenders over sixteen being dealt with by the prison system. Barnes (1989) notes that the findings of the Report of the Commission on Industrial and Reformatory Schools of 1884 were generally positive with regard to the reformatory and industrial school system and paved the way for the expansion of the industrial school system in the 1880s and 1890s and gave

16

Wild Arabs and savages

added impetus to those championing the reformatory and industrial school cause. The system continued to expand rapidly, leading to some concerns over the increasing number of industrial schools and requests for extensions to already existing certificates. The expansion in industrial schools continued to eclipse that of reformatory schools with the industrial school system reaching its height in 1898 when there were seventy-­one schools catering for almost 8,000 children (O’Sullivan, 1999). Some concern was expressed on the part of the authorities with regard to the numbers of children who were being detained in the industrial schools as a result of their destitution and the cost of maintaining them. The Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department of the Departmental Committee on Reformatory and Industrial Schools (1896: 242) highlighted this situation, referring to the ‘peculiar position’ of industrial schools in Ireland and noting: All taint of criminality being thus removed from the schools, numbers of children are sent to them who do not always come within the purview of the Acts, and who are sent mainly on the grounds of destitution. To check this tendency and to limit in some way the liability of the Treasury to contribute towards the maintenance of these destitute and deserted children, an arbitrary rule appears to have been laid down by the Irish Government, under which the certificate of each school is limited to a fixed number of children, and any addition to this number has frequently been refused, although additional and satisfactory accommodation has been provided.

‘a half-­way house between the prison and the reformatory’ The manner in which juvenile offenders were dealt with within the prison system had also become the subject of much public debate. A Departmental Committee on Prisons was established in 1894, under the chairmanship of Herbert Gladstone, to inquire into certain matters relating to prison administration, including: accommodation, juvenile and first offenders, prison labour and occupation, regulations governing prison visits and communication with prisoners. The Committee’s terms of reference were expanded in 1895 to include the treatment of habitual criminals and the classification of prisoners generally. The 1895 Report of the Departmental Committee on Prisons (Gladstone Report) called for greater classification to allow for the special treatment of certain categories of prisoners. Section 25 of the Prisons Act 1877 had allowed the Secretary of State to make special rules with regard to some classes of prisoners; however, the report argued for more systematic classification in local prisons. In particular, it argued that juveniles should not be subjected to normal prison regulations and discipline but that a system of classification



From penitentiary to community17

should be devised, taking into consideration the age, character and temperament of the prisoner. The report called for the classification of prisoners into three specific categories: juveniles, first offenders and habitual offenders. Under such a system of classification, juvenile offenders would be separated from habitual criminals who could have a negative influence upon them. The Report envisaged the establishment of a penal reformatory for those individuals who could not be adequately governed within the existing system because of their age or behaviour: The penal reformatory should be a half-­way house between the prison and the reformatory. It should be situated in the country with ample space for agricultural and land reclamation work. It should have penal and coercive sides which could be applied according to the merits of particular cases. But it should be amply provided with staff capable of giving sound education, training the inmates in various kinds of industrial work, and qualified generally to exercise the best and healthiest kind of moral influence. (1895: 30)

Such institutions were eventually established in Britain and became known as borstal institutions. The first borstal institution in Ireland opened in 1906 at Clonmel. The Thirtieth Report of the General Prisons Board, Ireland noted a: new departure in the prison treatment of Juvenile-­Adult prisoners, i.e., those between the ages of 16 and 21 years, known as the ‘Borstal’ system, which has been attended to with much success in England, and was introduced into Ireland at Clonmel Prison in 1906, is producing similar good results in this country. The number of cases at Clonmel was 32 at the end of the year 1907. They have since increased to 35. (General Prisons Board, 1908: vii)

‘this great charter of the helpless’ On 21 December 1908 an Act was passed to consolidate and amend the law relating to the protection of children and young persons, reformatory and industrial schools, juvenile offenders and amend the law with regard to children and young persons. The Children Act 1908 is generally regarded as a watershed event in terms of providing for the welfare of children. The barrister, magistrate and author Sir William Clarke Hall (1909) wrote of the Act, ‘Finally, it has become recognised that the child has a right to food, to cleanliness, to a life free from fear of wanton ill-­usage and to some degree of parental care and consideration; hence the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Acts, culminating in this great charter of the helpless, the Children Act, 1908’. The Children Act 1908 prohibited the imprisonment of persons under fifteen years unless they were of an ‘unruly’ or ‘depraved’ character. It provided that no child under twelve years could be committed to a reformatory school. However, this Act, along with the Employment of Children Act 1903,

18

Wild Arabs and savages

the School Attendance Act 1926 and the Children Act 1929, enabled the committal of various categories of children to industrial schools for reasons relating to family circumstances, financial status, criminal associations, or certain kinds of behaviour. Reasons for committal included: being found begging; ‘wandering’ with no visible means of support; parents or guardians imprisoned or of ‘criminal’ or ‘drunken habits’; residing in a house used for prostitution; unable to get adequate support from parents; parents unable to exercise control; being destitute and orphaned; found guilty of illegal street trading; and failure to attend school. With regard to Ireland, there were two pieces of legislation in particular that affected committals through the courts. The School Attendance Act 1926 gave the courts power to commit children to industrial schools for non-­attendance at school. Also, the Children Act 1929 amended the 1908 Act by extending the grounds of committal to industrial schools to children whose parents were unable to support them and who consented to their committal. Interestingly, while section 77 of the 1908 Act provided for the establishment and certification of day industrial schools this option was never availed of in Ireland, the preferred model being the closed institution which was controlled and managed by predominantly Catholic religious organisations. The Gladstone Report had recommended the separate treatment of children from adult prisoners within the prison system. Section 111 of the 1908 Act further distinguished children from adults within the justice system by providing for the hearing of cases relating to children at different times to adults or at different locations. It established the principle of a separate ‘children court’. This important reform reflected a changing attitude towards how the child was viewed within the criminal justice system.7 However, despite this development and the increased sentencing options with the Probation of Offenders Act, 1907 and the Prevention of Crime Act 1908, committal to reformatory and industrial schools remained the dominant sentencing option. This system lasted well into the late twentieth century and provided the primary means of governing offending young people or those classified as ‘at risk’. With the formation of the Irish Free State the reformatory and industrial schools system remained relatively unchanged. Responsibility for its administration and supervision passed to the Minister for Education in 1924. However, there was to be no significant change to the system in the years following Irish independence. ‘the suppression and prevention of public vice’ The Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor was established on 19 March 1925 under the chairmanship of Judge Charles O’Connor. Its



From penitentiary to community19

terms of reference included the examination of the law and administration relating to certain destitute classes: widows and their children; children without parents; unmarried mothers and their children; and deserted children. It was also to examine existing provision in public institutions for the care and treatment of ‘mentally defective’ persons, including the care and training of ‘mentally defective’ children. The Commission examined the relative merits of both the boarding-­out system and the system of institutional care in the context of unmarried mothers and their children. It took evidence from the managers of industrial schools and also the inspectors and assistant inspectors of industrial schools, visiting a number of industrial schools. In relation to the two systems it concluded that ‘both are necessary and that neither can be justly condemned because of occasional failures’ (Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, 1927: 74). Three years later the issue of unmarried mothers was again to become a cause of concern for government when it became linked to the perceived decline in the standard of public morals. On 17 June 1930 a Committee of Inquiry was established to consider whether the following statutes required  amendment, namely, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1880 and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, as amended. The Committee was chaired by William Carrigan KC and, according to Finnane (2001), its terms of reference were sufficiently ambiguous as to facilitate an extended enquiry into the moral order of the newly independent state. One of the central issues which the Committee was to consider was how to deal with the problem of juvenile prostitution. The report of the Committee (Report of the Committee on the Criminal Law Amendments Acts, 1931: 4) noted: ‘We looked upon it as our duty in the first place to collect sufficient ­information as would enable us to determine whether the standard of social morality is at present exposed to evils, which existing laws of the Saorstát, for the suppression and prevention of public vice, are inadequate to check.’ The report recommended the implementation of various measures, including new legislation to increase the level of supervision of young girls with the aim of both ‘protecting’ the girls themselves and the population as a whole.8 Its recommendations included the licensing of dance halls, extending the mechanisms for the supervision of young women released from industrial schools, the licensing of private maternity homes, restrictions on the sale of contraceptives and the establishment of a borstal institution for girl offenders aged between sixteen and twenty-­one years.9 The fact that the report itself was suppressed due to the ‘sensitive’ nature of the material contained in it gives an indication of the moral climate of the time.

20

Wild Arabs and savages

‘removing the cancer of crime from our midst’ During the 1920s and 1930s concerns had also been voiced about the welfare of large numbers of unsupervised children from Dublin’s tenements playing on the streets of the capital. In response to these concerns a number of playgrounds were established by Dublin Corporation and supervised by the non-­sectarian Civics Institute. The provision of these safe and supervised playgrounds was the result of a deliberate campaign in 1930 by the Women’s National Health Association to, among other things, protect public morals, children’s health and prevent juvenile delinquency (Kernan, 2005). At the time, Dublin had some of the worst slums in Europe with thousands of working-­class families living in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions. More than a decade later the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, under the auspices of the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau and the Legion of Mary put in place arrangements for the provision of ‘Catholic’ run playgrounds to ensure that Catholic children were supervised by Catholics (Kennedy, 2011). The supervision and treatment of the delinquent child was also the subject of a series of articles written by Thomas Molony, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and published in the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland between 1921 and 1940.10 In these articles Molony attempts to investigate the causes of crime and promote suitable methods of prevention and treatment. Molony associates the problem of juvenile delinquency with the lifestyle of the working classes and their poor living conditions. He invokes the image of the slum as a means of explaining delinquency and argues that by looking at the social conditions or causes of crime one can work towards ‘removing the cancer of crime from our midst’ (1923: 120). He lists four methods of preventing crime: comfortable living conditions; temperance; regular work; and suitable recreation. Molony’s was very much a lone voice in relation to the discussion of the issue of juvenile delinquency in Ireland at this time. He had chaired the Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders in Britain, which reported in 1927 and resulted in the enactment of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. He sought to promote discussion of such issues in Ireland through these articles, which consider the various legal options for the treatment of young offenders such as probation, borstal, the juvenile court, after-­care and legislative reform. However, he failed to inspire any significant debate around the issue of juvenile crime or any subsequent legislative change. ‘We interfere to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent’ There seemed to be little appetite for change in this area in the early years of the Irish Free State. It would appear that the attitude of government was to main-



From penitentiary to community21

tain the status quo in relation to the reformatory and industrial school system leaving the running of the schools to the religious orders. In a 1931 Dáil debate of the curriculum in the industrial schools and the role of the Department of Education, the Minister for Education, Professor O’Sullivan, adopted a clear ‘hands-­off ’ approach, stating: ‘We interfere very little with the schools … They [the school managers] are essentially the people who will decide the running of the schools. We interfere to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent’ (Dáil Debates, vol. 38, 27 May 1931). This attitude on the part of government could also be seen in the fact that two years later, in 1933, the first Fianna Fáil Minister for Education, Tomas Derrig, adopted the existing rules governing certified industrial schools that had been in place since the nineteenth century. In 1934 a Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory School and Industrial School System was established by Minister Derrig under the chairmanship of G.P. Cussen, a Justice of the Dublin District Court. The terms of reference of the Commission were to inquire into: existing statutory provisions and other regulations in relation to reformatory schools, industrial schools and places of detention and the committal of children to them; their care education and training; the treatment and disposal of children suffering from ‘physical or mental defects’; staffing qualifications and conditions of service; and funding of the institutions. The Cussen Report was published in 1936 and recommended the continuance of the reformatory and industrial school system with some modifications. In England the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 had abolished reformatory and industrial schools and replaced them with ‘approved schools’ that could only receive convicted offenders. The 1933 Act resulted in a clear distinction being made between the offender and the child in need of care. Public opinion had come round to the view that ‘juvenile delinquency’ was a social not a moral problem. Things were different in Ireland. The Cussen Report’s main recommendations concerned the manner in which the system was managed. For example it recommended that the period of detention be changed to a minimum of two years and a maximum of five years, and that managers of schools could release inmates on licence after six months rather than eighteen months. ‘A good smacking might cure them better than anything else’ The system in Ireland continued to be administered in much the same fashion after the Cussen Report. During the 1940s there appeared to be little evidence of a willingness on the part of government to change matters. In June 1947 James Dillon TD raised the matter of introducing improvements to the facilities for the psychological and physical examination of juveniles on remand for the information of the district justice presiding at the Children Court. The

22

Wild Arabs and savages

reply from the Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland, was stark and illustrated the thinking of the government at this time: I think the district justice ought to have a good idea himself when he sees the child before him whether it requires such an examination or not. At present, if he thinks the child requires to be examined, he can order that to be done. He has a panel of doctors. I think the scheme proposed by the Minister for Health will be much more satisfactory. I am not prepared to have a special clinic set up for these offenders. A good smacking might cure them better than anything else. (Dáil Debates, vol. 106, June 1947)

Four years later in 1951 a Commission on Youth Unemployment was appointed by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, and chaired by the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. Its terms of reference included the examination of the causes of unemployment in those under twenty years of age and making recommendations on a number of areas touching on employment, including ‘measures for promoting the religious, intellectual and physical development of young persons’ (Dáil Éireann, 1951: vii). It highlighted the unsuitability of industrial schools for dealing with what were in the majority of cases neglected children. It recommended that ‘boarding out’ should be considered especially where it provided an opportunity for agricultural and non-­ agricultural training. The Commission, like the Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems almost twenty years later, criticised these institutions for their inability to provide the elements of family environment that these neglected children required for their development. The Commission noted that the evidence pointed to juvenile delinquency resulting from a number of factors such as unemployment, lack of parental control and family circumstances. It would appear that there was a growing concern about the issue of juvenile delinquency in the city of Dublin during the 1950s. The Streets Committee of Dublin Corporation called a meeting of representatives from An Garda Síochána, the Catholic Social Services Bureau and the Civics Institute on 4 December 1956 to discuss the perceived increase in juvenile delinquency.11 It issued a report in November 1958 on the subject of vandalism and juvenile delinquency entitled Report of the Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency Appointed at the Request of Lord Mayor of Dublin. The report expressed the view that the industrial and reformatory institutions were too large and lacked a ‘family atmosphere’. It also called for greater segregation of those committed to these institutions; greater after-­care for those released from institutions; hostels for their supervision on release; greater rehabilitation and employment for juvenile offenders; greater segregation into special schools. However, the Committee appeared reluctant to openly criticise the system of reformatory and industrial schools, stating: ‘We do not feel competent to express an authoritative judgement on this assessment, but we do



From penitentiary to community23

consider that grounds have been put forward to suggest the need for a review of the system and the proposed Dublin City Youth Board might help in this matter’ (Dublin Corporation, 1958: 12). ‘the Brothers in charge, all holy men’ Two years later, Peadar Cowan, in his monograph Dungeons Deep, highlighted the fact that these institutions operated regimes that employed a degree of regimentation and routine that resembled imprisonment. He noted that ‘the Brothers in charge, all holy men, are looked upon as jailers by the children who come to associate in their minds religion with repression’ (1960: 34). Cowan, a former TD, was one of the first to highlight the abusive nature of these institutions and was scathing in his attacks on institutional provision for both adults and children in Ireland. Up to 1960 there had been little change or innovation within the prison system in Ireland. However, the Criminal Justice Act 1960, while not representing a paradigm shift in penal policy, did represent a move towards a more welfarist approach and a sign that things may be beginning to change. In particular, the provision of temporary release was viewed as an indication of a more humane approach to prison management. The Act also provided for the direct committal of male prisoners between sixteen and twenty-­one years of age to St Patrick’s Institution. In September 1962 Minister for Justice, Charles Haughey, established an Inter-­Departmental Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders under the chairmanship of the secretary of the Department of Justice and comprising members from each of four government departments: Health; Education; Industry and Commerce; and Justice. On 6 February 1964 Haughey informed the Dáil that members of the Committee visited prisons, Marlborough House remand home and a number of reformatory and industrial schools and had attended a United Nations seminar in Rome on the evaluation of methods used in the prevention of juvenile delinquency (Dáil Debates, vol. 207, 6 February 1964). He stated that the Committee had made a number of recommendations, including: the appointment of visiting committees; improvements in after-­care; training for prison officers; improved psychiatric, medical and educational facilities; the appointment of full-­time prison welfare officers; the assignment of a permanent district justice to the Children Court; and the expansion of the Garda scheme for cautioning juvenile offenders. These recommendations appeared to represent a new willingness on the part of government to embrace a more rehabilitative approach to the treatment of both adult and juvenile offenders. Another significant development around this time was a Department of Education report compiled with the assistance of the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development (OECD), which was critical of

24

Wild Arabs and savages

the operation of the reformatory and industrial schools (Department of Education, 1966). The report entitled Investment in Education was the work of a survey team appointed by the Minister for Education in October 1962 and considered the provision of after-­care in reformatory and industrial schools and the possibility of closing some of them. It was also critical of the standard of education and training provided in the schools. ‘the virtue of all punishment must be redemption’ A further significant development around this time was the establishment of a new Garda scheme for cautioning juveniles. The Irish Times in February 1963 reported that the Minister for Justice Charles Haughey, in a lecture at the Metropole Hotel in Cork to the Cork Branch of Tuairim, entitled ‘Crime and Punishment’, announced that a scheme similar to that already operating in Liverpool would be introduced in Dublin and if successful later in Cork. The Garda Juvenile Liaison Officer Scheme was modelled on a scheme that had been successfully operating in Liverpool for over a decade. In June 1963 An Garda Síochána sent two gardaí to Liverpool to meet with the Liverpool Police and examine the feasibility of establishing a similar scheme in Ireland. The Garda Juvenile Liaison Scheme was formally established on 3 September 1963. Interestingly, the Annual Report of the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána for 1967 notes that the scheme is aimed at two classes of children, those who had committed offences against the criminal law and ‘those not known to have committed any offence and whose behaviour if not corrected in time could lead them into crime’ (1967: 5). The annual number of juveniles cautioned under this scheme has continued to increase from 1,112 children in 1968 to 12,899 in 2010 (An Garda Síochána 2011). However, the initiative was only placed on a statutory footing under the 2001 Children Act. Figure 2.1 indicates the increase in the number of children cautioned under the scheme.

19 68 19 71 19 74 19 77 19 80 19 83 19 86 19 89 19 92 19 95 19 98 20 01 20 04 20 07 20 10

18,000 16,000 14,000 12,000 10,000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0

Figure 2.1  Numbers of children cautioned by An Garda Síochána, 1968 to 2010 Source: O’Donnell et al. (2005) Crime and Punishment in Ireland 1922 to 2003: A Statistical Sourcebook and An Garda Síochána (2004 –11) Annual Report of the Committee Appointed to Monitor the Effectiveness of the Diversion Programme



From penitentiary to community25

Haughey claimed that this was one of a number of reforms to the justice system that emanated from the inter-­departmental committee that had been established the previous year under the chairmanship of the secretary of the Department of Justice to look at penal reform. Haughey further revealed that medical and therapeutic services were being expanded in Irish prisons and that a psychiatric unit had been established in Mountjoy Prison. In the aforementioned lecture, Haughey stated that, ‘the virtue of all punishment must be redemption’ (Irish Times, February 1963). ‘a slow but perceptible change’ The psychological sciences were beginning to gain more prominence in Ireland at this time. The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Mental Handicap (Dáil Éireann, 1965) noted that psychology was being studied as a separate discipline in University College Dublin, University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin. A separate Department of Psychology had been established in Trinity in 1962. The Commission made a large number of recommendations in relation to the expansion of the psychological services in Ireland, especially in relation to the diagnosis and assessment of ‘mental handicap’ in children. It called for improvement in the training of professionals and recommended that the universities increase their provision for the training of psychologists. The report questioned the ability of large institutions to cater for the psychological needs of young people. Psychology as a profession in Ireland was still in its early stages of development. The 1965 Commission noted that psychology, ‘as an applied profession, has not yet reached the stage where there is universal agreement on methods or content of training’ (1965: 133). In the context of the juvenile justice system it would appear that there was limited awareness of the psychological needs of the child at this time. However, the following year the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness (Dáil Éireann, 1966) did comment on the inadequacy of the provision of psychological services in industrial schools. It described children in industrial schools as constituting ‘a group whose emotional needs are far greater than those of normal children, and for whom psychiatric and psychological services are particularly necessary … In many schools children are not properly segregated according to their educational, social and psychological needs’ (1966: 73). Two years earlier, in 1964, Tuairim established a study group aimed at examining the provisions for residential care for the deprived child in Ireland.12 The group’s activities consisted ‘of academic research into the historical and legal background of child care in Ireland, visits by members of organisations connected with child care in Ireland, talks with ex-­pupils of industrial schools, and a survey of Irish boys in English Borstals’ (Tuairim, 1966: 2). In 1966

26

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it published, Some of Our Children. A Report on the Residential Care of the Deprived Child in Ireland, which was critical of the Irish child care system which it contrasted with developments that had occurred in Britain. The report highlighted the negative effects of institutional care on children and also the lack of training for staff working in these institutions. Peter Tyrell, a member of the Tuairim study group and a former resident of Letterfrack Industrial School during the 1930s, had attempted to highlight the abusive nature of institutional care in Ireland. He forwarded his memoirs to Senator Owen Sheehy Skeffington in the hope that their publication would cause a public outcry. However, his life ended in tragedy when he burned himself alive on Hampstead Heath in London on 26 April 1967. His memoirs were subsequently published in 2006 after they were discovered amongst Sheehy Skeffington’s archives. The book, Founded on Fear, provides a chilling, yet measured account of the abusive and oppressive regime that operated at Letterfrack Industrial School. Tyrell’s attempts to highlight the abusive nature of Letterfrack came to nothing. In 1959 he wrote, ‘For a number of years I have been writing to responsible Ministers in the government, and the Catholic Church, as well as to Christian Brothers and their solicitors in Ireland. But not only have I failed to bring to an end the criminal brutality, which in many cases reaches a degree of torture, but I have failed to get a single reply to any of my letters’ (2006: 53).13 Garvin notes that although no great public outcry resulted from the publication of the Tuairim pamphlet on residential care in Ireland, ‘a slow but perceptible change was evolving in Irish public opinion about many officially sanctioned ideas and practices’ (2010: 10). Some evidence of this change could also be seen in the political realm. In 1965 Fine Gael, the second largest political party in the state, launched a policy document entitled Towards a Just Society in which it recommended the improvement of facilities in reformatories and industrial schools, the provision of adequate psychiatric care, the establishment of group homes and greater after-­care provision for those leaving industrial schools. ‘an outdated and money starved system’ Despite these developments, criticism of the reformatory and industrial school system in the media was rare. One exception to this was a series of articles published in the Irish Times from 27 April to 6 May 1966 and entitled ‘The Young Offenders’. The articles criticised the juvenile justice system for its overcrowding, lack of facilities, after-­care and psychological services. In these articles journalist Michael Viney was highly critical of the juvenile justice system in Ireland arguing that most juvenile crime resulted from adverse social conditions, including poverty, deprivation and inadequate parenting. Viney (1966a) also argued that the children’s courts had:



From penitentiary to community27 lost faith in an outdated and money starved system of institutional care … that probation, as an alternative, is emasculated by lack of training, lack of staff and overwork … that in the piecemeal partnership between two Government departments and a variety of religious orders and agencies, proper liaison and aftercare is virtually unknown [and] that vital psychological and psychiatric aspects of the juvenile problem are getting only token attention.

Morgan highlights the lack of discussion of the schools in the newspapers from the 1940s to the 1960s and notes that the series of articles written by Viney were ‘met by an eerie silence from other Irish newspapers’ (2009: 232). He also notes that ‘until very late in the day, the contribution made by the Oireachtas or the news media towards supervision, or even education of the public, in regard to the Schools, appears to have been negligible. Pressure groups were rare and usually ineffective. The general public was often uninformed and usually uninterested. All these pools of unknowing reinforced each other’ (2009: 236). One exception to this was the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers who sent a memorandum to the Minister for Education arguing against institutional care and in favour of financial support for families and supervision within the family environment by qualified social workers (Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers, 1967). The Committee, a lay organisation founded in 1935, actively lobbied for reform in relation to the treatment of children and young persons in institutional care. Its members included: Alexandra College Guild; Dublin University Women’s Graduates’ Association; Girl’s Friendly Society; Institute of Almoners; Irish Countrywomen’s Association; Irish Matron’s Association; Irish Women’s Workers’ Union; Mother’s Union; National University Women Graduates’ Association; Queen’s Institute of District Nursing; Soroptimist Club; Women’s National Health Association.14 While numbers committed to the reformatory and industrial schools had been declining since the mid-­1950s the existence of the borstal system was also under threat. As far back as the early 1940s Fahy (1941) bemoaned the pitiful state of the borstal system in Ireland in comparison to the Malone Training School in Belfast. He noted that many young people of ‘borstal’ age were still being sent to prison and that this reflected the negative view of the authorities in relation to the borstal system. This led him to conclude, with regard to the borstal system in Ireland, that, ‘the game is not worth a candle’ (1941: 85).The numbers committed to the borstal system remained low (see Figure 2.2) until its eventual replacement by St Patrick’s Institution in 1956. The term ‘borstal’ was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act 1960 resulting in persons between sixteen and twenty-­one years of age being committed directly to the new St Patrick’s Institution.

28

Wild Arabs and savages 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

56 19

53 19

50 19

47 19

43 19

40 19

37 19

34 19

31 19

28 19

25 19

19

22

0

Figure 2.2  Numbers committed to borstal, 1922 to 1956 Source: O’Donnell et al. (2005) Crime and Punishment in Ireland 1922 to 2003: A Statistical Sourcebook

‘a complex picture with no rationale’ In 1970 the Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems (Dáil Éireann, 1970), more commonly known as the Kennedy Report, made wide-­ ranging recommendations in relation to reformatory and industrial schools and the child care system in general. It was critical of the reformatory and industrial school system, highlighting its inadequacies, and recommending that children should only be admitted to residential care where there is no other alternative. It viewed the stable family unit as an essential element in the development of the child and recommended that the child care system be aimed at the prevention of family breakdown and the problems emanating from it. It recommended, among other things, improvements in education, prevention, psychological services and after-­care. The report stressed the psychological needs of the child in care and, most significantly, recommended the abolition of the existing institutional system of residential care and its replacement by group homes which would aim to preserve as much as possible the atmosphere of a normal family unit. The Kennedy Report heralded a major shift in child care policy and practice. After the report most of the remaining industrial schools were decertified and replaced by group homes that aimed to care for children in small family-­type units. This represented a major change in child care policy and practice although the transition was to take many years to achieve. However, despite these changes, the management of these homes was to remain primarily with religious bodies. At the end of 1970, following the publication of the Kennedy Report, CARE



From penitentiary to community29

(Campaign for the Care of Deprived Children) was established to publicise the inadequacy of the state’s response to the needs of deprived children and campaign for better services in this area. In 1972 CARE published The CARE Memorandum on Deprived Children and Children’s Services in Ireland, which called for radical legislative reform of the child care system in Ireland in line with international standards and children’s rights. It also recommended the development of family support, education and other services aimed at the prevention of delinquency. One of its main arguments was that, children who come into contact with the law and are termed offenders or delinquents, are ‘deprived’. The CARE Memorandum was critical of the general lack of organisation of children’s services in Ireland describing the system as follows: ‘It is a complex picture with no rationale. Three government departments have responsibility in this area and many other authorities, and a great deal of the initiative rests with voluntary bodies including religious orders. There is no means of formulating a coherent comprehensive policy at the top; there is no means of co-­ordinating services at the bottom’ (1972: 25). However, despite lobbying from CARE and others around the implementation of the Kennedy Report little seemed to be changing. ‘a degree of physical containment’ In the same year the issue of the provision of psychological services for children who come into contact with the justice system was considered by the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons, otherwise known as the Henchy Committee. The Committee was established by the Minister for Justice in 1972 and chaired by the Supreme Court Judge, Hon. Mr Justice Henchy. Its terms of reference were: To examine and report on provisions, legislative, administrative and otherwise, which the Committee considers to be necessary or desirable in relation to persons (including drug abusers, psychopaths, and emotionally disturbed and maladjusted children and adolescents) who have come, or appear likely to come, in conflict with the law and who may be in need of psychiatric treatment. (1975a: 3)

The First Interim Report of the Committee (1975) was critical of the services available for the assessment of such juveniles and recommended the establishment of both day and residential assessment facilities. It also recommended that probation and welfare officers work closely in the assessment of these young people. Osborough notes that after the report was published there was a ‘predictable call for an expansion of the existing service’ (1979: 500). There was some evidence of a change in thinking in relation to the ­provision of such services to young offenders. St Michael’s Unit in Finglas,

30

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which was established in 1972, opened its remand unit in August 1973 providing for the psychological, social and educational assessment of children referred by the courts. Also, it was becoming more common for courts to request background reports from probation officers. This coincided with the expansion and professionalisation of the probation service at this time. Another significant development at this time was the closure of Daingean Reformatory School in November 1973, which was run by the Oblates, and its replacement by Scoil Ard Mhuire in Lusk, which was to be run by a board of management with government representatives. Also, in June the following year Letterfrack Industrial School closed. The closure of these institutions was evidence of change; however, any change that was occurring appeared to be happening on an ad hoc basis and with little discernible logic. The Second Interim Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons (1975a) recommended the development of both residential and non-­ residential treatment facilities. It also recommended the establishment of a closed ‘school or unit’ for young male offenders up to sixteen years who were found to be ‘unmanageable’ but not psychiatrically disturbed. Aware of the fact that the managers of existing residential schools were unwilling to accept certain boys who were disruptive and unwilling to adapt to the regime in an open school, the report states that these boys ‘need a degree of physical containment and a more structured regime if they are to benefit from the educational and therapeutic programmes intended for them’(1975a: 10). It would appear that the managers of the industrial and reformatory schools were availing of their power under section 62 of the Children Act 1908 in refusing these ‘difficult’ children at this time. Osborough notes that ‘from the late 1960s onwards managers as a class showed themselves ­unusually determined in a number of instances to exercise their imagined rights under section 62’ (1979: 499). This posed a problem for the government, which was tasked with managing this particular group of children. The solution was the establishment of a closed institution at Loughan House, County Cavan, for young offenders between the ages of twelve and sixteen. There was considerable opposition to this move from a number of groups.15 However, despite this opposition the institution opened in 1978. Osborough (1979) described the facility as ‘an administrative novelty’, in that it was to be managed directly by the state, unlike other existing facilities that were managed directly by religious orders. It remained open until 1983 when it was replaced by the first purpose-­built secure unit for young offenders outside the prison system, at Trinity House School in Lusk, County Dublin.



From penitentiary to community31

‘complex administrative arrangements’ In 1980 the government Task Force on Child Care Services published its final report without including a draft Bill updating the law in relation to children as requested.16 The report made a large number of recommendations covering areas such as general administration; social services for children; family support; child care services; day care; support, advice and supervision; community services; alternative care; foster care; adoption; residential care; constitutional reform; and juvenile justice. The recommendations of the report were influential with regard to policy developments in these areas and provided an impetus for many subsequent reforms. However, in relation to juvenile justice the Task Force was divided. The main point of contention was the age of criminal responsibility. The majority opted to retain the age at seven years whereas a minority of Task Force members argued that the age should be raised to fifteen. This and other differences resulted in the publication of a supplementary report to the main report.17 At the time of the publication of the Task Force report, the Children Act 1908 was still the legislative basis for the juvenile justice system in Ireland. Following the Kennedy Report there was a change in terminology with regard to industrial schools and reformatory schools. The former became known as ‘residential homes’ while the latter became known as ‘special schools’. However, although the administrative titles may have changed, the law that provided for them did not and they remained industrial and reformatory schools in everything but name. The majority of these institutions also remained under the management of religious organisations and from an administrative point of view children became the responsibility of three separate government departments. The Department of Education was responsible for school attendance and reformatory and industrial schools, the Department of Health for preventative services and the Department of Justice for probation and children under detention. In terms of residential provision, Burke et al. (1981: 104) describe the situation in Ireland at this time as: complicated by the complex administrative arrangements that govern the provision of such care. At present the three government departments of Health, Education and Justice as well as religious orders and voluntary organisations are actively involved in this field. Thus in one institution the Department of Education may be the body in whom statutory responsibility is vested, while a religious order may have responsibility for the day-­to-­day administration of the establishment.

Following the Kennedy Report there had been a steady decline in the number of industrial schools and when the Department of Health took over

32

Wild Arabs and savages

r­ esponsibility for the care of children in 1984 fostering became the preferred option for those children deemed to be in need of care. While the overall numbers of children in care has increased, the role of residential care has moved from ‘a position of dominance in the provision of alternative child care in Ireland to now being a residualised and specialised service’ (O’Sullivan, 2009: 265). Also in 1980 the Commission of Enquiry into the Irish Penal System issued its report. The Commission was chaired by a former Minister for External Affairs, Sean McBride.18 In relation to juvenile offenders it recommended that in future, all places of detention be jointly administered by the Departments of Education, Health and Justice and never simply by the Department of Justice. It was highly critical of the opening of the facility for juveniles at Loughan House and also highly critical of conditions at St Patrick’s Institution. It recommended the provision of small non-­custodial residential units to be staffed by specially trained and experienced staff. It was also critical of Ireland’s age of criminal responsibility which, it pointed out, was the lowest in Europe. On 7 July 1983 the Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism was established to examine: the administration of justice; the implementation of the criminal law; and existing legislation. The Committee, which was chaired by Deputy Michael Woods, was particularly exercised by the extent of the increase in crime and specifically the fact that a large proportion of this crime was being committed by persons under twenty-­ one years. The Committee invited the Garda Commissioner to brief them on the situation. The result of this was that the Committee recommended increased investment in community policing and in particular the concept of Neighbourhood Watch. It stressed the importance of the role of the community in assisting An Garda Síochána in preventing crime (Dáil Éireann, 1984a). In the same year the new facility at Trinity House School in Lusk, north County Dublin, became the responsibility of the Department of Education and replaced Loughan House, which had been the responsibility of the Department of Justice. Like Loughan House, it was designed to confine those young people who were deemed to be unmanageable within the ‘special schools’. However, unlike Loughan House, it was to be staffed by specially trained personnel rather than prison officers. The school is still in existence today and is classified as a Children Detention School under the Children Act 2001. It provides a number of places for young offenders under the age of sixteen who are either sentenced or on remand from the courts encompassing educational facilities, a step-­down unit and an outreach programme for those detained.



From penitentiary to community33

‘young terrorists who are openly defying this House, the Garda and the courts’ In January 1984 administrative responsibility for the majority of industrial schools was transferred from the Department of Education to the Department of Health. The Department of Education retained administrative responsibility for a small number of reformatory and industrial schools. In the same year, a Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System was established under the chairmanship of Dr T.K. Whitaker, Chancellor of the National University of Ireland. The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System (Whitaker Report) (Dáil Éireann, 1985c) argued that the causes of much of the existing crime in Ireland was related to moral, demographic, social and economic change occurring at the time, especially the changes in Irish society as a consequence of its transformation from being a predominantly rural to a mainly urban society and the concentration of growing numbers of young unemployed in the larger cities. The Whitaker Report recommended that juvenile offenders be diverted away from the criminal justice system, with detention or imprisonment being viewed as a last resort. The report also recommended the expansion of facilities for the supervision of young people by An Garda Síochána and the Probation and Welfare Service. Despite this commitment to alternatives to custodial provision, there were increasing public concerns about what became known as the ‘revolving door’ in the Irish criminal justice system. Under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1960 the Minister for Justice could grant prisoners ‘temporary release’ to facilitate their reintegration into the community. However, this provision was being used by the prison authorities to alleviate overcrowding in an overburdened prison system. The numbers on ‘temporary release’ had increased dramatically from sixty-­four in 1973 to 2,604 in 1984, resulting in a public outcry about the use of this policy (McCullagh, 1996). By early 1985 juvenile offending was receiving considerable attention in the print media. In particular, the Herald newspaper ran a series of articles highlighting the exploits of juvenile offenders who were involved in committing crime in the city of Dublin and were primarily characterised as being divided in two groups. Those involved in stealing cars were labelled ‘joyriders’. Another group who were associated with juvenile crime in the north inner city were referred to as the ‘Bugsy Malones’. ‘Joyriding’ in particular was gaining national coverage in the media. On 28 February 1985 the Dáil debated the ‘joyriding menace’ and Fianna Fáil TD Jim Tunney highlighted what he saw as An Garda Síochána’s apparent helplessness in dealing with it. He told the Dáil that ‘those young gangsters and murderers in their cars have told the Garda, “We are taking you on”’ (Dáil Debates, vol. 356, 19 February 1985). The following month Fianna Fáil TD Liam Hyland condemned the Minister

34

Wild Arabs and savages

for Justice for failing to effectively deal with violent crime and lawlessness throughout the country. Hyland, rather dramatically, stated: ‘Our people have not experienced incidents of this nature since the time of Cromwell. In our own towns and cities the Garda, despite their best efforts, are being totally frustrated by organised bandits. In one night alone three patrol cars were rammed by young terrorists who are openly defying this House, the Garda and the courts’ (Dáil Debates, vol. 357, 20 March 1985). In the wake of considerable public disquiet about the issue of juvenile offending the former naval base at Fort Mitchell, Spike Island, was opened as a detention centre for juvenile offenders on 29 March 1985. By August the prison was accommodating 126 offenders with a further ten on temporary release (Department of Justice, 1985). The facility at Spike Island was opened at a time when there was a general image portrayed in the media of large numbers of juvenile criminals roaming the country committing crime with impunity while the justice system remained powerless. The image of the ‘revolving door’ was to be regularly invoked to illustrate this apparent crisis within the criminal justice system. The view of many commentators that there existed a population of disaffected young people who were ‘out of control’ and roaming the urban landscape was reflected in the tone of the Thirteenth Report of the Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism (Dáil Éireann, 1986), which noted: The problem of crime, lawlessness and vandalism by children and young persons is alarming and is out of control in some areas. The situation has deteriorated for too long and the problem is different from the problems of vandalism and lawlessness which have existed in the past. The present wave of lawlessness arises in a situation where there has been a major change in attitudes to responsibility and authority. We have reached a situation where we are faced with a breakdown in discipline and in respect for authority. (Dáil Éireann, 1986: 2)

The report made a number of recommendations. It called for greater accountability before the courts for parents who fail to prevent their children from becoming involved in criminal activities. It also recommended the expansion of the activities of the Probation and Welfare Service and the Garda Juvenile Liaison Service, the development of community youth projects and that there should be greater resort to the use of ‘restitution’, either voluntarily or by the courts. ‘executive inertia’ A significant development with regard to child welfare in the early 1990s was the enactment of the Child Care Act 1991, which updated the legal provision in relation to the care and protection of children and placed a statutory



From penitentiary to community35

duty on health boards to promote the welfare of children. It strengthened the powers of health boards and An Garda Síochána in relation to intervention when children are at risk and enabled the courts to place children deemed to be ‘at risk’ under the supervision of a health board. However, during the 1990s the problem of managing certain categories of vulnerable young people who could not be adequately catered for under existing state provision achieved prominence through a number of High Court cases. The majority of these cases involved young people who were either homeless,19 who placed themselves at risk of self-­harm, were abusing drugs or had mental health issues and were in need of accommodation and/or education. The Child Care Act 1991 had been criticised for failing to provide for the secure placement of such children who were in need of care. In the absence of such provision vulnerable children were often charged with a criminal offence in order to ensure that such secure placement could be achieved. Indeed, this approach had been sanctioned by the Supreme Court (D.G. v Eastern Health Board) where a 16-­year-­old child with serious behavioural problems had been detained in St Patrick’s Institution.20 This decision was subsequently appealed to the European Court of Human Rights where the Court found that the Irish state violated the child’s human rights and had acted unlawfully by detaining him in St Patrick’s. From the mid to late 1990’s the High Court considered the manner in which health boards were discharging the duties placed on them by sections 3 and 5 of the 1991 Act. In a number of these cases the Court took the view that some children, deemed to be ‘at risk’, required secure residential provision of a kind that was not available in Ireland at the time.21 The Court sought to vindicate the constitutional rights of these children by imposing on the state an obligation to provide facilities in which they could be detained for their care and protection.22 In the case of T.D. and Others v Minister for Education,23 Kelly J. directed the state to take the necessary steps to provide appropriate facilities for the detention of a number of ‘disadvantaged children in need of accommodation and treatment in high support units’. In this case, the Court heard that although the state had formulated a policy to deal with such children, it had failed to implement this policy in a timely manner. In this regard, Kelly J. was highly critical of the manner in which the state had delayed in providing such facilities.24 The Irish Times, reporting on another High Court case, noted that Mr Justice Kelly had refused to detain a 13-­year-­old boy in a hotel in the absence of secure facilities stating that, ‘the situation for such children had descended to new levels of farce’ (Irish Times, 20 February 2001). The widespread media coverage of many of these High Court cases concerning young people ‘at risk’ served to increase the pressure on the government to provide suitable facilities. Whyte (2002) has outlined the response of the Irish judiciary to what he terms ‘executive inertia’ in the area of provision for these

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Wild Arabs and savages

children. He argued that while the strategy of litigation provides only a partial response, it must be viewed ‘against the backdrop of shameful neglect by the State of the needs of children at risk and children with severe and profound learning disability’ (2002: 214). As a result of such litigation a number of high support and special care units were established in the state. The establishment of these units took place against the backdrop of a debate around the appropriateness of the introduction of ‘secure accommodation’ for dealing with certain young people deemed to be ‘at risk’. For some the introduction of such a measure was a regressive step in the development of Irish child care services (O’Sullivan, 1997b: 18). On the other hand, some welcomed the introduction of ‘secure accommodation’ contingent on the provision of adequate safeguards (Ring, 1997b). Concerns were also expressed in relation to the development of such secure options in the absence of an overall integrated child care strategy. The Children Act 2001 sought to clarify the legislative position in relation to special care units. Part III of the Children Act, 2001 inserted Part 1VA into the Child Care Act 1991 and imposed a duty on health boards to apply to the District Court for a special care order where the behaviour of the child or young person was such that it posed a real or substantial risk to his or her health, safety, development and welfare and it was necessary in the interests of the child to do so. This, however, did not preclude the High Court from exercising its jurisdiction in this area and in practice the provision to apply to the District Court was never implemented, with applications for special care orders continuing to be pursued through the High Court. This situation was eventually regularised when the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2011 conferred power on the High Court to grant special care orders to detain children, in certain circumstances, in secure special care units for their own protection and the protection of others. The Act defines ‘special care’ as the provision to a child of care which addresses his or her behaviour and the risk of harm it poses to his or her life, health, safety, development or welfare, and his or her care requirements including medical and psychiatric assessment, examination, treatment and educational supervision.25 ‘established consensus’ The spectre of ‘out of control’ youths roaming the country’s main urban centres remained a live issue during the 1990s. In November 1991 an Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder was established to look at the problem of ‘urban crime and disorder’. The establishment of the group was a response to incidents of serious public disorder that had occurred in the Ronanstown area of Dublin. The Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder (1992) noted that although the group was not



From penitentiary to community37

provided with specific terms of reference it sought ‘to recommend measures aimed at addressing the difficulties caused in certain urban areas by the conduct of a minority of people who, sometimes alone or in small numbers, sometimes in groups, engaging in criminal acts and intimidating behaviour directed not only against the majority of law abiding people in their own communities but also against the Gardaí’ (1992: 15). The most significant recommendation to come from the report was the development of projects, sponsored by the Department of Justice, based on the existing GRAFT (Give Ronanstown a Future Today) Scheme. This was to be the prototype for the development of Garda Youth Diversion Projects, formerly known as Garda Special Projects. The projects are aimed at preventing juvenile crime and diverting young people from involvement in the criminal justice system. They are managed by a committee comprising gardaí, community representatives, local youth workers and other statutory and voluntary representatives. The number of these projects has increased from two in 1992 to 100 in 2012. Also in 1992 the First Report of the Dáil Select Committee on Crime was published. The Committee, established in June 1991 and chaired by Deputy Marian Quill, noted the ‘deep unease about crime’ and that a ‘clear thread through many submissions was the importance of preventing delinquency’ (1992: 4). Its terms of reference included the examination of the administration of justice and the implementation of the criminal law and existing legislation. The report called on the government to introduce new juvenile justice legislation urgently to replace the Children Act 1908, which it regarded as outdated.26 However, it was not until 1996 that the government published a Bill with the aim of replacing the Children Act 1908. Among other things, the Children Bill 1996 proposed a range of diversionary and community-­based alternatives to custody. These included: fines and binding over of parents; day centre orders; probation orders; intensive supervision orders; residential supervision orders; suitable person orders; and restriction on movement orders. The Bill also proposed the introduction of special care orders that would allow the detention of children whose behaviour posed a real and substantial risk to their health, safety, development or welfare and require care or protection which they would not get if such an order was not made. It was criticised at the time for confusing those children who were already criminalised with those who were not (O’Sullivan, 1997a). However, according to Ring (1997a), an important change proposed in the Bill was that the use of the word ‘child’ was to designate a person under eighteen years, a positive move towards the consolidation of legislation concerning children and young persons. The 1996 Children’s Bill was however allowed to lapse with the dissolution of the Dáil in 1997. At the same time that a new Bill concerning juvenile

38

Wild Arabs and savages

justice was being debated in the Dáil the government published a discussion paper which outlined the thinking of the Department of Justice on the problem of crime. Published in May 1997, Tackling Crime, formed part of the government’s Strategic Management Initiative. In line with international thinking it endorsed the view that custodial sentences should only be used as a last resort and emphasised greater use of community sanctions and supervision of offenders within the community. The paper stated that reform of the criminal law in this area was a key priority of government. However, it was 1999 before the government published a new Bill, which would be the precursor to the Children Act 2001. The Bill was radically different to the 1996 Bill. In introducing the Bill to the Dáil on 29 March 2000, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform John O’Donoghue heralded it as a radical and enlightened piece of legislation that would change the face of juvenile justice in Ireland. He described it as ‘a blueprint for a new system of juvenile justice that will charter the course of that system for many years to come’. The 1999 Bill emphasised non-­custodial options for juvenile offenders and sought to place more responsibility on both individuals and communities in providing solutions to juvenile crime. The Children Act 2001 emphasises the prevention of criminal behaviour in relation to young people and their diversion from the criminal justice system. It also embraces the principles of restorative justice. The Act, which is comprised of 271 separate sections, contains many innovative changes in the juvenile justice system in the areas of: family welfare conferencing; the treatment of child suspects; the Children Court; diversion; sanctions; detention; oversight; protection. Significantly, it changed the age of criminal responsibility from seven to twelve years. The Act also amended the Child Care Act 1991, providing for the establishment of special care facilities for young people who require secure accommodation. Before being fully implemented, the 2001 Act was substantially amended by the Criminal Justice Act 2006, which introduced changes in the areas of diversion, the age of criminal responsibility, detention and anti-­social behaviour. Sections 123–7 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 amended the Children Act 2001 to allow the Diversion Programme to cater for children who accept responsibility for their anti-­social behaviour. The 2006 Act also raised the age of criminal responsibility to twelve years, with some exceptions, and allowed the Diversion Programme to cater for children aged ten or eleven years. ‘the serious problems in many neighbourhoods and town centres’ The image of gangs of anti-­social young people roaming the urban landscape continued to occupy the public imagination into the 2000s. Such concerns were raised during a Dáil debate on the Criminal Justice Bill 2004. Speaking of



From penitentiary to community39

proposed new legislation to deal with ‘anti-­social behaviour’, Brian Lenihan, Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, stated that while he wanted to ensure that the new legislation would not harass or intimidate young people he was, ‘equally determined that we must put in place effective remedies that will address the serious problems in many neighbourhoods and town centres’ (Dáil Debates, vol. 617, 28 March 2006). In the same debate, Deputy Sean Crowe, Sinn Féin and Dublin South West, raised concerns about the proposed changes in the Bill and in particular the controversial introduction of ASBOs. Among his concerns were: [t]he fact that as ASBOs involve the imposition of penal sanctions for the breach of an order made in civil proceedings, they are inconsistent with the European Convention on Human Rights. Furthermore, the conditions imposed by an ASBO may involve a disproportionate interference with personal and private rights, and civil liberties.

Crowe was echoing concerns that had been expressed by others at the time. Most notably, the Irish Youth Justice Alliance,27 had publicly criticised some of the amendments to the Children Act 2001 proposed in the Criminal Justice Bill 2004. In particular, they were highly critical of the use of ASBOs to deal with ‘anti-­social behaviour’. ASBOs had been introduced by the Labour government in the UK in 1998 to deal with ‘low-­level behaviour’ that would not normally result in a criminal prosecution. Their introduction in the UK was highly controversial and met with significant opposition from human rights campaigners. In an oral submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Women’s Rights on 28 March 2006 the Alliance strongly opposed the application of anti-­social behaviour orders (ASBOs) on children in any form. However, despite considerable opposition, the legislation providing for the use of ASBOs was enacted. The Criminal Justice Act, 2006 passed into law on 16 July 2006 with the provisions relating to the anti-­social behaviour of children becoming law on 1 March 2007. The new provisions differ from the UK legislation by providing for a preliminary stage whereby a ‘behaviour warning’ can be issued by a Garda and a ‘good behaviour contract’ can be drawn up between a Garda Superintendent, the child and his/her parents on fulfilling certain conditions. If the child fails to comply with such a contract he/she can be referred to the Diversion Programme or an application for an ASBO can be made. The Act defines a child as being between twelve and eighteen years and stipulates that: a child behaves in an anti-­social manner if the child causes or, in the circumstances, is likely to cause, to one or more persons who are not of the same household of the child – harassment, significant or persistent alarm, distress, fear or intimidation, or significant or persistent impairment of their use or enjoyment of their property.

40

Wild Arabs and savages

The introduction of this legislation has been criticised by children’s rights campaigners on a number of levels. Some have argued that the Irish legislation rather than diverting children out of the criminal justice system has even greater capacity for net-­widening than its UK equivalent due to the fact that it has a greater number of options and that more children can be diverted into the Diversion Programme.28 The legislation has also been criticised for blurring the distinction between civil and criminal law. ‘across the Care and Justice sectors’ Despite the enactment of the Children Act 2001 there still remained little co-­ordination of services within the juvenile justice system. In October 2004 the government appointed a project team to examine the implementation of the 2001 Act and the scope for ‘rationalising and restructuring’ services in line with the new Act. In 2005 the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, signalled the government’s intention to develop a co-­ordinated approach to youth offending. He stated that ‘across the Care and Justice sectors, but among the justice family in particular, it is essential to renew our focus on establishing youth justice as a joint strategic priority’ (Irish Times, 28 July 2005). The Irish Youth Justice Service was established in 2006 as an executive office of the Department of Justice with responsibility for the management of detention facilities and the implementation of the Children Act 2001. The Report on the Youth Justice Review (2006) listed as one of its main aims the co-­ordination of services within the juvenile justice system. The report recommended restructuring and rationalising the ‘youth justice’ service within the context of the new legislative framework, the Children Act 2001. It also recommended a ‘single agency approach’ with the proposed Youth Justice Service located in ‘a care and social services setting’ (2006: 9). In April 2006 a senior official with the Department of Justice was appointed National Director of the new Irish Youth Justice Service (IYJS). Kilkelly, commenting on the recommendations of the 2006 report, viewed the establishment of the IYJS as having the potential to radically reform the youth justice system and successfully oversee the implementation and operation of the Children Act 2001 (2006b: 51). In 2008 the Irish Youth Justice Service published its National Youth Justice Strategy 2008–2010. This strategy, through a number of high-­level goals, aimed to promote a co-­ordinated approach among the relevant agencies working in the youth justice system in accordance with the principles of the Children Act. In May 2009 the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse published its final report. The report highlighted the failures of the state in terms of systems, policy, management, administration and senior personnel which resulted in



From penitentiary to community41

the abuse of children in reformatory and industrial schools. It made a number of recommendations aimed at the protection of children and the prevention of abuse in institutions. These included changes in child care policy, regulations, systems of inspection, management and support for children in such institutions. With the publication of this report, the enactment of the Children Act 2001 and its subsequent implementation it seems that juvenile justice in Ireland has moved into a new era where the mistakes of the past have been acknowledged and the old abusive system of juvenile justice has been replaced by a more enlightened one. The committal of children to closed institutions is now regarded as a last resort with the interests of the child regarded as paramount and diversion and rehabilitation within the community the preferred options. This section has provided a brief historical review of some of the main developments or milestones concerning the Irish juvenile justice system from 1801 to the present. As can be seen from this review, despite constant calls for reform of the Irish juvenile justice system throughout the twentieth century it was to be almost one hundred years before the Children Act 2001 was introduced to replace the Children Act 1908. The subsequent emergence of the new ‘youth justice’ system after the introduction of the Children Act 2001 has been rapid and unprecedented in comparison to the previous one hundred years, with the state taking centre stage in the management of the new system. However, how did we arrive at this position? Existing explanations There have been no serious attempts to account for the historical development of juvenile justice in Ireland. Only fragments of this history have been written: for example, histories of the borstal system and of the industrial school system. However, these accounts are largely descriptive and do not engage in wider theoretical debates. Walsh (2005) examined the juvenile justice system from a legislative perspective. He reviews the historical development of juvenile justice legislation from the mid-­nineteenth century to the introduction of the Children Act 2001 and considers the legal and procedural implications of this legislation. Also from a legal perspective, Osborough (1979) highlights the lack of system and formalism that characterised the juvenile justice system for most of the twentieth century. He sees a change occurring in the early 1970s with the increasing expansion of probation services, the introduction of the Garda Juvenile Diversion Scheme and the improvement of facilities for the assessment of juvenile offenders. Martin (2000) examines the nature and scope of children’s rights in Ireland, how they have been defended in the Irish courts and how they measure

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Wild Arabs and savages

up within the international context. He adopts a broadly reformist agenda arguing for the development of more effective methods for safeguarding children’s rights. Kilkelly, in Youth Justice in Ireland: Tough Lives, Rough Justice (2006b), evaluates the contemporary juvenile justice system from a ‘children’s rights’ perspective. Seeking to benchmark the system against international standards, she reviews juvenile justice legislation and procedures in the light of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the European Convention on Human Rights and United Nations International Rules and Guidelines. Her book represents a comprehensive audit of the law, policy and practice as it applies to the contemporary juvenile justice system in Ireland. From a purely historical perspective, The Lost Children: A Study of Charity Children in Ireland, 1700–1900 (Robins, 1980) provides an account of how the destitute child was dealt with in Irish society, starting with the foundling hospitals, charter schools, gaols and orphanages and eventually culminating with the development of the Poor Law system, workhouses and the reformatory and industrial schools. He charts the gradual emergence of a progressively more humane system for dealing with the destitute child and in relation to the Irish reformatory and industrial schools argues that despite their shortcomings, in relation to the rehabilitation of young people they represented a progressive departure prompted by genuine humanitarian motives. Turning to more recent times, Osborough’s Borstal in Ireland, Custodial Provision for the Young Adult Offender 1906–1974 (1975) provides an account of the borstal system in Ireland from 1906 to 1974 which includes a comparison of developments in the Republic with those in Northern Ireland. It outlines the scope of the system and provides a useful insight into the regimes that existed within the borstal institutions. In a similar vein, Reidy’s Ireland’s ‘Moral Hospital’: The Irish Borstal System 1906–1956 (2009) provides an ‘institutional history’ of the Clonmel borstal. Utilising archival material, he provides a straightforward historical account of the background to the development of the system, a profile of the inmates that went through the system and the regimes they were subjected to. With regard to the industrial schools, Barnes (1989) provides a historical account of the development and origins of the industrial school system from 1868 to 1908. She describes the emergence of the system, its establishment, consolidation and expansion, giving a detailed account of the regimes and environment within the schools. In this sense, she provides the first systematic and detailed description of how the schools operated. Her positive assessment of the schools’ contribution acknowledges the quality of education and training provided and highlights the fact that the schools represented an advance in the care of destitute, orphaned and neglected children. In contrast, Arnold’s The Irish Gulag: How the State Betrayed Its Innocent Children (2009) is a more sceptical account of the development of the



From penitentiary to community43

reformatory and industrial school system that views the state as having played a central role in the construction of a regime that facilitated the abuse and deprivation of children. He argues that the ‘Irish State bathed its hands in the blood of generations of innocent children tormented by the prison warders who took charge of them and who were, in the main, nuns and brothers of religious orders’ (2009: 19). Arnold is highly critical of state involvement in this area from the formation of the newly independent Irish state to its later involvement in the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. This book was published in the same year as and was prompted by, the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse 2009. Also taking a sceptical approach, Coldrey (2000) regards ‘class’ as an important aspect of how the reformatory and industrial schools functioned. He views these schools as primarily catering for the children of the working classes and argues that the deprived and neglected children from these poorer classes were perceived as a threat to respectable society and for this reason incarcerated in industrial and reformatory schools. He regards each of these schools as representing a ‘total institution’ whose aim was to reform the personality of each working-­class youth and transform them into respectable working-­class adults. In a somewhat similar vein, Raftery and O’Sullivan (1999: 18) suggest that the reformatory and industrial schools be viewed as ‘part of a larger system for the control of children and, to a lesser degree, women’. They argue that the system, dominated by Catholic religious congregations, incarcerated huge numbers of children for ‘transgressing the narrow moral code of the time’. Their account, a mix of sociological analysis and personal testimony, catalogues many of the abuses that were perpetrated against those confined within the schools from the mid-­nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Similarly, Smith (2004) argues that collusion between the Catholic Church and the Irish state in the late 1920s resulted in the emergence of a ‘containment culture’ that targeted the perceived sexual immorality of females, especially unmarried mothers. For Crowley and Kitchen (2008), post-­independence Ireland during the 1920s and 1930s became an intense site for the regulation of sexual conduct through a range of commissions and legislation aimed at sanitising the country’s moral landscape. Utilising a governmentality framework they argue that a regulatory grid emerged between 1922 and 1937 which specifically targeted sexual conduct. Another aspect of the development of the system in Ireland that has been discussed is the ‘subsidiary’ attitude of government. Gilligan (2009 and 1989a) has highlighted the Irish government’s subsidiary attitude to policy development and its inadequate response to the needs of the ‘public child’. Looking at the history of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems one can see that both systems were heavily dependent on Catholic religious and other

44

Wild Arabs and savages

v­ oluntary organisations. Although the reformatory and industrial schools were inspected by the state, the management and control of these institutions was left in the main to Catholic religious organisations. Maguire (2009: 42) contends that policy in this area resulted from the newly independent Irish state’s willingness to adopt the pre-­existing religiously run reformatory and industrial school system because it ‘was convenient and cost-­ effective from all perspectives to allow the system to continue’. This subsidiary explanation could also be used to explain the development of probation and youth work, where religious and voluntary organisations played a large part in the provision of these services for most of the twentieth century. Many of the more recent innovations in this area have subsequently been grafted onto existing voluntary initiatives. This is particularly true of initiatives in the area of probation and crime prevention, where state-­sponsored initiatives such as Garda Youth Diversion Projects, Probation Projects and community projects have piggy-­backed on existing voluntary initiatives.29 Catholic religious organisations such as the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the Legion of Mary supported a range of initiatives such as youth clubs that targeted children and young people they deemed to be ‘at risk’. The activities of these clubs normally consisted of both recreational activities and ‘spiritual’ training. As such the young people catered for were often simultaneously characterised as being ‘at risk’ morally or spiritually and also ‘at risk’ of offending. Activities such as arts and crafts were combined with religious instruction and the Catholic Church was active in the promotion of initiatives targeting young people. Cooney (1999) highlights the key role played by John Charles McQuaid, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, in establishing church control over a complex network of services in the areas of health, welfare and recreation in the twentieth century and in particular, the development of youth work services throughout the country.30 These initiatives served to regulate and socialise generations of adults and children within a specifically Catholic religious ethos. Inglis (1998) has highlighted the manner in which ordinary people colluded with the Catholic Church in order to increase their social capital. He argues that the Catholic Church maintained an institutional ‘monopoly of morality’ through its control of churches, schools, hospitals and homes and that being a ‘good’ Catholic was a way to achieve increased status and power within society. However, he notes that the influence of the Catholic Church began to decline in the mid-­1980s with the greater secularisation of Irish society, a decline hastened by the increasing number of scandals associated with the church. A more recent work, Coercive Confinement in Post Independence Ireland: Patients, Prisoners and Penitents (O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, 2012), takes a critical look at the control of deviance in Ireland in the first half-­century



From penitentiary to community45

after Irish independence. It highlights the interlocking roles of church, state and family in maintaining a range of institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, mother and baby homes, Magdalen homes, reformatory and industrial schools, prisons and borstal as powerful forms of social control. Carroll-­Burke (2000) highlights the influence of Ireland’s political status as a colony on the development of penal strategies. This status, he argues, led to a degree of experimentation and classification with regard to penal policy that did not exist in Britain. This is particularly apt in the context of the present study, where it is noted that the first juvenile penitentiary was established in Ireland almost four decades before a similar development occurred in Britain. Carroll-­Burke also highlights the influence of disciplinary pedagogy and the politics of education on the development of penal policy between 1850 and 1870 and the importance of the Catholic Church, and in particular, the figure of Archbishop Paul Cullen, in promoting its interests in the context of the development of Irish penal policy. The influence of the Catholic Church in the development and subsequent colonisation of the reformatory and industrial school system has also been highlighted by O’Sullivan (1999), who points to the existence of a range of Catholic orphan societies that preceded the introduction of state-­subsidised reformatory and industrial schools. The existence of these orphan societies, he argues, combined with the increasing prominence of the Catholic Church, provided the ‘conditions of possibility’ for the rapid expansion of the Irish reformatory and industrial schools system. All of these factors serve to highlight significant differences in the way that these institutions emerged in Ireland as compared with other jurisdictions. Considering the juvenile justice system as a whole, O’Sullivan (1998b) argues that the modern system has moved from the concept of dangerousness to the concept of risk and prioritises the perceived risk that the working-­class young pose in the abstract rather than the reality. This is reflected in the emergence of technologies of normalisation, socialisation and prevention that are aimed at disciplining the poor. Notes  1 The first Dublin House of Industry was established near St James’s Street by an Act of Parliament in 1703 to cater for the large destitute population that inhabited the streets of Dublin at the time. A second House of Industry was established North of the Liffey at North Brunswick Street, near Smithfield in 1773 (see Burke, 1987 and Robins, 1980).  2 For a more in-­depth discussion of this issue see Carroll-­Burke (2000).  3 Although the directors of convict prisons in Ireland were committed to a separate institution for juveniles they envisaged that the regime would be the same as that

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Wild Arabs and savages

for adults. This involved the stage system with an initial probationary period followed by a period of separation and labour (House of Commons, 1855). See also Carroll-­Burke (2000).  4 A series of articles appeared in the Irish Quarterly Review and the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland utilising statistical material from official reports, censuses, etc. to highlight the ‘criminal status’ of a class of young people and suggesting a more efficient system for managing them. In the Irish Quarterly Review the articles included: ‘The Garret, the Cabin and the Gaol’ (1854b); ‘Our Juvenile Criminals: The Schoolmaster and the Gaoler’ (1854a); ‘Reformatory Schools for Ireland’ (1855b); ‘Juvenile Delinquents and Their Management’ (1855a); ‘Notes on Reformatories for Ireland’ (1858); ‘Industrial and Reformatory Schools for Ireland’ (1858b). Articles appearing in the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland included: ‘On the Importance of Reformatory Establishments for Juvenile Delinquents’ (Pim, 1854); ‘Education the Surest Preventive of Crime, and the Best Safeguard of Life, Property, and Social Order’ (Haughton, 1856); ‘The Educational and Other Aspects of the Statistics of Crime in Dublin’ (O’Shaughnessy, 1861); ‘On Criminal Statistics with Special Reference to Population, Education and Distress in Ireland’ (O’Shaughnessy, 1864).  5 There was subsequently a series of amending legislation in respect of reformatory schools that acted to regulate the operation of these schools subsequent to the initial Act of 1858. These included: the Irish Reformatory Schools (Ireland) Act 1868; the Reformatory Schools Act 1893; the Reformatory Schools Act 1899; the Youthful Offenders Act 1901; the Children Act 1908; and the Children Act 1941.  6 In his report Lentaigne quotes at length from the address of the Lord Chancellor and President of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland on the subject of industrial schools: ‘the evils created by a vagrant population are very serious; and whether we regard as our plain duty to the children who are cast abroad as waifs and strays on the world, and are entitled to receive from the State that guardianship and guidance which they cannot give themselves; or the importance of preventing the vagabond from developing into the criminal, preying upon society whilst he is at large, and a burden to it when it is forced to pay for his punishment, in either way, morally or socially, for fiscal advantage or for the higher motive of redeeming from bad courses our brethren of humanity whom untoward circumstances have put in the path of temptation and vice, we are bound, so far as we can, to withdraw them from that evil path promptly, before the tyranny of habit and the domination of unregulated passions have made impossible their abandonment of sin and reconcilement with society’ (Ninth Report of the Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in Ireland, 1871: 17).  7 Although the Children Act 1908, the Courts of Justice Act 1924 and the Courts of Justice (District Court) Act 1946 paved the way for a separate children’s court, the reality in Ireland was different. A separate court was only ever established in Dublin, sitting first in Dublin Castle and then in Smithfield. Outside Dublin, the Children Court continued to sit in the same room as the regular District Court.



From penitentiary to community47

The 1908 Act, as amended, provided for the District Court to sit as a Children Court until it was repealed by Part VII of the Children Act 2001, which provided for the establishment of a separate Children Court.  8 Smith (2004: 209) sees the report as being a ‘formative moment in establishing an official state attitude toward “sexual immorality”’. He also views the subsequent legislation enacted as authorising Ireland’s ‘architecture of containment’, most notably, industrial and reformatory schools, mother and baby homes, adoption agencies and Magdalen asylums.  9 The issue of the provision of facilities for females within the Irish juvenile justice system was to remain a live one until the end of the twentieth century. After the closure of St Anne’s, CuanMhuire Assessment Unit was opened in 1984 in Collins Avenue, Whitehall, Dublin. It accepted young girls aged between ten and sixteen years on remand from the courts for assessment. It was run broadly on the same lines as St Michael’s Assessment Unit in Finglas, with both assessment and educational facilities provided. In March 1990 Oberstown Girls’ School was opened as a place of detention, replacing CuanMhuire. A second temporary unit was opened in 1991 while consideration was being given to the development of a facility at Finglas Assessment Centre. However, the anticipated demand for places did not materialise. In September 2007 CuanBeag, a detention and assessment unit for girls, opened at the Oberstown campus in Lusk, County Dublin. 10 These included: The Prevention and Punishment of Crime (1923); The Probation of Offenders (1927a); The Treatment of Young Offenders (1927b); New Methods for Offenders (1940). 11 This committee, known as the Streets Committee, was chaired by D.A. Hegarty of the Civics Institute of Ireland and was established in December 1956 by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who was ‘concerned at the increase in vandalism and misconduct amongst juveniles in the City Area’ (Dublin Corporation, 1958: 1). Members of the Committee included representatives from: Civics Institute of Ireland Ltd; Catholic Social Welfare Bureau; Social Studies Department, UCD; the INTO; Legion of Mary; An Garda Síochána; Society of St Vincent de Paul; Comhairle le Leas Óige; ISPCC; Catholic Boy Scouts; the Boys Brigade; St John Bosco Society; Primary Schools League; Dublin Corporation. 12 Tuairim was a London-­based study group established in 1960. It published a number of pamphlets on topics relating to Ireland such as economic development, partition, education and European integration. The members of the group came from diverse backgrounds and included university graduates, academics and a former resident of an Irish industrial school. 13 Raftery and O’Sullivan (1999) note that although Tyrell was a member of Tuairim none of his experiences were reflected in the final Tuairim report. 14 From the early 1940’s the Committee had argued in favour of foster care over institutional care and for the regular inspection of such institutions (see O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, 2012). 15 The groups who opposed the opening of the facility included: CARE; the Irish Association of Social Workers; Children First; the Psychological Society of Ireland; Dublin Simon; the Royal College of Psychiatrists; the National Federation

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of Youth Clubs; Hope; and the Prisoners’ Rights Organisation. In May 1978 the Prisoners’ Rights Organisation published a survey of fifty male offenders aged from twelve to sixteen years from the Sean McDermott Street/Summerhill area of Dublin’s inner city. The purpose of the report and survey was to illustrate the folly of opening the facility at Loughan House. 16 The Task Force on Child Care Services was ‘asked to make recommendations on the extension of services for deprived children and children at risk, to prepare a Bill updating the law in relation to children and to make recommendations on whatever administrative reforms it considered necessary in the child care services’ (Department of Health, 1980: 1). 17 Apart from the issue of the age of criminal responsibility the authors of the supplementary report argued that the recommendations contained in the main report would result in greater intervention by the state in the lives of a greater number of children. They argued that ‘more and greater intervention means two things: wasteful expenditure by the state and damage to many children who would be better off if left alone’ (Department of Health, 1980: 341). 18 Other members of the Commission included: Louk Hulsman, Michael D. Higgins, Gemma Hussey, Michael Keating, Mary McAleese, Patrick McEntee, Micheal McGreil, Matt Merrigan, Muireann O’Briain, Una Higgins O’Malley and Catriona O’Malley. 19 Whyte (2002: 177) notes the extensive range of studies into homelessness undertaken in the 1980s and early 1990s by groups such as the National Campaign for the Homeless, Streetwise National Coalition and Focus Point. Also, O’Sullivan and Mayock (2008) consider the emergence of youth homelessness in Ireland as a social problem and its legal construction during the 1990s. 20 D.G. v Eastern Health Board [1998] 1 I.L.R.M. 241. 21 See, for example, F.N. v Minister for Education [1995] 1 I.R. 409 and D.B. v Minister for Justice [1999] 1 I.R. 29. 22 For a more in-­depth discussion of the role of the high court in the provision of secure care in Ireland see Carr (2008). 23 TD. v Minister for Education, Ireland, the Attorney General, the Eastern Health Board and the Minister for Health and Children, unreported, High Court, Kelly J., February 25, 2000. 24 However, this judgement was later appealed to the Supreme Court and the appeal was upheld on the basis that the High Court had breached the ‘separation of powers’ doctrine by directing the legislature to implement policy. 25 There are nine high support and three special care units in Ireland. These units are under the control of the Health Service Executive and incorporate a range of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ therapeutic regimes where young people who are deemed ‘at risk’ are managed. The three special care units are: Ballydowd Special Care Unit, Coovagh House Special Care Unit and Gleann Alainn Special Care Unit. The high support units are: Elm House, Green Meadows, Ard Doire, Clodiagh House, La Nua, Lough Mahon, Creag Aran, Crannog Nua and Rathna Nog. These units are the subject of regular inspections by the Health Information and Quality Authority in line with the National Standards for Children’s Residential Centres



26

27 28 29 30

From penitentiary to community49 (Department of Health, 2001) and the National Standards for Special Care Units (Department of Health and Children, 2000c). Among the legislative changes it recommended were: raising the age of criminal responsibility to twelve years; the establishment of a Garda Juvenile Liaison Section within An Garda Síochána; recognition and expansion of opportunities for diversion within the juvenile justice system; extension of the range of non-­custodial dispositions; victim–offender mediation; secure units for juveniles within the juvenile justice system; and appropriate psychiatric facilities for ‘psychiatrically disturbed’ young offenders. The report also highlighted the ­importance of the early identification of ‘children at risk’. The Irish Youth Justice Alliance represented eighty non-­governmental organisations concerned with the rights and welfare of children in Ireland. For a more in-­depth discussion of these issues see Kilkelly (2006b). For further discussion of this, see Bowden and Higgins (2000). McQuaid was Archbishop of Dublin from 1940 to 1972.

3

How the system became visible

Cartography – the activity of mapping – exemplifies the ways in which spaces are made presentable and representable in the hope that they might become docile and amenable to government. To govern it is necessary to render visible the space over which government is to be exercised. This is not simply a matter of looking; it is a practice by which the space is re-­presented in maps, charts, pictures and other inscription devices. (Rose, 1999: 36)

Introduction When one looks at the youth justice system from a governmentality perspective, what emerges is a series of competing discourses, strategies and practices spread across a range of governmental sites that have evolved in response to the challenge of governing the juvenile offender and potential offender. In terms of visibility, a range of mechanisms emerge that are aimed at disciplining and regulating those deemed delinquent or potentially delinquent. Within the context of the Irish juvenile justice system these disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms initially became visible in the form of reformatory and industrial schools and later in the form of initiatives such as detention centres, secure units, assessment centres, community initiatives, diversion projects and mentoring projects. What also emerge are various forms of inscription, reports, statistical or otherwise, that serve to describe the juvenile offender and potential offender and delineate the ‘problem’ of juvenile crime. These reports not only make the juvenile offender and the means of governing them more visible they also serve to construct the identity of the offender and the means of governing them. The manner in which the youth justice system emerged or became visible is the subject of the following chapter. The ‘problem’ becomes visible As already noted, the first serious attempt at the separation of juvenile offenders from the general prison population in Ireland occurred with the



How the system became visible51

establishment of the Smithfield penitentiary in Dublin in 1801. However, the main impetus for the establishment of a distinct juvenile justice system can be traced to the mid-­nineteenth century and the activities of certain ‘moral statisticians’. Throughout the nineteenth century one can see a growth in the numbers of statistical societies in Britain and Ireland. Cullen notes that ‘One of the distinguishing characteristics of the statistical movement is the very use of the term “moral statistics”. It is a term which gradually disappeared during the nineteenth century: its popularity in our period underlines the importance of moral preoccupations in the movement. At its heart lay two or three broad subjects: crime, education, and less frequently studied, religion’(1975: 65). Over the course of the nineteenth century, a change occurred in the way the collective existence of people was viewed. Statistical knowledge enabled populations of individuals to be classified and regulated, resulting in the ­construction of a distinct moral order. Hacking (1990) notes, that around the mid-­nineteenth century mathematical theories relating to probability started to be applied to problems of government. Also, Deflem (1997) illustrates the manner in which criminal statistics began to be utilised as a governmental technology of surveillance in the nineteenth century. In particular he points to the Meldwesen system in Germany and the collection of criminal statistics in the United States from 1850 onwards. According to Deflem, the development of these technologies represents a move from a legally regulated state to a society that is statistically administered. Thus, there emerged a visible domain to be acted upon utilising various forms of statistical knowledge. According to Rose, these moral technologies ‘did not answer to a single logic or form part of a coherent programme of “state intervention”. Rather they were employed around particular issues: epidemics and disease, theft and criminality, dangerous and endangered children’(1999: 101). From a governmentality perspective, one can see the issue of juvenile delinquency emerging as a ‘problem’ to be governed. As such, certain categories of children had emerged as a ‘dangerous’ and ‘potentially dangerous’ and in need of control. In particular, reformist writings such as Mary Carpenter’s (1970) Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders in 1851 opened up a new space for the government of these children. Her work took the form of a moral topography, describing the various characteristics of these ‘dangerous and perishing classes’. May (2002) notes that Carpenter’s work marked a significant step in recognising the ‘needs’ of the child and galvanised public opinion, leading to the first positive state action. She championed the introduction of a new regime that would be more efficient and ‘humane’ in dealing with the ‘problem’ of juvenile delinquency. The ‘problem’ of juvenile delinquency itself is thus made visible in the writings of Carpenter and others who produced both statistical and biographical

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evidence in the form of case studies of offenders. The ‘problem’ of delinquency is here defined in statistical terms and its visibility is confirmed within various biographical narratives. A new space is created whereby populations can be governed by the utilisation of ‘scientific truth’ in the form of various statistical analyses. The delinquent and potential delinquent are thus made visible within these statistical analyses. Carpenter’s ‘perishing classes’ are the precursor of the present day ‘at risk’ population and they obtain their visibility in terms of a potential for delinquency. As such, by identifying certain characteristics individuals or classes of individuals are marked out as being in danger of becoming members of the criminal class: That part of the community which we are to consider, consists of those who have not yet fallen into actual crime, but who are almost certain from their ignorance, destitution and the circumstances in which they are growing up, to do so, if a helping hand is not extended to raise them; these form the perishing classes [and those] whose hand is against every man, for they know not that any man is their brother; these form the dangerous classes. (Carpenter, 1970: 2; italics in original)

Carpenter was not unique but was following in a tradition of those ‘moral statisticians’ who had developed the methods and tools of statistical inquiry, analysing the ‘moral topography’ of certain geographical areas and populations. In relation to Ireland, the Irish Quarterly Review and Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland provided the forum for such endeavours. It is within this context that juvenile delinquency emerges as a problem to be governed in the mid-­nineteenth century both in Britain and Ireland. Statistics and other evidence relating to juvenile crime was gathered from a number of sources and used to advance the cause of the Reformatory School Movement. A typical example is the Irish Quarterly Review of 1858 where a wide range of criminal statistics were taken from reports of the Inspector General of Prisons and the Dublin Metropolitan Police to illustrate the position in relation to juvenile crime in Ireland. These included statistics on offences committed, committals, re-­ committals, sentences, parentage, education, religion, home circumstances, age and sex. In the context of these statistics the Review states: ‘With facts like these before them it is strange that our legislators and those entrusted with the administration of justice, should lag behind the public, and act as a species of drag upon the desire which many entertain of advancing the Reformatory question in Ireland’ (1858a: xxx). Carroll-­Burke (2000) highlights the importance of the emergence of social science in the mid-­nineteenth century on the development of the ‘Irish convict system’ and how theories and experiments in social improvement were discussed in forums such as the Dublin Statistical Society, the Freeman’s Journal, the Dublin University Magazine and the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (NAPSS). He notes that NAPSS, which was



How the system became visible53

established in Birmingham in 1857 and was active in the promotion of juvenile reformatories, held an annual congress in Dublin in August 1861 that lasted a week and to which two hundred papers were submitted. Garland (2002) notes, that in Britain, the science of criminology began to emerge through the activities of the numerous statistical societies that were established around this time. In Ireland this was reflected in numerous articles appearing in journals such as the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland and the Irish Quarterly Review calling for reform of the justice system in relation to juveniles. In the mid-­nineteenth century the Irish Quarterly Review initiated a quarterly record of statistics and other information it deemed advantageous to the cause of the reformatory movement and this formed a backdrop to a general movement for reform of the prison system in favour a reformatory school model in Ireland. However, unlike Britain and America this concern about crime failed to develop into an established ‘governmental project’ in Ireland. Garland (2002: 8), speaking of criminology as a ‘governmental project’, states: I use the concept of a ‘project’ here to characterize an emergent tradition of inquiry that, despite a degree of variation, shares a cluster of aims and objectives. The ‘governmental’ project refers to those inquiries that direct attention to the problems of governing crime and criminals. Studies which fall within this tradition are not necessarily official, state sponsored studies, although, from the nineteenth century onwards, the state came to dominate work of this kind.

The dearth of criminological research in general and in particular in the area of juvenile justice, for most of the twentieth century is in contrast to the situation in the second half of the nineteenth century when there was a rich vein of research in journals such as the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland and the Irish Quarterly Review. In the absence of such an established ‘governmental project’, policy in the area of juvenile justice has been developed in what has described as a ‘research vacuum’. Indeed the lack of research in the area of juvenile justice in twentieth-­century Ireland is mirrored by the lack of legislative reform and policy development (O’Sullivan, 1996). Visibility of the system in Ireland In nineteenth-­century Ireland statistics played an important part in the emergence and visibility of numerous problems for government. The first official census took place in 1813. However, the census of 1841 marked a significant development in that it broadened the scope of the inquiry to include information relating to the family unit, house size, conjugal status, births, deaths, marriages, internal migration, emigration, literacy and agricultural ­production

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(Vaughan and Fitzpatrick, 1978). The development and increasing refinement of these and subsequent censuses meant that more sophisticated knowledge was available in relation to population. This allowed for the classification of sub-­ populations and the analysis of problems such as taxation, land valuation, agricultural production, employment, accommodation, crime and fertility. Much of the groundwork for these censuses was laid down by the mapping of the country by the Ordnance Survey from 1824 onwards. The Ordnance Survey was one of many bodies of expert knowledge established during the nineteenth century in response to problems of political governance such as land valuation, boundaries and the evaluation of taxation and rents. According to Doherty: Cartography was increasingly seen as a useful and utilitarian endeavour, and as one conducive to good government as it was to national security or to territorial expansion. Contemporaries believed that the Ordnance Survey would have important scientific, practical, and political results. Maps would benefit owners and occupiers of land by providing detailed information about estates and the valuation would provide relief from excessive taxation. (Doherty, 2004: 14)

The development of the Ordnance Survey and the compilation of population statistics emanating from the censuses meant that the population of Ireland became more visible and more readily amenable to classification. It also meant that the problems concerning population were more governable. These forms of specialised knowledge can be viewed as an ever-­increasing development of bio-­political knowledge that finds its impetus in response to certain problems of government. Such forms of specialised knowledge became visible in the form of ‘official’ projects and found their way into the official discourses of government in the form of various reports of government departments in response to problems of political governance. One such problem was the governance of the ‘delinquent’ juvenile population and the collection of statistics helped define this ‘problem’ and make it more governable. Rose and Miller note: From this statistical project, through the requirements imposed upon firms to keep account books and make tax returns, through censuses and surveys, the investigations of Victorian social reformers, the records kept by newly formed police forces and the school inspectors, through the calculations of such things as gross national product, growth rates of different economies, rates of inflation and the money supply, government inspires and depends upon a huge labour of inscription which renders reality into a calculable form. (1992: 185)

From 1823 onwards the Inspector General of Prisons issued an annual report outlining the manner in which ‘deviant’ populations were governed in prisons, bridewells, workhouses, etc. This facilitated the classification of the



How the system became visible55

prison population in general and although it included the ages of those incarcerated it did not specifically discriminate a separate class of juvenile offender. However, the reports did include a section on ‘employment and schools’ but it would appear that these schools were not aimed at children specifically but the general prison population. James Galwey, an inspector of prisons, in describing the situation in Kilkenny Gaol in 1851, noted: ‘There is a regular schoolmaster employed, and a registry of advancement is kept. I examined some of the classes, and I regret to add that they appeared to have made but little progress, particularly the juveniles, to whom I suggest more attention should be paid in future’ (Inspectors-­General of Prisons in Ireland, 1852: 185). A significant development appeared the following year in the report of 1852 which introduced two new categories: ‘juvenile crime’ and the ‘juvenile offender’. The former comprises an analysis of juvenile crime for each county in Ireland covering the age of the offender and a typology of offences committed. The latter represents a classification of the ‘condition’ of the juvenile offenders according to the prison they were incarcerated in, their age, parentage, education, class of offence and statistics relating to re-­committals. The effect of this is to separate out the class of juvenile offender and his or her crime, thus ensuring that the problem of governing juvenile crime becomes more visible and hence more governable. The following year, James Connellan, Inspector General of Prisons in Ireland, gave extensive evidence to the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles of 1853 outlining the extent of the prison system: the number of prisons, number and type of cells and total number of beds. Most significantly his statistical evidence made visible the manner in which juveniles were governed within the prison system. In particular, he mentions the ‘separate system’ as it applied then to juvenile prisoners: The separate system is carried out in a very small number of gaols in Ireland; in fact it is only carried out fully for both sexes in the gaol of Belfast. Juveniles are there treated under it. We have no exclusive principle in regard to juveniles confined in other prisons not fitted for separation; but in every instance where there is a slight depletion of the gaol … we invariably give the benefit of such depletion to them … We have no institution peculiarly fitted for the reception of juveniles; in fact they stand on precisely the same ground as adults. (House of Commons, 1853: 358)

Connellan produced an impressive corpus of statistical evidence to the Committee detailing the numbers of children in workhouses and those detained in prisons and bridewells. He also gives an outline of the extent of juvenile crime in Ireland and the manner of conviction. It is clear from this evidence that although a separate system for the government of criminal and destitute juveniles had not evolved in Ireland a system for the classification

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of these two classes of children had begun to emerge. Offenders were classified according to age, type of crime committed and parentage. Another item of classification that Connellan reports on is the skill level of these classes of children prior to incarceration. What also emerges from the statistical data presented to the Select Committee of 1853 by James Connellan and Walter Berwick QC and assistant barrister for East Riding of Cork County is the extent to which the rate of juvenile crime is increasing. From the statistics produced, Berwick concludes that there are two main reasons for the enormous increase in juvenile crime. The first is what he sees as the defects in the law as it relates to vagrancy and the second relates to problems in the management of ‘poor-­houses’. Both Berwick and Connellan refer to the system of management in the ‘poor-­ houses’ and point to the proportion of the prison population that came from the workhouse system. This leads them to conclude that both the classification of vagrancy offences and the system of governing juveniles in the workhouses are significant factors affecting the enormous increase in the population of juvenile delinquents. From the statistical knowledge available, both Berwick and Connellan are able to construct a classification of population aimed at achieving a more efficient government of the ‘problem’. The first effect of their mode of classification is to make the ‘problem’ become more visible. The population in general is viewed as divisible into sub-­categories and by virtue of this process of sub-­ division those that are problematic (criminal, destitute, etc.) are isolated from the general population. What also becomes visible, are the various sites that have been established for governing these sub-­populations. Implicit in both men’s models of classification is a rudimentary typology of the normal and deviant population. Connellan describes the class of juvenile delinquent in terms of age, sex, parentage, criminal history, sentence, place of incarceration, type of crime, etc. The effect is that the juvenile criminal class is made visible in a tabulated form. The various sites of government, including prisons, workhouses, courts, family and schools, are assembled to map the outline of this criminal and destitute child population. The use of statistics in constructing and making visible problems for government underlines the intrinsic relationship between numbers and democratic government.1 Numbers shape the way that persons and processes are organised. In the above case, juveniles are classified according to age, location, parentage, etc. This facilitates the isolation of a criminal class separate from the general population. This criminal class is further sub-­divided to produce the sub-­class ‘juvenile offender’. A further statistical refinement makes visible a ‘destitute class’ that has been convicted of vagrancy offences. This, in turn, justifies speculation around what constitutes the ‘criminal child’. Berwick distinguishes between those children who are committed for begging or vagrancy



How the system became visible57

from those who are committed for larceny or stealing, or other criminal acts. The utilisation of statistical techniques enables the ‘criminal child’ to become visible and appear within a matrix of criminal and non-­criminal types. The appendices to the main report contain statistical tables that delineate the space occupied by the juvenile offender in Ireland. They allow the juvenile offender to be thought of and speculated upon. They give the juvenile offender a certain density. Rose notes that in the nineteenth century, ‘statistics thus becomes one of the key modalities for the production of the knowledge necessary to govern. The statistics of crime, of trade and industrial disputes, of morbidity and mortality, of population size and growth, render the objects of government into thought as domains with their own inherent density and vitality’ (1999: 209). Not only does the offender become visible and assume a certain density but the various locations of these individuals are also made visible. A spatial map is constructed of the various sites for government and the spaces within these sites that the offender occupies. Each set of co-­ordinates maps a different aspect of the problem. Just as problems of land valuation or boundaries were made more visible by the work of the Ordnance Survey, the statistics represented in tabulated form in various reports make the problem of governing juvenile offenders visible and give the ‘problem’ itself its own density. In the Report of the Select Committee of 1853 the child of the workhouse is represented in tabulated form outlining the geographic spread of these children throughout the four provinces of Ireland. This is further refined to reveal various sub-­categories: under nine years; nine to fifteen years; total between nine and twenty-­one years. Further refinements include details of parentage. Those without parents, those without mother or father and those deserted. Thus, a profile of the destitute child in Ireland on the 2 April 1853 is produced. The destitute child is reconstituted in spatial form and inserted within a map of delinquency. Such children are given a visible identity within the context of the workhouse. The workhouse itself is also included as a discrete space within the general field of government of the delinquent and destitute class. This reconstitution of the destitute child is effected by means of the assembling of various moral and political co-­ordinates. The most significant of these is the family. The ‘natural’ family unit lurks behind these statistical representations as an invisible moral diagram against which these deviant representations are compared. The categories ‘without father’, ‘without ­ mother’ and ‘deserted’ describe a ‘natural’ state of existence that has been sundered, resulting in a form of existence categorised as the ‘workhouse’ or ‘destitute’ child. They appear as separate from both the ‘natural’ family unit and the general population. In this sense, the act of governing has rendered them separate. They occupy a separate physical space, the ‘workhouse’, and a separate ontological space through the process of statistical classification. The statistical tables in the 1853 Report of the Select Committee are maps

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representing the destitute child in the workhouse in Ireland on 2 April 1853. They take the form of a number of maps superimposed upon each other: a spatial map representing the spatial location of workhouse sites for governing the destitute; a map charting the ages of the destitute children; a map of the children’s family circumstances representing the various degrees to which the particular family bonds have become sundered from the norm; a map of the population of destitute children as it exists separate from the general population. This process of mapping is a political and moral act. It entails the making of certain moral and political judgements. These judgements are constitutive of the act of governing. As such, the counting of numbers is both a political and a technological act. Connellan’s classification expands to cover other sites included in the government of the juvenile offender. He produces tables mapping the prisons and bridewells throughout Ireland and gives the corresponding numbers of juveniles incarcerated in them. These figures, like those referring to the workhouses, describe the familial state of the offenders prior to committal, including information as to whether they were abandoned or absconded from the family unit. Their place of origin is also included. Further density is given to these entries by cataloguing their individual ability to perform certain tasks such as reading or writing, and also the number of times they have been imprisoned before. This information enables a degree of speculation to take place around the type of individual classified as a juvenile offender and facilitates the construction of a typology of the offender. Certain classes are represented according to the site they occupy within the system. For example, the class of juvenile offenders who are incarcerated in prisons, those committed to bridewells, those transported or those dealt with by the Dublin Metropolitan Police. The construction of these classes enables speculation in relation to emerging trends. These statistics are to be speculated upon in the context of crime and enable the mapping process of crime itself. In tabulated form they occupy a new space. They take the form of ‘patterns’ of offending and offenders. They invite speculation as to where, how and why. They open up historical and spatial vistas. These acts of speculation can operate over a given time scale, over a geographical location or both. They also invite moral and political speculation around such issues as the family, education, sex and criminal tendency. The analysis and refinement of such statistics also allows the movement of these sub-­classes of the general population to become visible and to be tracked for the first time. In the Report of 1853 Connellan reproduces figures outlining the annual committals of juvenile offenders in respect of the various prisons throughout Ireland. Again, these figures are classified by age and show the historical movement of a distinct ‘class’ in regard to the main site for governing children, namely prisons. The figures he presents show the committal



How the system became visible59

rate for all prisons from 1846 to 1851. This represents the mapping of both the spatial and temporal aspects of the government of the juvenile offender. In terms of the system itself, the First Annual Report of the Directors of Convict Prisons (1855) noted that a rudimentary ‘separate’ system for the management of juveniles under seventeen years of age had been adopted in Mountjoy and Philipstown.2 In the report the Chairperson of the Directors, Sir Walter Crofton, stated: ‘we have every reason to be fully satisfied with the results as evinced by the conduct and industry of the prisoners located here’ (1855: 5). He also noted that the facilities at Philipstown allowed for the separation of juveniles from adults. The Governor of Philipstown, Richard Grace, reported to Crofton the fact that by the end of 1855, all adult prisoners had been removed to Spike Island from Philipstown ‘replacing them by invalids and juveniles, conformably with your intention to convert it into a prison entirely for those classes’ (House of Commons, 1855: 59). The construction of a separate juvenile prison system was evidently underway. However, it was to be somewhat overshadowed by the introduction of reformatory school legislation. The reformatory and industrial school system With the eventual introduction of reformatory and industrial schools, the system for governing juveniles had become separate from the main prison system and occupied a new space constituted for the reformation of the ‘delinquent’ juvenile. Within this space juveniles were separated by sex and religion and various means were employed to effect their reformation. These institutions, like workhouses and prisons, represented a distinct architecture, a visible effect of power, designed ‘to turn the subjects of the confining regimes into agents of their own reformation’ (Markus, 1993: 95). A good illustration of how a specific institution could be designed to achieve such a reformative effect on children is a Christian Brothers’ publication entitled School Government (1865). It outlines in great detail the way that their schools should be managed and organised, including specific instructions in relation to the situation and size of buildings, furniture, cleanliness, ventilation, the classification and distribution of pupils and the regulation of their movements throughout the school day. Within the reformatory and industrial school system each juvenile also became a calculable subject in that the average cost per head with regard to maintenance of the person, buildings, etc. were taken into consideration in the context of the economic management of the system. As such the juvenile delinquent became a separate economic unit within the economy as a whole and the institution was examined in terms of its economic viability. The average cost per head could be calculated and compared for each reformatory

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and industrial school in Ireland. The activity of reformation and the subject of that reformation had become calculable within the overall political economy.3 The appendices of the Ninth Report of the Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools (1871) construct the population of juveniles detained in these institutions, giving them a visible existence as statistical entities. These statistical tables operate in a similar fashion to those in the reports of the inspector of prisons. They classify the population in terms of numbers entering and leaving the system and their previous criminal history. The Ninth Report, however, charts the subsequent history of the population after discharge. This includes details of employment, emigration, mortality, physical well-­being and subsequent criminal history under the heading ‘subsequent character and circumstances’. It includes the details of the physical existence of the subject itself. The following details are included: cause of death; the degree to which each individual was partially or fully clothed by the institution; the degree to which each individual was provided with food by the institution; whether each individual was voluntarily or involuntarily detained. These tables also represent a further development in the classification of the juvenile delinquent population. The system itself becomes visible in the numerous sites throughout the country that are classified as reformatory or industrial. By 1884 there were ten reformatory schools and sixty-­ one industrial schools in Ireland. The juvenile justice system was visible in four forms: prison, reformatory school, industrial school and probationary school. The Report of the Commission on Reformatory and Industrial Schools of 1884 notes that certified industrial schools in Ireland were regarded as institutions for poor and deserted children rather than for those who had committed an offence. The report also makes reference to the greater degree of classification in Ireland as compared with England. It mentions an ‘experiment’ at Spark’s Lake in Monaghan whereby refractory females were taken in from other reformatories around the country and that ‘at Kilkenny, Waterford and elsewhere, schools, under the management of religious sisterhoods, have been established for the reception of very young boys up to the age of 10’ (1884: lviii). There was a certain degree of experimentation in the manner in which the juvenile justice system was evolving and this was reflected in the practices that the managers of these institutions employed. Indeed, the evidence suggests that these practices were constitutive of the system itself rather than the other way round. These institutions catered for four distinct classes of juvenile: the criminal type; those who had committed a crime but were capable of reform; those of a lesser criminal type who could eventually be placed within industrial schools; and those who had not got the ‘taint’ of criminality but who, because of their life circumstances, were ‘at risk’. The 1884 report provides a unique insight into the



How the system became visible61

practices and discourses that converged to make the reformatory and industrial school system visible. Although the system became visible to some extent in the previous reports of the inspector of reformatory and industrial schools, the report of the Commission in 1884, like that of the Select Committee of 1853, provides first-­hand testimony from those operating the system as to the practices that were constitutive of the system for governing juveniles.4 The 1884 report outlines the ‘criminal status’ of those committed to reformatory and industrial schools. It also gives an account of a rudimentary method for the surveillance of those discharged from both types of institution. They were classified as ‘doing well’, ‘doubtful’, ‘re-­convicted’ or ‘lost sight of ’. Another aspect of this surveillance was that of the system of licensing out of children and the report notes that in the previous year 140 children were licensed (out of 396 who were eligible) from reformatories and 465 (out of 3,965) from industrial schools (1884: lix). It also shows the modes of disposal of those discharged under the headings: to employment or service; to friends; emigrated; went to sea; enlisted; discharged as a consequence of disease; discharged as incorrigible; died; absconded and not recovered. The numbers incarcerated in reformatory and industrial schools were at their highest at the turn of the twentieth century and only started to decline in the mid-­1940s. Over 105,000 children were committed to industrial schools by the courts between 1868 and 1969 (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 1999). Figure  3.1 indicates the numbers committed to industrial schools 1400 1200

1908

1941

1000 800 600 400 200

71 19

65 19

59 19

53 19

47 19

41 19

35 19

29 19

19

23

0

Figure 3.1  Numbers committed to industrial schools, 1923 to 1969 Source:  O’Donnell et al. (2005) Crime and Punishment in Ireland 1922 to 2003: A Statistical Sourcebook

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between 1922 and 1969. The reformatory schools, which were designed to cater only for children who committed a criminal offence, were utilised to a much lesser extent. After 1917 and the closing of the last Protestant industrial school, the industrial school population was totally governed by Catholic congregations, with the exception of the schools at Killybegs and Baltimore, which were managed by parish priests. Morgan notes that the total population in reformatory and industrial schools in 1924 was 5,192, with the numbers remaining steady throughout the 1920s and 1930s, rising to a peak of 6,979 in 1946/47 and eventually declining sharply in the 1960s and 1970s (Morgan, 2009).5 In 1970, following the recommendations of the Kennedy Report, the terms ‘industrial’ and ‘reformatory’ schools were dropped, although the legislation underpinning them remained in place until the enactment of the Children Act 2001. After the Kennedy Report there was a move away from large institutional sites to smaller ‘group homes’. Invisibility of the system in Ireland By adopting a governmentality approach one can broaden the critical lens and identify a range of regulatory initiatives aimed at governing the child that would not normally be considered part of the juvenile justice system but nevertheless are crucial to our understanding of it. Alongside the network of reformatory and industrial schools that emerged throughout Ireland from the mid-­nineteenth century there also appeared a network of regulatory sites that formed an almost invisible grid across Irish society. These sites were not visible as part of a juvenile justice system per se but nevertheless reached into every strata of life spanning areas such as health, welfare, recreation, employment and social work. The vast majority of these sites were in one way or another seeking to promote a Catholic moral ethos and were invariably sponsored by some charitable enterprise and managed by a religious or quasi-­religious organisation. Together they formed a vast regulatory grid that had as one of its main aims the socialisation and ‘protection’ of the young person in accordance with Catholic religious teaching. The following, while not exhaustive, illustrates the degree to which the government of young people was spread across a wide range of sites within society and emanated not from the state but predominantly from a wide range of quasi-­religious and predominantly Catholic religious organisations. The Handbook of Catholic Social and Charitable Works in Ireland (Irish Messenger, 1911) lists the ‘charitable works’ available in each diocese under the headings: aid in distress; aid in sickness and affliction; aid to reformation; aid to development –religious, social and physical. It provides an insight into the degree to which the Catholic Church had permeated all levels of Irish



How the system became visible63

society at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Dublin Diocese alone lists the following initiatives: (1) Aid in distress: crèche, homes for the aged poor, homes for widows, homes for servants, homes for children rescued from or in danger of loss of faith, proselytism, etc., homes for boys, orphan charity, boys’ orphanages, girls’ orphanages, girls’ protection society, coal funds, lunches for poor school children, penny dinners, shelter, servants’ homes of mercy, soup kitchen, visiting and relief of the poor and sick; (2) Aid in sickness and affliction: hospitals, hospice for the dying, children’s hospital, children’s convalescent home, convalescent homes, blind asylums, asylums for deaf mutes, asylum for mentally afflicted gentlemen, asylum for the insane, nursing the poor in their homes, visitation of hospitals; (3) Aid to reformation: boys’ industrial schools, girls’ industrial schools, boys’ reformatory, girls’ reformatory, Magdalen asylums, home for discharged female prisoners; and (4) Aid to development – religious, social and physical: Boys’ Brigade, clubs, societies, employment for girls, organisations for the diffusion of catholic literature, charitable societies, cookery classes, domestic economy classes, domestic training college, domestic training schools for young servants, homes of residence for ladies, business girls,etc., home for catholic district nurses, retreat, improvement classes, boys’ night schools, lecture and entertainment halls, primary schools, penny savings banks, reading rooms, registry offices, religious instruction, sewing classes, Seamen’s Institute, training schools and colleges, workrooms, work for poor churches (Irish Messenger, 1911).

Among the organisations active in these areas were the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Irish Sisters of Charity, Little Sisters of the Poor, Sisters of Mercy, Christian Brothers, Sisters of the Holy Faith, Daughters of the Heart of Mary, Poor Clares, International Catholic Association for Protecting Girls, Poor Servants of the Mother of God, Dominican Sisters, Brothers of St John of God, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, Franciscans, Capuchins, and the Irish Catholic Truth Society. In terms of the regulation of young people probably the oldest surviving of these organisations is the Catholic Young Men’s Society of Ireland. Founded in 1849 by Dean O’Brien of Limerick, its stated purpose was ‘fostering, by mutual union and co-­operation, and by priestly guidance the spiritual, intellectual, social and physical welfare of its members and in obedience to and under the guidance of the Hierarchy, of taking part in Catholic Action, for the Glory of the Church, and the benefit of the Irish people’ (Irish Catholic Directory, 1958: 134). It was organised as a federation with a network of branches throughout the country and affiliated to diocesan church councils. One of the most prominent organisations to emerge, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, was founded by Frederick Ozanam in 1835 in accordance with Catholic religious principles and came to Ireland in 1856. The Society is organised on the basis of conferences spread out across the country and

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attached to specific Catholic dioceses. Its original aim was the visitation and relief of the sick and poor. Curtis (2008), commenting on the activities of the Society, notes that in 1910 a ‘new social consciousness’ was in evidence that saw the Society embarking on a number of new schemes. In 1947 the Society published a Social Workers’ Handbook for use by Catholic social workers in Dublin. In this the Society is listed as providing a range of services for children and young persons, including male and female orphanages, recreation and holiday homes for boys and girls and boys’ clubs catering for boys between fourteen and eighteen years. The Society also operated a ‘Central Boys Club and Night Schools Committee’ for ‘the development of the work for the care of neglected boys’ (Irish Catholic Directory, 1958: 132). In 1948 the Society established the Guild of St Philip, which provided after-­care for Catholic discharged male prisoners ‘with particular concern for young and first offenders’ (1958: 132). These activities are ongoing, with the Society involved in a range of crime prevention and other initiatives involving young people. An organisation that has maintained a prominent position both in terms of the ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ system of regulation is the Christian Brothers. Founded in Waterford in 1802 by a wealthy businessman, Edmund Ignatius Rice, the organisation rapidly gained a foothold in the Irish education system. In terms of visibility it established six industrial schools at Artane, Tralee, Salthill, Glin, Letterfrack and Dun Laoghaire. It also established a large network of schools and boys clubs throughout the country. In 1923 the Christian Brothers adopted a Constitution and Rule that outlined the mission of the Congregation: ‘The main end of the Congregation is that all its members labour for their own sanctification by the observance of the Evangelical Counsels and of these Constitutions. The secondary end is that they endeavour to promote the spiritual good of the neighbour by the instruction of youth, especially the poor, in religious knowledge, and their training in Christian piety’ (quoted in Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report, 2009: 71). The Christian Brothers assumed a prominent position in the education sector in Ireland gaining a reputation for high achievement and strict discipline in primary and secondary schools. There are still a large number of their schools throughout Ireland. St Joseph’s Catholic Boys’ Brigade, founded in 1894, had more overt Catholic religious aims. It sought: [t]o crush vice and evil habits amongst boys; to instruct them thoroughly in the Catholic doctrine; to prepare them for the worthy reception of the sacraments; to give them habits of obedience, discipline and self-­respect; reverence and love for ecclesiastical authority and our holy religion; to promote their moral, physical and temporal well-­being, and to give them habits of strict sobriety. (Irish Catholic Directory, 1958: 132)



How the system became visible65

Another Catholic religious organisation which targeted young people throughout Ireland was the Salesian order. Founded in Italy in 1859 by a Catholic priest John Bosco, the order came to Ireland in 1919. Their main mission is to promote the Christian education of young people through their youth centres, boys clubs, and hostels, ‘for young people in difficulties’. There are still a number of St John Bosco youth centres operating throughout Ireland. They also have a number of houses located in Dublin which provide services for young people who are ‘out of home’. These are currently funded by the Health Service Executive.6 Concerns about the preservation of the Catholic faith and the fear of protestant proselytism was the main motivating force for the establishment of the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland. Its annual report of 1914 noted that the Society was founded in 1913 ‘by a committee of Catholic gentlemen, with the approval and blessing of His Eminence the Cardinal Primate and of most of the Irish bishops. Its sole aim is Catholic Defence – to protect the Faith of Baptised Catholics in Ireland from proselytising influences, and to rescue Baptised Catholics who have already fallen under them’ (1914: 7). The Society actively pursued cases of Catholic children whom they believed were being lured by Protestant proselytising organisations away from the Catholic faith. The organisation established a network of branches throughout Ireland. As late as 1952 the Society noted in its annual report that ‘The proselytisers are still active, and we had to foil their plans on a number of ­occasions … We removed seven children from Protestant Homes and our timely intervention on occasions saved other Catholic children from the Bird’s Nest’ (1952: 1). The Handbook of Catholic Social and Charitable Works in Ireland (Irish Messenger, 1911) also lists a ‘Girls Protection Society’ as the Irish branch of the International Catholic Association for Protecting Girls. The object of the Society was ‘to counteract the grave moral and religious dangers besetting the paths of Irish girls obliged to leave home in search of employment. It looks after them when travelling, indicates homes and helps them to find work in safe surroundings’ (1911: 36). In addition, the handbook lists a number of ‘Servants Homes of Mercy’ that were aimed at girls of ‘good character’ that would be supported and trained as servants free of charge. These institutions were in contrast to the Magdalen institutions that existed to train young women who were judged to be of ‘poorer character’. Youth work initiatives also acted as sites for the regulation and socialisation of young people. Hurley (1992) notes that developments in Irish youth work closely paralleled those in Britain. The Boy Scouts and Girl Guides appeared in Ireland as early as the nineteenth century. However, with independence, the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland were established in 1927. Archbishop John

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Charles McQuaid, who was to become patron of the Catholic Boy Scouts, sought to practise scouting ‘according to the Catholic ideal and teaching, and so to promote the physical, mental and spiritual welfare of the boys’ Irish Catholic Directory (1958: 138). In a similar fashion, in the early 1930s, following a controversial row between its original founders and Archbishop Edward Byrne, the Catholic Girl Guides of Ireland were to come under the control of the Catholic Church. In 1936 the organisation adopted a constitution which resulted in its being administered on a diocesan basis with the ultimate control of the organisation resting with the Catholic hierarchy (Brophy, 2009). A survey of youth clubs in Cork City undertaken by the Cork City Deanery Group of the Christus Rex Society in 1946 provides an interesting snapshot of how some of these clubs operated within the community. The survey reveals that there were fifteen clubs catering for 1,240 boys and girls in the city. The groups organising these clubs included: the Legion of Mary; the Christian Brothers; Sodality of the Children of Mary; Irish Sisters of Charity; and the staff of a vocational school. These clubs provided a range of social activities, games and crafts, combined with religious practice. The ‘spiritual activities’ included prayers, retreats, monthly confession, rosary, parish confraternity and junior presidia. The ‘Our Lady’s Parlours’ initiative run by the Legion of Mary aimed to ‘supply through pleasurable activity the character training which the girls are not getting at home’ (Christus Rex, 1946: 48). In addition to these groups catering for young boys and girls, the Social Workers’ Handbook (1947) lists a large number of boys’ and girls’ clubs, the most prominent of which were those run by the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the St John Bosco Society. Also listed are the Belvedere Boys’ Club, girls’ clubs run by the Legion of Mary and clubs run by the Catholic Women’s Federation of Secondary School Unions. The activities of these clubs usually amounted to physical activities, instruction in arts and crafts and some form of religious instruction. The state for the most part had no input into the development of these initiatives and this remained the case for most of the twentieth century. In this regard, the ‘Catholic Action’ movement was a powerful influence in Ireland during the early decades of the Irish Free State.7 According to Curtis, Catholic Action was part of the Catholic Church’s strategy to maintain cultural control and dominance and represented one aspect ‘of a many-­pronged model, organised through parallel catholic structures, schools, hospitals, political parties, and lay organisations, that intervened at strategic points in the new social complex’ (2008: 56). The scope of this regulatory grid is evidenced by the range of initiatives established by Catholic organisations touching all areas of social life. This is epitomised in the creation of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid’s ‘super-­



How the system became visible67

agency’, the Catholic Social Service Conference in Dublin. Cooney has argued that the formation of this agency by McQuaid resulted in the government abandoning a more interventionist approach in the sphere of social service provision with the De Valera government and Dublin Corporation confining themselves ‘to the role of supplementing the Archbishop’s efforts’ (1999: 142). Within this context the young person is characterised as a problem to be governed and therefore in need of constant surveillance and guidance. This characterisation in turn serves to justify a range of interventions into the life of the young person. The emergence of these interventions does not follow any single logic. This was the case with the development of these regulatory sites, where the state or any coherent governmental programme was largely absent. Instead, interventions were deployed around a range of problems and arose from the activities of certain powerful groups, predominantly Catholic religious ones. The problem of governing ‘rural youth’ provides a good example of this. Muintir na Tíre, in its handbook of 1943, calls for the establishment of rural youth clubs ‘designed to interest the young boys and girls in the rural and agricultural problems around their homes and to lay the foundations for better farming and better citizenship’ (Walsh, 1943: 21). Through farm-­based activities the organisation sought to improve the rudimentary farming skills of young people and also to enhance their personal development. The organisation was closely identified with and benefited from the patronage of the Catholic Church. Rev. J.M. Hayes (1943: 17) describes the unique way that the organisation sought to govern aspects of rural life based on the local parish system: the people of each parish get together and, no matter what their callings may be, they unite in one parish guild for the good of the community. They select a council to govern this guild with representatives from all callings in their parish, thus bringing about a healthy civic spirit, a good community mentality and an attempt at putting into practice the Christian principles enunciated by the Papal Encyclicals.

Another organisation whose structure and development was closely associated with the Catholic parish network is the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Founded in 1884, the GAA has 2,600 affiliated clubs dispersed throughout the island of Ireland with over two hundred clubs among the Irish overseas (O’Tuaithigh, 2009: 238). Unlike other more commercial sporting organisations, the GAA actively promotes a vision of community-­based amateur athleticism. Through its countrywide network of clubs it acts as an effective mechanism for the socialisation of young people broadly in line with its amateur athletic ideals. It promotes itself as a democratic, volunteer-­led, non-­sectarian, amateur organisation that fosters ‘a clear sense of identity and place’.8 The notion of ‘community’ and commitment to the local community

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is central to the ethos of the GAA. Its volunteers are active in primary, secondary and third level schools and colleges throughout Ireland and their activities represent a powerful socialising influence on young people in Ireland. Catholic religious organisations have been the single biggest influence on developments aimed at governing young people in Ireland since the mid-­ nineteenth century. This has resulted in a highly visible network of closed institutions, reformatory and industrial schools, that remained in existence until the late twentieth century. They also influenced the development of a less visible network of regulatory sites within the community that served to socialise the juvenile population in accordance with broadly Catholic religious principles. The visible and invisible aspects of the system often overlapped and one often supported the other. A good example of this is the manner in which religious organisations such as the Legion of Mary were engaged in probation work in Dublin. In this way, the Catholic religious organisations successfully engineered their involvement in the juvenile justice system. Although the influence of the Catholic Church has declined, many of the above organisations remain active through various activities albeit in a more secularised form.9 What also should be recognised is the participation of communities in their own government and the government of their children. It would be too simplistic to see this merely as the imposition of government from above. People participated freely in these religious organisations. This participation was particularly evident in the first half of the twentieth century where Catholic religious organisations boasted huge numbers within their ranks. As already noted, Inglis (1998) has argued that large sections of Irish society colluded with the Catholic church in order to increase their status and social capital. He estimated the membership of the following Irish Catholic lay organisations as late as 1983: Pioneer and Total Abstinence Association, 170,000; Society of St Vincent de Paul, 9,000; Young Christian Workers, 500; Legion of Mary, 10,000; Catholic Boy Scouts, 35,000; Catholic Girl Guides, 13,000; National Federation of Youth Clubs, 35,000. He notes that at this time there were twenty-­six Catholic lay organisations affiliated to the Catholic hierarchy’s Laity Commission with a total membership of over 300,000 (1998:51). Organisations such as the Pioneer and Total Abstinence Association commanded a huge and loyal following. Founded on 28 December 1898 by Father James Cullen, the organisation expanded rapidly from a membership of four in 1898 to 38,000 by the end of 1904. At its diamond jubilee celebrations in Croke Park in 1958 there were almost 100,000 pioneers. In 1900 the organisation established a Juvenile Branch for boys and girls under twenty-­one years (Dunne, 1981). Although membership has declined, they claim to still have over 100,000 members and offer membership to ‘juveniles’ and ‘young persons’ who pledge to abstain from alcohol.10



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The juvenile justice system in Ireland was dominated from the mid-­ nineteenth century to the late twentieth century by the reformatory and industrial schools. These were the most visible sites for the government of children. However, there also existed a wide range of less visible regulatory sites designed to regulate and socialise different classes of children. These were predominantly, though not exclusively, sponsored by Catholic religious organisations and centred around a broad range of activities and ­initiatives focusing on the issues of health, welfare, recreation and ­reformation. Although the activities of these groups now take place in a more secularised form many organisations, such as Catholic Youth Care and the Society of St Vincent de Paul, still remain active to this day in the areas of community development, child welfare, family support and juvenile justice. The Children Court The Children Act 1908 marked an important development in the juvenile justice system in Ireland. Section 111 of the 1908 Act allowed for the District Court to sit separately as a ‘Children Court’. This development represented the recognition that the child was different in the eyes of the law to the adult. The Act opened up a space for the government of children that sought to go further than just apportioning guilt or innocence but to inquire into the reasons why children offended and attempt to address these factors. However, the establishment of a separate children’s court in Ireland after independence was slow to take place. The first Children Court sat as part of the Dublin Metropolitan District Court in 1923 and was located in Dublin Castle. Over a decade later, in 1937 James Dillon TD raised concerns in the Dáil about the manner in which juveniles were being dealt with by the Irish courts and called for changes to the existing system. He stated: (1) I want the system of juvenile delinquents being tried in a court-­room done away with, and (2) I want juvenile delinquents to be brought before a district justice sitting in his room at a desk much as a headmaster at school would interview delinquent pupils. I suggest that members of the Garda Síochána who are in charge of these cases should attend the proceedings in plain clothes. I make the suggestion because, these children who are, in many cases, of tender years are brought before these Children’s Courts in circumstances naturally of great psychological stress, dismay and unhappiness, and I think it is undesirable to associate with the child mind the uniform of the Garda Síochána, as great mental distress must affect it in the circumstances I have outlined. (Dáil Debates, vol. 66, 1937)

However, little changed and a further decade later, McCarthy (1948) was arguing that ‘special children’s courts’ were needed throughout the country

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so that consideration could be given to the social and personal factors that caused the young person to offend. He contended that such consideration could not be given by the ordinary courts but only from special courts ‘adapted to the particular nature of these cases, and applying special procedure’. These ‘special procedures’ included, seeking the assistance of ‘doctors, educationalists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, or persons with practical knowledge of child welfare questions’ (1948: 4). This separate space within the criminal justice system was to stand in contrast to the perceived punitive space of the ordinary courts. It was a space constituted for the examination not only of the crime committed by the young person but also the circumstances leading to the criminal act, a space for the exploration of the particular circumstances and motivations behind the young person’s actions. McCarthy’s description of the first Children Court which was established in Dublin Castle in July 1943, suggests an almost benign space existing outside the cut and thrust of the regular district courts where a degree of informality could be achieved: Here, in the peaceful seclusion of the Upper Castle Yard, the Court is situated in the north side of the rectangle. It is held in a bright, airy room which has three tall windows, graceful fittings, and accommodation for thirty or forty people. At one end of the room is the Bench, or Desk, at which the Justice sits, having on his right his clerk, and on his left a Lady Probation Officer, both of whom are seated in line with the Justice but at a slightly lower level. In front of this desk is a slightly elevated platform on which the smaller children can stand so as to bring them comfortably on a speaking level with the Justice, and within two feet of his chair. (1948: 5)11

The establishment of the Children Court had the effect of drawing in a range of actors that would impact on the government of certain categories of children by considering their moral welfare. O’Connor (1963: 72) notes: ‘The functions of the Children’s Court are unusual and unique, and while its paramount duty is to protect society and enforce the law, it is also charged with a more vital responsibility, that of assessing children’s moral needs and prescribing treatment which, though punitive, is also remedial and constructive.’ This is particularly interesting in relation to the committal process that was employed in relation to reformatory and industrial schools where children were being committed to these schools as much for their ‘moral protection’ as for offences committed. An examination of the committal process allows one to see the manner in which the government of children occurred in practical terms. Here, one can see the various parties to the government of the child become visible: the judiciary, the family, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC),12 An Garda Síochána, school attendance officers, parish priests,



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Society of St Vincent de Paul members and Department of Health inspectors all participating in the government of the child. This often amounted to an examination of the child and the family, ‘where the mode of appearance before the court implies the placing of the child and his family in a setting of notables, social technicians, and magistrates: an image of encirclement through the establishment of a direct communication between social imperatives and family behaviour, ratifying a relationship of force prejudicial to the family’ (Donzelot, 1997: 3). In the case of the industrial schools the majority of young people were committed to the schools as a result of perceived familial failure or life circumstances. In the committal process we see the process of governing children made visible. We also see that this process of government was not always a direct coercive act but was often dependent upon the willing participation of the family of the child. The Children Act 1941 made it possible for children to be committed to an industrial school with the consent of both parents or, in the case of mental incapacity or imprisonment, of one parent. Indeed, an examination of the early years of the NSPCC indicates that the majority of cases investigated were reported by members of the public, including parents (Luddy, 2009). Also, after the establishment of the Irish Free State, the NSPCC began to play a greater role in the committal of children to reformatory and industrial schools. The majority of these children were from deprived backgrounds. Criticism of the NSPCC and its role in the committal of large amounts of children was to come from an unusual source. The founder of the Legion of Mary, Frank Duff, in a letter to Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid on 12 June 1941, criticised the manner in which one particular NSPCC inspector along with the District Justice ‘shovelled children into industrial schools’ (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report, 2009: vol. 5, 5). The Court was at the centre of the process of governing children and facilitated the dispersal of juvenile offenders and potential offenders to various sites within the juvenile justice system. In particular, the legal interpretation of the ‘fit person’ by the courts enabled the industrial schools (and later the health authorities) to assume greater legal significance in the governance of those children who were deemed ‘at risk’. In the mid-­1970s some health boards used their interpretation of the ‘fit person’ to take children into care, with the ‘fit person’ being interpreted not as an individual but the health board itself. This interpretation was later successfully challenged resulting in the enactment of emergency legislation in the form of the Children Act 1989.13 The Court often acted outside its statutory powers in discharging individuals that it deemed as being in ‘moral danger’ into the custody of certain Catholic religious congregations. Most significantly, the Court occupied a governmental space within which children and their families could be

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r­ egulated and disciplined. In this way: ‘The Juvenile Courts thus established the linkage between familial scrutiny and moralisation on the one hand and the penal system on the other which remains until today, providing ‘voluntary’ interventions into the lives of families and children with the coercive back-­up necessary for them to operate’ (Rose, 1985: 171). The Court assumed a highly visible central role in the policing of children and families. It legitimated intervention on the grounds of parental failure, moral danger and potential risk. As has already been noted, the 1908 Children Act extended the grounds upon which a child (up to the age of fourteen years) could be committed to an industrial school by the courts. In addition, the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 opened up a range of new sites for the government of young people. Under this Act, probation officers took on an important role in relation to the investigation and supervision of young people. McCarthy’s description of the role of the probation officer from the 1940s provides an interesting insight into how the probation officer was perceived at this time. He portrays the probation officer as a matriarchal figure mediating between the child and the justice in an attempt at achieving a more humane outcome: The Lady Probation Officer performs a most valuable function. Apart from the feeling of confidence which many a harassed mother derives from the presence of a woman in the Court, this officer presents all the Probation Officer’s reports to the justice as each case is dealt with. Having been in consultation with her colleagues before the Court opens, she is in a position to supply the Justice with all the information he requires: and being a married woman, with children of her own, her advice and assistance, which is invariably sought, is of tremendous value to the Court, and is always exercised in an endeavour to temper the wind of the Justice’s wrath. (McCarthy, 1948: 6)

The mechanism of ‘social enquiry’ within the context of the Children Court can be viewed as a means whereby parental authority can be wrested from the family and vested in the hands of those deemed suitable by law to intervene. In this regard, the social enquiry report prepared by the probation officer could legitimate the adjustment of familial bonds in circumstances where the family unit is deemed to have failed. The role of the Probation and Welfare Service was extended in the early 1970s and as well as providing a service to the courts and places of detention it established a number of community-­based hostels with the aim of supporting young people in the community who were released from custody or deemed to be at risk of offending. This facilitated the extension of the judicial gaze beyond the courtroom into an array of non-­judicial and less visible settings and sites located within the community and also within institutional settings. The Probation Service expanded during the 1970s and was renamed the Probation



How the system became visible73

and Welfare Service in 1979. In the same year its management structure was regionalised. It operated a ‘social work’ model of intervention and described itself as a ‘social work agency serving the courts, the prisons and places of detention and some special schools on a country-­wide basis’ (Probation and Welfare Service, 1981: 10). This role was further expanded in 1983 by the Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act, which allowed the courts to order the supervision of offenders aged over sixteen years in the community.14 The Children Act 1908 along with the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 provided a number of points of entry into the juvenile justice system for different forms of expert knowledge. In particular, it legitimated the intervention of the state into the private space of the family. The Children Court was given the power to examine not only the nature of the crime but the nature and circumstances of the offender or potential offender. The Children Court moved from Dublin Castle to Smithfield in 1985. The first purpose-­built Children Court was only completed at Smithfield in Dublin in 1988 next to the existing court. It was the first new courthouse to be built in Ireland since independence and it was designed to reflect the thinking underpinning a modern juvenile justice system: The building is monumental without being intimidating. The architect has stated elsewhere that he wanted to make the court a relatively pleasant place … This humanity is in evidence everywhere from the stone seats outside the building, to the waiting areas outside the courtrooms with its projecting first floor window giving one of the finest views of the city, to the intimate courtrooms themselves basking in sunlight. (Magill, 1988: 50)

The court at Smithfield remains the only purpose-­built children court in Ireland. The Courts of Justice Act, 1924 provided for special sittings of a children court in Cork, Limerick and Waterford. These sittings take place in court rooms where normal district court business occurs. In other places throughout Ireland charges against children are heard in a different building or room to that where the ordinary district court sits or at a different time to these sittings. The establishment of the current Children Court is provided for by Part 7 of the Children Act 2001. The 2001 Act, like its predecessor the 1908 Act, aims to delineate a separate legal space within the justice system for the management of juvenile offenders. The Children Court has the same jurisdiction as the District Court for dealing with summary charges. In addition, section 75(1) of the Act specifically gives the court jurisdiction to deal summarily with any child charged with an indictable offence aside from manslaughter and those required to be dealt with by the Central Criminal Court. Section 71(1)(b) of the Act stipulates that the court shall sit in a different building or room to other courts.

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In general, the 2001 Act has sought to create a separate judicial space that is more suitable to the needs of the child and their family, recognising explicitly the distinction between the child and adult in law. This is ­particularly illustrated by section 77 of the 2001 Act which deals with proceedings in the Children Court. It allows the court to divert the child into the welfare system in specific circumstances where the presiding judge believes this is in the best interests of the child. The court can require the HSE to initiate a family welfare conference and adjourn the case pending the outcome of this conference. This means that judicial proceedings can be suspended pending the investigation of the child’s circumstances by welfare agencies in a non-­judicial space. This reflects a more welfare orientated approach to the child in the Children Act 2001. This provision of the Act has been viewed as bridging the gap between the ‘justice’ and ‘welfare’ systems for children coming before the Children Court deemed to be ‘at risk’.15 In ­addition to this, section 72 of the Act provides for the participation in training or e­ ducation for judges before transacting business in the Children Court. There has been relatively little published research on the workings of the Children Court.16 The research that has taken place has been critical of many aspects of the operation of the Court and its compliance with national and international standards. In particular, Kilkelly (2005) highlights the fact that while the Children Act, 2001 provides for the establishment of the Children Court it fails to consider the role of the court in any detail. The borstal institution With regard to imprisonment, the principle of segregating juvenile prisoners from adult prisoners was established in Ireland in 1906 with the introduction of the borstal system. The borstal system operated on the basis that certain individuals between sixteen and twenty-­one years were to be segregated from the adult prison population under a regime of discipline and instruction in order to effect the reformation of their character. The decision as to what prisoners were suitable to be detained under this regime lay initially with the Irish Prisons Board, which selected suitable prisoners from prisons around the country. This system was eventually changed with the enactment of the Prevention of Crime Act 1908, which gave power to the courts to decide who was sentenced or transferred to the borstal system. The original site for Ireland’s first borstal institution at Clonmel, County Tipperary was the existing county gaol which had been constructed in the late seventeenth century. Initially, a section of the goal at Clonmel was set aside to accommodate this new facility, however, in 1910 all adult prisoners were removed from the gaol, something which Reidy (2005) regards as indicative



How the system became visible75

of the success of the borstal experiment in Ireland at the time. The location of the first borstal institution in a rural location was no accident, as it was part of the borstal philosophy to take the young offender outside of his own environment and subject him to a regime of hard work in order to reform his character. The Borstal Association of Ireland in particular advocated the ‘country life’ ­believing that such influence would ‘transform a ‘‘city cornerboy’’ into a decent farm labourer’ (Reidy, 2006: 187). With regard to the borstal at Clonmel, Reidy highlights the enthusiastic role played by the local community through the Borstal Association of Ireland which was crucial to its initial success: ‘a state run institution serving a national purpose, there was little or no interest shown by individuals or groups outside of County Tipperary, in the extraordinary efforts of a small but energetic group of philanthropists, bent on reshaping the lives of those the rest of society seemed to ignore’ (2006: 187). The Borstal Association of Ireland provided aftercare for inmates of the Clonmel Borstal. The Association was a philanthropic venture founded by people from the local community of Clonmel. It was given a degree of official recognition and support with the passing of the Prevention of Crime Act 1908. Section 8 of the Act allowed for the payment of money from the state to societies engaged in assisting or supervising persons discharged from a borstal institution. Reidy (2009), notes that the initial success of the borstal at Clonmel was to be short-­lived. Civil War politics dictated that the facility at Clonmel be evacuated on the request of the military authorities and the borstal institution was transferred to Clogheen Workhouse, County Tipperary, in October 1922. The fate of the borstal system in Ireland was in stark contrast to the progress of the system in Britain. There appears to have been a distinct lack of planning in relation to the borstal institution as far as the post-­independence government was concerned and after a spell in Cork during the ‘Emergency’ the borstal institution returned to Clonmel in 1946. In relation to both the Cork and Clonmel borstals, Fahy (1941: 80) commented, ‘Exactly how either of these buildings came to be chosen as a place wherein youthful minds and characters could get a new outlook and a new bent is not a little difficult to understand … in my opinion … the Borstal and Prison Systems in Eire are not two distinct systems. With a few unimportant differences, they are really one system – the Prison System.’ Fahy was not the only one who voiced public concerns about the borstal institution. In July 1946 the Irish-­American Roman Catholic founder of Boys Town home for destitute boys in Nebraska, Monsignor Edward Flanagan, who was on a visit to Ireland from America, ignited a major controversy by criticising the poor state of the institutions in Ireland and in particular the borstal institutions. This controversy was to receive widespread coverage in

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the print media and resulted in Flanagan incurring the wrath of the Catholic hierarchy and the Irish government.17 Whether Flanagan’s criticism resulted directly in improvements to the institution at Clonmel is not clear but there were some improvements to the facility at Clonmel prior to its return from Cork. Many of the objectionable features of the old prison at Clonmel were removed, including old buildings and walls and some attempts were made to landscape the grounds with a flower bed and a garden planted (Osborough, 1975). In 1948 the institution was formally re-­designated ‘St Patrick’s’. However, as has already been noted, the numbers committed to Clonmel continued to remain low and the institution was eventually transferred to the vacant women’s prison at Mountjoy, Dublin, in December 1956. Four years later the Criminal Justice Act, 1960 replaced the term ‘borstal’ with ‘St Patrick’s Institution’ putting an end to the borstal system in Ireland. The justice–welfare continuum As already noted, from the 1950s onwards, the numbers committed to the reformatory and industrial schools began to decline steeply as alternatives such as probation and cautioning began to gain in prominence. Also, after the Final Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (1980) there appeared to be an increasing bifurcation of justice and welfare services and a willingness to embrace alternatives to the closed institution. What becomes visible is a continuum of options located in a variety of settings ranging from the closed institution to the community. These options include detention centres, children detention schools, high support and special care units and a range of diversionary initiatives that operate along the cusp of what has become known as the justice/welfare divide. For present purposes, the term ‘justice–welfare continuum’ is preferred over ‘justice/welfare divide’ as the latter implies that there is some clear dividing line between justice and welfare options with initiatives such as ‘special care’ and ‘high support’ located firmly on the welfare side. However, from a governmentality perspective this divide is artificial and indeed unhelpful as it stands in the way of a clearer understanding of how the child and young person is governed in general.18 Places of detention In Ireland from the early twentieth century a number of distinct sites emerged for the detention of young people. The emergence of these sites did not appear to follow any discernible logic and their opening and closing occurred on an almost ad hoc basis without any evidence of a coherent government policy. In 1912 the Summerhill Police Barracks in Dublin was converted to a place of detention for juvenile offenders on remand from the courts. This was pro-



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vided for by section 108 of the Children Act 1908 which assigned a duty on each Garda authority to provide suitable places of detention for such juveniles. After Independence, the Institution was condemned by the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System in 1936 which regarded it as an unsuitable place for the detention of juveniles. The report noted that the institution was located in a densely populated area and ‘its structure is such that it might prove a death-­trap in the event of fire’ (1936: 19). It recommended that an alternative site be provided with adequate space and recreational facilities and that Summerhill be closed. Three years later, in 1939, James Dillon TD, criticised the conditions at Summerhill describing it as follows: It is a gloomy Georgian house with barred windows in as depressing a part of Dublin as could be found. There is no recreation ground attached to it, except a cemented backyard. The amenities and arrangements for the reform of children in such a place are non-­existent and it is in every sense a thoroughly undesirable Oliver Twist kind of establishment. Now, that in this day and generation the only provision we should make for juvenile delinquents in this city is a place of that kind, is a gross reflection on us all. There is no other civilised country in the world which would tolerate such treatment of children, and there is no Deputy in this house who, for one hour, would tolerate the removal of his child to such a place. (Dáil Debates, vol. 74, 16 March 1939)

Dillon’s criticisms of the conditions at Summerhill were to fall on deaf ears and it was to be a number of years before an alternative site was considered by government. On 24 March 1944 Marlborough House, the former teacher training college at Glasnevin, was certified as a detention centre for up to fifty juvenile offenders under seventeen years. It catered for four classes of juvenile: those on remand pending the hearing of their case; those to be detained no more than one month at the discretion of the courts as a substitute to imprisonment; those awaiting transport to industrial schools; those who were of no fixed abode or whose parents refused bail and were awaiting the disposal of their case. Marlborough House was described as an anomaly in that it was managed by the Department of Education yet registered by the Department of Justice as a place of detention (Keating, 2004). This peculiar arrangement led to serious tensions in the operation of the institution which ultimately acted to the detriment of those juveniles detained in it. The poor conditions at Marlborough House were the subject of much public controversy. The Kennedy Report (1970) was highly critical of the manner in which it operated and recommended its immediate closure. The former Supreme Court judge, Justice Kingsmill-­Moore, who visited Marlborough House in 1972 described the conditions there in a letter published in the Irish Times on 27 January 1972:

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The exterior of Marlborough House will be familiar to many. The house was condemned in 1957. It is shored up by heavy beams supporting the front. The back continues in use as a place of detention for boys ranging from 7 or 8 to youths of 17 awaiting trial for serious crime. The front door opens into a normal house … We found ourselves in a single enormous hall comparable to a disused garage. The walls were rough plaster, some falling from damp, exposing the bricks behind. At each end was a small black stove, each with a few red embers at the bottom. The sole furniture consisted of two tables and a few backless forms, some broken. There were not enough forms to seat the number of boys incarcerated. Each tall window was blocked by brownish material and covered with wire netting, a little light coming through part of the upper panes. Hanging from the high ceiling were three or four low wattage bulbs, one broken.

Kingsmill-­Moore went on to describe how there were no facilities for recreation, no teachers and no trained social workers, only staff recruited from the local labour exchange. After a walk out by staff, due to unacceptable working conditions, Marlborough House eventually closed on 1 August 1972, the building being demolished and replaced by a new remand and assessment centre run by the De La Salle Order in Finglas, in January 1973. As already noted, the Criminal Justice Act 1960 had formally established St Patrick’s Institution as a place of detention and an ‘alternative’ to imprisonment for persons between sixteen and twenty-­one years, replacing the borstal system. However, while the 1960 Act retained the principle of segregation of this class of offender it is less clear as to whether it was intended to retain a ‘borstal-­type’ regime.19 The government was criticised for the lack of clarity in relation to the criminal Justice Act, 1960: ‘The most lamentable feature of the Act was its total failure to describe St Patrick’s or to set out clearly what the purpose of the institution is supposed to be … What, may we ask, is the Minister substituting in place of the borstal system?’ (O’Connor, 1963: 91). However, the Minister for Justice, Oscar Traynor, was in no doubt in relation to the type of regime proposed for St Patrick’s: It may be said that it would be undesirable to apply old prison acts and rules made under them to St Patrick’s as this may over-­emphasise the prison aspect of St Patrick’s, but no magic can be worked by deleting unpleasant words like ‘prison’. St Patrick’s must remain primarily a prison. (Dáil Debates, vol. 183, 21 June 1960)

St Patrick’s was to remain somewhat of an enigma. It is a closed, medium security place of detention for males aged sixteen to twenty-­one years, accommodating both remand and sentenced prisoners. In terms of the physical infrastructure it has the appearance of a prison. Access to the institution is strictly controlled with inmates locked in their cells at night and for certain periods during the day. Walsh, describes the regime as ‘more like that in a prison as distinct from that in a reformatory school’ (2005: 256).



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There have been a number of attempts to provide alternative institutions catering for those deemed ‘less risky’, within more open regimes. In August 1968 an ‘open centre’ for the detention of young offenders was established in Shanganagh, County Dublin. In that year, fifty inmates were transferred from St Patrick’s to Shanganagh Castle. The institution operated as an open centre providing dormitory-­style accommodation. The ‘Castle’ was located in a rural setting with the grounds being used by the inmates to grow flowers and vegetables that were consumed in the institution (Department of Justice, 1994). Programmes similar to those offered in St Patrick’s at the time were available. Shanganagh Castle closed in 2002. Loughan House in County Cavan was another open institution that started to receive young offenders between sixteen and twenty-­one years in 1972.20 The regime in both Loughan House and Shanganagh differed significantly from St Patrick’s and, according to Osborough, new regulations governing these institutions gave them: a separate progressive identity that included: specific training and treatment to encourage and assist them to lead law-­abiding and self-­supporting lives; the imposition of the minimum restrictions required for well-­ordered community life; a regime that seeks to influence them by good example and leadership and to enlist their willing cooperation; training and treatment of offenders that encourages in them self-­respect and a sense of personal responsibility. (1975: 92)

Another facility aimed at providing an alternative to the regime at St Patrick’s Institution was Fort Mitchell (Spike Island) in Cork. Its location off the south coast of Ireland reflected its former status within the penal architecture of the mid-­nineteenth century. Formerly a British military installation, it was opened as a penal establishment in the mid-­nineteenth century. It subsequently operated as a place of internment for Irish Volunteers during the War of Independence and was only handed over by the British government in 1938. On 29 March 1985 it was taken over by the Department of Justice as a prison for young offenders between sixteen and twenty-­four years. When taken over the facility was in poor condition requiring considerable refurbishment much of which was carried out by the prisoners themselves. The prisoners were accommodated in large dormitories within the former army barracks. When Spike Island was visited by the Dáil Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism in 1985 they described the facility as a temporary, emergency reaction to the problem of overcrowding in the prison system. Interestingly, the opening of Spike Island came in the same year as the publication of the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System 1985 (Whitaker Report, Dáil Éireann, 1985c) which was committed to the reduction of prison places and the provision of alternatives to custody. Despite its location on an island in Cork Harbour, a significant positive feature of the regime was the

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range of academic and vocational training provided, which had a high participation rate (Kilkelly, 2006b). Since the foundation of the state there have been a number of places of detention established catering for juvenile offenders. These were Summerhill, Marlborough House, St Patrick’s Institution, Loughan House, Spike Island and Shanganagh Castle. The opening and closing of these institutions did not appear to follow any particular logic or forward planning on the part of government but appeared to be more a response to political expediency or public outcry. The issue of closing St Patrick’s Institution and replacing it with a more appropriate facility specifically designed for the detention of children has been raised by children’s rights campaigners for several decades. Plans to build such a national detention facility at the Oberstown campus were first announced by the Fianna Fáil government in 2008.21 However, these plans were put on hold due to the sudden downturn in public finances. In April 2012 Frances Fitzgerald, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, confirmed that funding for the construction of a national detention facility for children at Oberstown Campus in Lusk had been approved by government. Since 1 May 2012 all newly remanded or sentenced sixteen-­year olds have been remanded in the existing children’s detention facility at Oberstown. Children detention schools The Children Act 2001, as amended, transferred responsibility for detention schools from the Minister for Education and Science to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. It also stated that the detention school model of care, education and rehabilitation was to be extended to include persons under eighteen years. From 1 March 2007 it became illegal for a court to order the detention of someone under eighteen years of age in a prison. On 1 January 2012 responsibility for the schools passed from the Minister for Justice and Equality to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. The reformatory and industrial schools remained in existence until the implementation of the Children Act 2001 when they were renamed ‘children detention schools’. These schools accepted male and female children aged between twelve and sixteen years on committal, remand and assessment from the courts. Trinity House, Oberstown Boys’ School and Oberstown Girls’ School were formerly reformatory schools. Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre was formerly an industrial school and operated since 1973. However, following the Report of the Working Group on the Future of Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre (Health Information and Quality Authority, 2010) the facility closed on 31 March 2010 and staff were transferred to the Oberstown campus in Lusk. St Joseph’s Clonmel, formerly an industrial school, is now an open residential centre for boys between ten and seventeen years. It is owned and managed by the HSE. In June 2007 responsibility for the provision of



How the system became visible81

education was transferred from the Department of Education and Science to South Tipperary Vocational Education Committee. There are (in 2012) three detention schools for children, all located at the Oberstown campus, Lusk, County Dublin. These are: Trinity House School, Lusk; Oberstown Boys’ School, Lusk; and Oberstown Girls’ School, Lusk. Statutory Instrument number 136 of 2012 designates these schools as detention schools. The schools cater for the following age groups: Trinity House School, 10 to 17 years; Oberstown Boys School, 10 to 17 years; and Oberstown Girls School, 10 to 18 years. The schools provide regimes designed to cater for the different categories of children detained. There are two education centres on the Oberstown campus which come under the remit of the County of Dublin Vocational Education Committee. Each school imposes a regime of security in accordance with the level of risk attributed to the individual contained therein. The regime at Trinity House School is reserved for those offenders deemed to pose the highest risk and is classified as a secure unit. In relation to this school the criteria for admission is being convicted of a ‘serious offence’ such as murder, manslaughter, rape or ‘posing a serious threat to society; or being unsuitable for management or containment in an open residential establishment’ (Walsh, 2005: 252). There is a lower level of security in Oberstown Girls’ School and Oberstown Boys’ School with the young people being allowed to move around the campus under supervision; however, they are locked into their rooms at night. These units have the capacity to restrict the movement of young people within the buildings but the units and the campuses are not totally secure. The Standards and Criteria for Children Detention Schools 2008 stipulate that the school is located in premises which are suitable, safe and secure for the purpose of providing residential care for young people (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2008: 20). They also note that within the constraints of safety and security each school should provide a ‘domestic and homely living environment’. St Joseph’s in Clonmel (Ferryhouse) is an interesting case study in that its development and eventual phasing out as a detention school reflects some of the changes in thinking that have occurred in the juvenile justice system since the late nineteenth century. Originally certified as an industrial school and managed by the Rosminian Order, it operated as an industrial school from 1885 to 1999. It is located four kilometres from Clonmel beside the River Suir. The main building was a large three-­storey red-­brick construction with adjoining buildings surrounding a quadrangular area. The development included a school, infirmary, chapel, dormitories and workshops. The original dormitories accommodated 100 beds and a Prefect’s room. The Rosminian Community residence was located in the main building. The

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school was o ­ riginally certified to accommodate 150 children in 1885 but this was increased to 200 in 1944. The atmosphere in the school even in the late 1960s and early 1970s was described by a member of the Rosminian Order as ‘Dickensian’ (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report, 2009). Following the publication of the Kennedy Report in 1970, the school was redeveloped to reflect the Kennedy Committee’s view that children should be cared for in smaller group homes rather than large dormitory-­style institutions. A programme of building works began in 1980 consisting of open-­plan buildings, a bungalow-­style unit, a sports centre/gymnasium and a number of residential units accommodating ten to fourteen boys. Other features included the provision of educational and psychological services and the provision of child care training for staff working there. In 2002 the management of the school transferred from the Catholic religious Rosminian Order to the Department of Education and Science. St Joseph’s operated an open regime with a mixture of referrals coming from the courts and the Health Service Executive. It comprised a number of residential units as well as a supervision unit, dining block, gymnasium, school and a chapel. In 2007 St Joseph’s ceased to be a detention school and was taken over by the HSE in 2008 under the provisions of the Child Care Act 1991. The planned national children’s detention facility at the Oberstown campus in Lusk will provide eighty detention places in six new residential units along with the required recreation, education, administration and ancillary services. The facility will allow a ‘child care model’ of detention to be extended to all children under eighteen years. When open all boys aged sixteen and seventeen years will be transferred there from St Patrick’s Institution with the result that the Irish Prison Service will no longer have responsibility for the detention of this age group. It is estimated that the planned development will be complete in 2015.22 High support/special care units As already noted, the concepts of high support and special care emerged in the mid-­1990s following a series of High Court cases revolving around the issue of the provision of adequate care for young people deemed to be ‘at risk’. A number of high support special care units were established by different health boards throughout Ireland to address this problem, encompassing mainstream residential care and secure facilities. With no overall national strategy for the provision of such services a range of models were implemented in various health board areas. In order to plan for the provision of these services the Department of Health and Children commissioned two reports with the aim of examining the requirements and the principles underpinning the development of high support and special care services. These reports were entitled: A Report on the Requirements and the Necessity



How the system became visible83

for Special Care and High Support Residential Child Care Provision in Ireland (Department of Health and Children, 1998) and The Principles and Policies Underpinning the Development of Special Care and High Support Provision in Ireland (Department of Health and Children, 2000b). They outlined a number of options and their broad conclusion was that there was a need for some form of specialist residential childcare provision incorporating high support units designed to provide a measure of security. In 2003 the Special Residential Services Board (SRSB) commissioned a report in an effort to define the concept of ‘high support’. It concluded that despite its relatively brief history high support had evolved into a range of different approaches throughout the country. These included regionally configured residential units offering short-­term and medium-­term interventions and locally configured community-­based residential units. The report noted a number of defining criteria for high support including: short-­to medium-­ term intensive care; a non-­secure environment focusing on stabilising an extreme situation; a high staffing ratio; maintaining links with family; aftercare; access to education; access to therapeutic services. The report called for a clearer distinction to be made between ‘high support’ and ‘special care’ in the light of the passing of the Children Act 2001 and took the view that high support should be delivered within a non-­secure ‘open’ environment with the consent of the young person concerned. It noted that high support had come to be viewed within some health board areas as a ‘methodology’ of childcare rather than as a specific form of residential care. The report supported this conceptualisation of high support as maximising its potential use in both residential and community-­based initiatives. This view was supported in a subsequent report commissioned by the Eastern Regional Health Authority in 2004, which defined ‘high support’ as ‘an individualised programme of support for children and young people with exceptional needs through the provision of a time-­limited, therapeutic intervention in a non-­secure environment’ (2004: 7). The report outlined a number of models where high support could be deployed using the above definition including: special arrangements, specialist foster care, mainstream residential care, flexible high support and community-­based high support (2004: 17). The high support unit has been defined as a residential unit established to cater for the needs of a ‘minority of highly troubled children’ that require intensive support away from the home environment when other supports are not available (Social Information Systems, 2010). In contrast to the high support unit, the special care unit caters for the detention of a young person in a secure and controlled environment. The overall aim of special care is to facilitate a short-­term, focused package of care and therapy which aims to ‘stabilise’ the behaviour of the young person, enabling their eventual return to a non-­secure environment. Security and

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supervision are key elements in the design of a secure unit. The National Standards for Special Care Units notes that the ‘premises and associated outdoor areas are designed to prevent unauthorised entry or exit. They should facilitate supervision and minimise opportunities for self-­harm while providing accommodation which is, in so far as practicable, appropriate to its designation as a children’s home’ (Department of Health and Children, 2000c: 19). The Child Care (Amendment) Act, 2011 defines the special care unit as a: premises or part of a premises, comprising secure residential accommodation in which a child, in respect of whom a special care order or an interim special care order has been made, is detained for the purpose of the provision to that child of special care and includes accommodation and facilities required for the provision of special care.

The essential difference between High Support and Special Care Units is the level of security employed in managing those detained. Special Care Units are purpose-­built secure, locked facilities, managed by the HSE where the children detained within them are prevented from leaving of their own accord. Diversionary sites These are located in the community and facilitate a wide range of strategies designed to prevent the child from becoming involved in crime, to divert those who have already engaged in crime from entering the justice system or to divert those who have already entered the justice system from custody. The Diversion Programme is the main mechanism for diverting children between twelve and eighteen years from crime. The former Garda Juvenile Liaison Officer Scheme had operated since 1963 and was placed on a statutory footing with the enactment of the Children Act 2001. The Programme is centrally administered by An Garda Síochána from Garda Headquarters and is managed by dedicated Juvenile Liaison Officers located in each Garda district. These officers administer cautions and supervise juveniles within the community.23 In addition to this Programme, there is a large number of Garda Youth Diversion Projects operating within the state. Garda Youth Diversion Projects are primarily aimed at diverting certain targeted offenders and non-­offenders away from the criminal justice system. Although they are viewed primarily as crime prevention initiatives these projects engage in a wide range of activities, including education, family support, counselling and sporting and recreational activities. Adopting a broadly youth work approach they provide support for young people in a pastoral way by offering a range of strategies designed to prevent juvenile offending. A key element in the operation of the projects is the co-­ordinator who engages with individuals on the projects in a direct way. The initial projects were viewed as effective mechanisms for build-



How the system became visible85

ing trust and establishing links between statutory and voluntary agencies and the community.24 The projects target not only individuals deemed ‘at risk’ of offending but also geographical areas and populations that are considered suitable. Criteria for locating a Garda Youth Diversion Project in an area include: crime statistics; number of referrals to the Garda Juvenile Diversion Scheme; youth demographics such as rates of early school-­leaving, homelessness, drug and alcohol use; services; social exclusion; perceptions of local agencies on youth crime in the area. Once established in an area a project will set about targeting those young people deemed suitable for inclusion in the process of diversion through the project. The target population is sufficiently broad to include those who have offended and those ‘at risk’ of offending. Referrals can come from a range of sources including youth workers, teachers, family support workers and members of the community. The projects employ the category ‘at risk’ to cover a broad range of young people, including those who have no history of offending. The process of diversion becomes identified with various other governmental strategies such as youth work and family support that are aimed at the protection and welfare of the ‘at risk’ child. This process of identification enables these diversionary projects to become less visible and hence less invasive. The development of the modern Diversion Programme should be seen within the context of the increasing visibility of the ‘at risk’ child within the Irish juvenile justice system. Professionals working within the justice system are employing risk assessment techniques to a greater extent. This is reflected in ongoing research aimed at profiling participants on Garda Youth Diversion Projects and their behaviour using risk-­based methodologies (IYJS 2009a; Redmond, 2009). In particular the IYJS have embraced the practice of ‘baseline analysis’, in relation to the Garda Youth Diversion Projects, with the aim of establishing an evidence-­based approach to crime reduction. On a more general level the IYJS has recommended that support be given to the standardisation of risk assessment practice across the criminal justice system (IYJS 2009a). The utilisation of risk factors as a crime prevention strategy was also highlighted in a recent White Paper on Crime (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2009). In addition to these projects, the Probation Service administers a large number of projects aimed at offenders and potential offenders. The service has developed a network of services for young people including treatment, counselling, intensive probation and education schemes. These initiatives facilitate the government of young people by utilising a range of pastoral techniques to address one or more of the risk factors identified as causing the individual to engage in offending behaviour. The projects offer a range of services: outdoor activities, drug treatment, youth work activities, initiatives focused

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on a s­ pecific crime such as car theft, training for employment, social skills, educational programmes, early school-­leaving programmes, residential treatment, counselling and programmes to challenge offending behaviour. For the most part, these projects represent a multi-­agency approach on behalf of the Probation Service. In addition, Young Person’s Probation (YPP) was established as a separate division of the Probation Service to implement relevant sections of the Children Act 2001. It works closely with the IYJS. In working with children aged twelve to eighteen years who come before the courts YPP promotes the use of community-­based sanctions and restorative justice initiatives to reduce re-­offending. At the time of writing the service deals with approximately six hundred young offenders on a nationwide basis.25 The range of community-­based initiatives targeting children and their families in order to promote ‘positive’ lifestyle choices has increased dramatically since the 1990s. Family support has gained prominence as a strategy for early intervention by targeting young people at risk of entering the care system or offending. The Final Report of the Commission on the Family to the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs: Strengthening Families (Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs, 1998) recommended family support as a primary preventative strategy. The Family Support Agency, a government body established in 2003 and managed by the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, currently operates under the aegis of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. It funds a large number of family resource centres throughout Ireland supporting a wide range of individuals and groups working with families.26 In addition, the National Development Plan 2000-­2006 (Government of Ireland, 2000) provided for a substantial allocation of funds to community, family support and youth services. The HSE also currently provide a wide range of family support services in disadvantaged areas. In September 2011 the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, announced the establishment of a Task Force on the Child and Family Support Agency. This formed part of the Fine Gael Programme for Government which is aimed at creating a separate and dedicated Child Welfare and Protection Agency which will eventually divest the HSE of its responsibility for child welfare and protection. Alongside family support, other strategies are employed to prevent crime as part of a risk-­based approach for dealing with young people. Many of these initiatives target a specific risk factor in the child’s life. In general, child development and education intervention initiatives that promote the development and education of children from deprived backgrounds encompass a wide range of approaches such as crèches, pre-­schools, after-­schools clubs, home–school liaison initiatives and alternative school projects. These initiatives often seek to instil a sense of responsibility into individuals, families and groups within the child’s or young person’s environment in order to bring



How the system became visible87

about some form of behavioural change. Such strategies of empowerment often reject what Rose (2000) has described as the more patronising aspects of earlier welfare strategies and portray individuals as pursuing their own freedom. Behaviour is here perceived as being adjusted by the individual as a result of his or her freedom to choose rather than as the result of coercion. There is also a wide range of initiatives specifically aimed at combating educational failure. The Early Start Programme aims to address the problem of educational failure, which is recognised as a risk factor in relation to predicting juvenile crime. It was established in 1994 to promote the education and development of pre-­school children in disadvantaged areas and reduce the risk of failure in school. It is a one-­year preventative education scheme managed and funded by the Department of Education and Skills. Similarly, the Schools Completion Programme targets school children between four and eighteen who are deemed likely to drop out of school by providing activities designed to encourage them to stay in school. Established in 2002 the Programme has eighty-­two projects countrywide catering for over four hundred primary and post-­primary schools. Schools completion officers are attached to schools in designated areas of disadvantage. The Youthreach Programme, first established in 1988, targets early school leavers between the ages of fifteen and twenty years. It encompasses a network of more than one hundred community training workshops and training centres throughout Ireland catering for this targeted group of young people. Youthreach aims to increase their employability while at the same time addressing their personal development. The Programme is targeted at young people primarily on the basis of two risk factors: unemployment and early school-­leaving. Programme activities include basic skills training, Copping On Programme, practical work training and general education, personal development, literacy, numeracy, communications, IT, catering, hairdressing, woodwork, photography, video, sports, art and craft, work experience, counselling and advocacy.27 An initiative that is targeted specifically at crime prevention and utilised on a widespread basis by youth services throughout Ireland is the Copping On Programme. It aims to positively change the behaviour of the young people and thereby reduce the likelihood of offending. This initiative is extensively used in youth work projects and Garda Youth Diversion Projects throughout Ireland. Conclusion From their emergence in the nineteenth century as a distinct class to be governed separately to the rest of the ‘criminal’ population, the juvenile offender and potential offender have become conspicuous in a range of highly visible

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institutional settings and also less visible ones. The numbers detained in institutional settings have decreased dramatically with the demise of the reformatory and industrial schools. However, even larger numbers are now governed within less obvious sites that now form part of a justice–welfare continuum. Regulatory sites within the community aimed at adjusting the behaviour of young people are not new. From the mid-­nineteenth century there emerged an extensive regulatory grid, dominated by Catholic religious organisations and linked to issues such as health, welfare, recreation and employment. While the dominance of these Catholic religious organisations has waned, modern crime prevention initiatives are still linked to the issues of health, welfare, recreation and employment. This is particularly evident in the areas of youth work, crime prevention, early intervention and family support. From the mid-­ nineteenth century the juvenile justice system became visible in a number of ways: the panoptic architecture of the reformatory and industrial schools; the borstal institution; detention centres; high support and special care units; and a less visible network of alliances, predominantly run by Catholic religious organisations. From the 1970s onwards one can see the emergence of a wide range of, less visible, diversionary and crime prevention initiatives located within ‘community’ settings, that are not as visible as part of the juvenile justice system, yet still perform a powerful regulatory function within Irish society. While some have welcomed the emergence of these initiatives others have argued that such diversionary and crime prevention initiatives merely spread the criminal justice net wider, resulting in greater numbers being drawn into the system.28 Notes  1 See Rose (1999).  2 Franz von Holtzendorff (1860: 150) noted that a ‘special division’ for the treatment of juveniles had been created in Mountjoy and that ‘an establishment for the purpose of employing juvenile offenders at agricultural labour is in the course of formation on the Commons of Lusk’.  3 Calculating the average cost per head remained a preoccupation for government into the twentieth century. The difficulty of calculating the cost of keeping a child in an industrial school was considered by the Cussen Report (1936). The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report (2009) highlights the efforts that the Department of Education made to establish the basic cost per head between 1945 and 1964.  4 The Commissioners held sittings in Dublin, Belfast, Kilkenny and Cork and received evidence from various individuals directly involved in the system for governing destitute and criminal juveniles. These included: Sir John Lentaigne, Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools; Brother Thomas Hoope, Manager of Artane Industrial School; Eliza Rothe, Superintendent of Grangegorman; James



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Raftery, collector of parental contributions in Dublin; Frederick Richard Falkiner, Recorder of Dublin; C.J. O’Donell JP, police magistrate; Thomas Mayne, Chair of the Finance Committee of Dublin Corporation; John L. Robinson, architect and civil engineer; Henry Robinson, Vice-­President of the Local Government Board in Dublin; Richard Bourke, Chair of the Local Government Board in Dublin; Sir Patrick J. Keenan, Commissioner of the Board of National Education; Abraham Shakleton, magistrate; Rev. Patrick Francis Moran, Bishop of Ossory; James Hegarty, magistrate; Alexander McCarthy, Town Clerk; Elizabeth Woodroofe, Deaconess of Glanmire School for Protestant Girls; Edwin Hall, Acting Manager of Cork Industrial School for Protestant Boys.  5 The following industrial schools closed between 1950 and 1970: Baltimore, 1950; Carriglea, Dun Laoghaire, 1953; St Lawrence’s, Sligo, 1957; St Joseph’s, Cork City, 1959; St Coleman’s, Cobh, early 1960s; St John’s, Birr, 1962; St Joseph’s, Athlone, 1963; Our Lady’s, Kinsale, 1963; Our Lady’s, Ennis, 1963; St Augustine’s, Templemore, 1964; St Aloysuis’, Clonakilty, 1965; St Joseph’s, Cavan, 1966; St Brigid’s, Loughrea, 1966; St Patrick’s, Kilkenny, 1966; St Joseph’s, Glin, 1966; St Francis, Cashel, 1967; St Joseph’s, Ballinasloe, 1968; St Aidan’s, New Ross, 1968; Artane Snr Boys, Dublin, 1969; St Francis Xavier’s, Ballaghaderreen, 1969; St Joseph’s, Tralee, 1970; and Our Lady of Succour, Newtownforbes, 1970; also Glencree Reformatory School, 1940 (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 1999: 397–400).  6 See www.salesiansireland.ie.  7 Curtis (2008) notes that the term ‘Catholic Action’ was first used by Pope Pious X in some of his early encyclicals (1903–14) and represented the organisation of lay interest groups under the direction of the Catholic hierarchy in the service of the Catholic Church.  8 www.gaa.ie.  9 In an article in the Irish Times on 30 May 2009, Healy noted that of the eighteen religious organisations who managed the reformatory and industrial schools the following remained active through various initiatives: Sisters of Mercy (­ pre-­schools, secondary schools and addiction centres); Christian Brothers (primary and secondary schools); Presentation Brothers (immigrant support); Rosminians (education for the visually impaired); Daughters of Charity ­(pre-­school, high support, nursery); Good Shepherd (youth work); Oblates (work with community groups); Hospitaller Order (care for children with disabilities); Sisters of Charity (convalescent and pastoral care); De La Salle Brothers (primary and secondary schools); Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge (work with prostitutes); Sisters of St Clare (voluntary counselling and early school leaving); Sisters of St Louis (primary and post-­primary); Presentation Sisters (special needs and pre-­school); Dominican Fathers (schools); Daughters of Mary (social work); Brothers of Charity (intellectual disability); Sisters of Nazareth (care of the aged). 10 www.pioneerassociation.ie. 11 O’Sullivan (1977) describes the effect of the committal process on young people who perceived it as a ‘criminal procedure’ despite it taking place in a different location to the adult courts. 12 The NSPCC was founded in Dublin in 1889 to combat poverty, neglect and abuse

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of children. In 1956 the ISPCC was founded as a limited company and took over the work of the NSPCC. They operated a number of branches throughout the country and employed a number of inspectors colloquially known as ‘cruelty men’. The ISPCC was essentially a voluntary organisation who responded to reports of cruelty or neglect with regard to children. 13 The State (D and D) v G, 1990, ILRM 136. 14 For a consideration of the development of social work in probation, see Guerin(2005). 15 Section 77 was subsequently amended by the Child Care (Amendment) Act, 2007 and the Child Care (Amendment) Act, 2011. 16 The Children Court: A National Study (Caroll and Meehan, 2007) and Dublin Children Court: A Pilot Research Project (Irish Association for the Study Of Delinquency, 2005b) both examine the background of children coming before the Court; type of offences committed; outcomes; the court process itself; sentencing and detention. 17 For a more in-­depth discussion of this visit, see Reidy (2004). 18 Rose (1987) notes that traditional forms of critique tend to simplify explanations in relation to policies and reforms and fail to explain fully the role played by political rationalities in constituting programmes of government. They tend to view power as being centralised in the state and operating along a justice/welfare axis. As such, programmes of government are viewed as either justice-­or welfare-­ oriented. However, according to Rose, in order to understand such forms of government we must analyse the rationalities that constitute them. We must look beyond the traditional dichotomies such as justice/welfare and public/private. These are not ‘natural’ distinctions but are created as a result of the process of governing itself. 19 The term ‘borstal’ was abolished by section 12 of the Criminal Justice Act 1960. 20 It closed in December 1977. In October 1978 it reopened, becoming a detention centre for boys aged twelve to sixteen. In 1983 it was changed to a prison accommodating adult male offenders, its inmates being transferred to the newly opened Trinity House in Lusk, County Dublin. 21 The Oberstown campus is located at Lusk, north of Dublin city, and houses Ireland’s three children detention centres: Trinity House School, Oberstown Boys’ School and Oberstown Girls’ School. 22 Due to lack of suitable secure places in the detention school system, the Children Act 2001 as amended by section 135 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, provided for a period of transition whereby 16-­and 17-­year-­old boys could be legally detained in St Patrick’s Institution. 23 The first Garda Diversion Scheme was established by An Garda Síochána in 1953 and aimed at first-­time offenders aged between fourteen and seventeen years. It was subsequently formalised and in 1963 and the Garda Juvenile Liaison Officer Scheme was established. The Garda National Juvenile Office was established in 1991. 24 See Darcy (1996) and Dunne (1996). 25 www.iyjs.ie.



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26 The Family Support Act 2001 established the Family Support Agency, giving it responsibility for these resource centres (see www.fsa.ie). 27 www.youthreach.ie. 28 A large and wide-­ranging literature has emerged on the subject of social control; however, Cohen’s Visions of Social Control (1995) remains the classic description of how such diversionary and crime prevention initiatives have come to exemplify the widening of the criminal justice net.

4

Rationalities underpinning the system

Introduction The discourse on the failure of the prison, the failure of the institutional model and the failure of juvenile justice system in one form or another has provided the impetus for the reform of the juvenile justice system in Ireland. This registration of failure was a constant theme from the mid-­nineteenth century when reformists argued for the reformatory model to replace imprisonment for juvenile offenders. In Ireland, by the early 1970s the perceived failure of the Children Act 1908 to cater adequately for young people’s needs became a prominent discourse. A series of reports highlighted the ‘needs’ of the young person and the importance of prevention in relation to juvenile delinquency.1 Throughout these reports a significant discourse on the failure of existing systems to cater for the ‘needs’ of young people was emerging. This discourse opened up a space for new rationalities of government to develop. These rationalities of government can be forms of theoretical knowledge, specific programmes, types of practical know-­how, or strategies (Dean, 2010).The following chapter describes how these particular rationalities of government emerged in the context of the Irish juvenile justice system. Risk and reformation As already noted, the legislation enabling the establishment of the reformatory and industrial school system emerged as a result of lobbying from reformists concerned with the plight of the ‘perishing and dangerous classes’. However, while there was a strong lobby in favour of the introduction of these schools there was an equally strong Catholic religious lobby in favour of these institutions operating on strictly denominational lines. A further consideration in relation to the establishment of the schools is the influential role played by voluntary organisations prior to their establishment. These organisations, which were responsible for a range of initiatives aimed at governing destitute, neglected and orphan children were inspired not only by charitable principles but also by a suspicion of proselytism. Two figures in particular, Cardinal



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Paul Cullen and Margaret Aylward, were instrumental in the establishment of a number of Catholic orphanages and ragged schools during the nineteenth century.2 Also, Edmund Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers, targeted the education of children of the poorer classes in a deliberate effort to frustrate the activities of Protestant proselytising societies in the early nineteenth century.3 In Dublin during the 1850s there was a number of ‘ragged schools’ operating which were viewed by some Catholics as proselytising agencies. Indeed the rescue of children was a source of much conflict between Catholic and Protestant philanthropists around this time (Luddy, 1995 and 2009). In 1856 Patrick Joseph Murray, a prominent Catholic barrister and later the first inspector of reformatory schools, in a letter to the Right Hon. Edward Horsman MP, Chief Secretary for Ireland, called for specifically Catholic reformatory schools: I beg you, before you lay aside this letter, to remember how potent the agencies of the Catholic religion have been in working out the Reformatory Principle in France and in Belgium. Consider how cheaply and how cheerfully the agency of the Sisters of Charity, and the Christian Brothers, could be brought to bear upon the Catholic juveniles in the course of their reformation. (Murray, 1856: 29)

Murray saw the principles of Catholic teaching as playing a central role in the work of the reformatory schools. Catholic religious organisations had played a key role in the colonisation of the area of childcare in Ireland,4 and the foothold of these Catholic religious congregations was further strengthened by the introduction of the reformatory and industrial school legislation in 1858 and 1868. O’Sullivan charts the manner in which Catholic religious congregations colonised the welfare services in Ireland throughout the nineteenth century. He notes that by the mid-­1850s, most of the parish based orphanages, which had used the boarding-­out method of rescuing orphan and deserted children had been largely phased out. These were replaced by orphanages run by religious congregations, primarily female congregations and employing an institutional model of ‘child welfare’ (1999). This process of colonisation was actively encouraged by the intervention of the Catholic bishops, who invited a number of congregations into the country for the sole purpose of establishing industrial schools. In this regard, the Sisters of Mercy were by far the most active in establishing such schools. These congregations approached their task with a missionary zeal which was reflected in the rapid expansion in the number of industrial schools in the early years. Also, organisations such as the Christian Brothers, who had established a successful reputation in education, were in an ideal position to increase their influence as a result of the new legislation. The manner in which children were committed to the schools reflected a preoccupation with the moral risk posed to certain sections of the juvenile

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population, in particular young girls. Raftery and O’Sullivan (1999) note that in the case of the industrial schools a large percentage of committals were on the basis of a perceived moral risk rather than any specific criminal tendencies. The fact that this conceptualisation of moral risk was often co-­terminus with a perceived disposition for crime was a peculiarity of the Irish system. An example of this thinking can be found in the activities of the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland which was founded in 1914 and aimed to protect and rescue baptised Catholics from proselytising influences. The Society, in its reports, listed the numbers of children ‘rescued’ from Protestant influences and in some cases gave detailed case studies. For example, ‘Case 35’ is a ‘Boy of 12 years living with an uncle, in surroundings where he was likely to grow up a member of the criminal class; was attending a Protestant school, frequenting public houses, etc. Father dead, mother leading an immoral life; boy sent to a Catholic Home and doing well’ (Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland, 1914: 11). Here we find religious and secular imperatives co-­existing. Saving the soul of the child and saving them from a life of crime are viewed as part of the same strategy. Similarly, in the case of the reformatory and industrial schools an implicit religious imperative is embedded within the policy of reformation. In order to explain this we need to understand the particular conditions that existed to make such activities possible. In relation to Irish industrial schools there is clear evidence to suggest that the aim of reforming the ‘juvenile delinquent’ was secondary to the school’s moral concerns and this is reflected in the large numbers of young girls who were committed to the schools ‘for their own protection’. The reality is that the numbers committed to industrial schools for criminal offences was quite small. The reasons for committal to the schools included non-­ attendance at school, family breakdown, lack of parental control and poverty. Factors such as these provided the justification for the preventative detention of large numbers of male and female children from the poorer classes who had committed no crimes. Some concerns had been expressed about the rapid expansion of the reformatory and industrial school system and its appropriateness. Daly, writing in 1897 when the numbers detained in industrial schools were at their peak, questioned the wisdom of such a huge expansion in the number of schools, arguing that while such schools were needed in some cases: our efforts should not run into a blind craze for establishing new schools. Schools, both reformatory and so-­called industrial schools, are of vital importance for many cases; but it must be bad for any community needlessly to disturb the family as our social unit. State schools may be essential to rescue children whose parents are incorrigible or not forthcoming. But it is against common sense to hurry children into schools, as we are doing, without any adequate attempt to first persuade or coerce parents to take better care of them. (1897b: 338)



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In relation to the industrial schools in particular, the evidence points to two prominent political rationalities existing side by side. The first was a rationality of crime prevention concerned with the reformation of the delinquent and the potential delinquent, based broadly on utilitarian principles. The second and dominant one in the case of Ireland was the religious preoccupation with the risk posed to the children of the poor from the dangers of proselytism and ‘immoral’ influences. These risks or dangers were usually dramatised as problems to be governed, such as begging, homelessness, destitution, vandalism, juvenile prostitution, anti-­social behaviour, immoral associations, and the existing legislation facilitated the committal of this ‘at risk’ group. The Children Act 1908, although originally hailed as a ‘children’s charter’, increased the number of categories of children that could be committed to the schools and facilitated the activities of the Catholic congregations operating the schools. It would be mistaken to characterise the system of regulation employed by the religious congregations as a straightforward case of coercive power exerted by the state in the form of a national strategy to deal with the problem of juvenile delinquency. Indeed there is evidence to suggest that those managing the schools resisted state attempts to interfere in their activities. A series of letters to John Sweetman, Honorary Secretary of the General Council of County Councils, in 1900 expressed opposition to moves to restrict the committal of young people to industrial schools to certain specific classes. A Lord Lieutenant’s Circular issued to Irish magistrates on 1 October 1898 set out the grounds upon which a young person could be lawfully detained at an industrial school. These included children under fourteen years who were found under certain circumstances such as begging; wandering; homeless; without a guardian or visible means of support; destitute whose parent is in prison; frequenting the company of reputed thieves (Irish County Councils’ General Council Publications, 1900). In response to this, Peter Hill, Manager of St Malachy’s Presbytery, Belfast, expressed his dissatisfaction with what he saw as state interference in the business of running the schools: ‘All this red-­ tapeism is a source of considerable annoyance to priests and others who bring forward cases for admission to Industrial Schools … Very often their wishes as to disposal of the children are over-­ridden by the mere whim of the presiding magistrate’ (Hill, 1900). This resistance on the part of school managers was to continue well into the twentieth century. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report (2009) noted that as late as the mid-­1960s there were written complaints to government from the managers of the schools in relation to the perceived reluctance on the part of judges to commit children to reformatory and industrial schools. This resistance was also matched by an apparent reluctance on the part of the new independent state to interfere in the running of these schools.

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The development and subsequent dominance of the reformatory and industrial school system in Ireland resulted from the activities of a number of powerful Catholic religious congregations who were concerned with the protection of the Catholic faith and who actively resisted state interference in the management of the schools. Various processes of colonisation and resistance acted to ensure the dominance of the industrial school system in Ireland. These factors, combined with an obvious reluctance on the part of government to play an active part in the management of the schools, meant that the original utilitarian principle of reformation remained secondary to the dominant Catholic religious imperative. Reformation of the ‘juvenile adult’ According to David Garland (1985), legislation such as the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 and the Prevention of Crime Act 1908 was tacit recognition of a criminological programme in that it allowed for factors such as the ‘character’ and ‘antecedents’ of the offender to be taken into account by the courts. Part I of the Prevention of Crime Act 1908 created a new category of offender aged between sixteen and twenty-­one years known as the ‘juvenile adult’. The Act itself provided for the detention of this category of juvenile in a borstal institution where they exhibited ‘criminal habits or tendencies’ or by reason of their association with ‘persons of bad character’. Section 1(1) of the Act further provided for these individuals to be detained for a period and ‘under such instruction and discipline as appears most conducive to his reformation and the repression of crime’. The construction of this particular category of offender by the Prevention of Crime Act 1908 was to be significant in that it was to persevere into the twenty-­first century with this category of offender being subject to detention in St Patrick’s Institution. In this sense, although the borstal system ended in Ireland in 1956 its legacy has been retained with this particular provision. A feature of this development is the fact that it emerged from the rhetoric of the failure of the prison system. A recurring theme throughout the history of juvenile justice both in Ireland and Britain is a continuous discourse of failure. In this regard, the Gladstone Committee was established in 1895 in response to a growing recognition that the ‘prison’ was failing to govern the criminal population effectively. The Report of the Departmental Committee on Prisons noted: we could not but be cognisant of the circumstances under which the inquiry was instituted. In magazines and in the newspapers, a sweeping indictment has been laid against the whole of the prison administration. In brief, not only were the principles of prison treatment as described in the Prison Acts criticised, but the prison authority itself, and the constitution of that authority, were held to be responsible for many grave evils which were alleged to exist. (1895: 1)



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This growing dissatisfaction with prison as a means of governing the criminal population became a dominant discourse at this time. Garland (1985) highlights the fact that in the penological literature of the time there was widespread endorsement of this particular critique of imprisonment. The Gladstone Report sought to take account of individual characteristics within the criminal population and thus recommended a greater classification of individuals according to certain characteristics and their previous history. In addition, the report recommended that juveniles and first offenders were to be treated as a class apart. In recommending this, the report recognised the concept of the formation of the individual’s character and the influence of external factors on this process of character formation. In particular it recognised the risk posed to the character of juveniles from association with the ‘habitual criminal’. Its recommendations included the establishment of separate penal reformatories under government control. The underlying philosophy behind the borstal system was similar to the ‘progressive stage system’ which was pioneered by Sir Walter Crofton and rewarded prisoners through a system of marks for good behaviour and industriousness. The borstal system provided a special regime where the ‘juvenile adult was separated from the general prison population on the basis that those separated were deemed capable of reformation. It thus recognised certain inherent characteristics in these individuals that made them amenable to reformation. It also set apart the juvenile offender as having a ‘character’ distinct from the general criminal population. The process of reformation was to be achieved by subjecting them to a regime of discipline and instruction. The classification ‘juvenile adult’ distinguishes a particular type of offender as being suitable for treatment under the borstal regime: ‘the class of persons to be dealt with in these institutions is one of the most difficult to manage of all classes; strong, active young criminals, who must qualify for admission, have actually acquired criminal habits, or have associated habitually with persons of bad character’ (Cherry, 1912: 441). The introduction of the borstal system along with the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 and the Criminal Justice Administration Act 1914 created a range of alternatives to the widely criticised prison system. However, within the context of the Irish juvenile justice system these alternatives never seriously challenged the dominance of the reformatory and industrial school model. For Garland, the crisis of penality that came about in the 1890s signalled the ascendancy of a ‘criminological programme’ in Britain: ‘The first and most important internal condition of change was undoubtedly a growing recognition, by the 1890s, of the serious failure of the prison as a disciplinary institution’ (1985: 59). In the context of juvenile justice in Ireland, there was a sustained challenge to the prison model from the Reformatory School

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Movement in the writings of reformists such as Mary Carpenter and contributors to the Irish Quarterly Review and the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland. Also, the Report of the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles of 1853 not only highlighted inadequacies in the administration of juveniles within the prison system but also recommended its replacement with a reformatory model. For Garland, the failure of the existing penal strategy to combat crime was used as an opportunity for the introduction of a new approach offering ‘a radical critique of the current strategy, its institutions and particularly its classical jurisprudence’ (1985: 84). This new political rationality that began to take hold within the penal sphere was based on a positive criminology that sought to question the motives and circumstances that surround the actions of the criminal. It sought to define criminals and classify them according to type. It also sought to divert juvenile offenders into alternative sites, regarding prison as a last resort. However, the Irish experience was different from that in Britain. While the failure of the prison was a significant discourse, it did not lead to any notable ‘governmental project’ in terms of the juvenile justice system in Ireland. Instead of any positive engagement with criminology the dominant political rationality remained one based on religious rather than criminological concerns with the state abdicating its responsibilities in deference to mostly Catholic religious congregations. The most obvious manifestation of this was the large population of young people incarcerated in the industrial schools. Like the Children Act 1908, the borstal legislation can be viewed as emerging out of the discourse of the failure of existing legislation to govern the ‘at risk’ young person adequately. Both pieces of legislation recognise the separate identity of children as distinct from adults. They also extend judicial gaze beyond merely the offence committed. The character and circumstances of the child were also to be examined. However, within the context of the history of the Irish juvenile justice system, religious/moral concerns took precedence over those of a criminological nature. As such, the Irish system tended to concentrate more on the pre-­delinquent than on the delinquent and calculations of risk in relation to young people were usually of a moral rather than a criminological kind. This was reflected in the fact that the numbers detained in reformatory and borstal institutions were small compared with those detained in industrial schools. The category ‘juvenile adult’ remains a part of the juvenile justice system. While the regime at St Patrick’s Institution differed from the borstal regime, it still retained a basic philosophy of reformation. The 1960 Regulations state that an inmate shall, in so far as the length of his sentence permits, ‘be given such training and instruction and be subjected to such disciplinary and moral influences as will conduce to his reformation and the prevention of crime’



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(SI No. 224 of 1960). These regulations also applied to Fort Mitchell (Spike Island). There is evidence of a certain level of experimentation with regard to the treatment of ‘juvenile adults’ in more open regimes. The centres at Shanganagh Castle and Loughan House sought to reform their inmates in less restricted environments. However, with the closure of both institutions, St Patrick’s remained the only existing institutional model of reformation for the ‘juvenile adult’. Probation A core principle of the Children Act 2001, as amended, is that detention is a last resort to be used only when all other alternatives have been exhausted. In this regard, Young Persons Probation (YPP), a specialist division of the Probation Service, works throughout the community in conjunction with voluntary and statutory organisations. The philosophy underpinning this work is that the behaviour of young people can be influenced and this influence can be provided by the positive interaction and support of adults. It is the function of YPP officers to supervise young offenders in the community, liaise with the courts, provide background reports and manage offenders under community sanction orders. In Ireland, probation evolved in a relatively ad hoc manner. Rather than investing in a centralised state-­run probation service or other formal alternatives to institutional care, efforts were concentrated into forming alliances between voluntary and religious organisations. McNally has argued that the principle of subsidiarity, as interpreted by the Irish state, proved to be a major influence on the development of social policy in Ireland and of the Probation Service in particular (2007). It was only from the early 1960s onwards that one can see movement towards a greater professionalism for probation officers with increased recruitment of graduates and trained social workers. Indeed, it has been argued that it was with the recruitment of the first trained probation officer by the Department of Justice in 1961 that the ‘formative space for the expansion of probation social work was established’ (Skehill, 1999: 127). However, unlike the development of probation in Northern Ireland which was the subject of a white paper in 1948, the service in the Republic Ireland developed in a less planned manner. Though the Probation Service eventually developed a professional social work model for the supervision of ‘at risk’ young people, voluntary and religious influences remained into the late twentieth century. The Report on the Probation and Welfare Service (1981) listed among its hostels three run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Sean McDermott Street, Kilmacud and High Park, Dublin. It also listed among its ‘experimental projects’ a Legion of Mary Probation Group providing a support service to clients of the Probation

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Service in the area covered by the Dublin District Court. McNally notes that a prominent role was played by the church and other voluntary agencies ‘in a personal and visible manner in courts in Ireland into the 1970s, in partnership with the small professional Probation Service’ (2007: 6). As a result of the enactment of the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 the courts were given the power to order that certain individuals be placed under the supervision of those deemed suitable to carry out the task. However, following the passing of the Act, apart from the city of Dublin, no formal probation service developed. This lack of development remained a feature of the service until the 1970s. As far back as 1927 Sir Thomas Molony had argued for the development of a centralised probation service along the lines of that in Britain and bemoaned the fact that such a service had failed to be established in Ireland (Molony, 1927a). While in Britain there was a successful merger of public and private agencies to constitute a unified Probation Service, in Ireland the system of probation represented a much more ad hoc arrangement of alliances between various individuals and organisations. McNally notes that from the early 1940s there was an ‘explicit preference in government for the engagement of denominational organisations in the provision of probation supervision’ (2007: 12). The work of voluntary organisations such as the Legion of Mary was given legal backing by the 1907 Act and up to the late 1950s, probation officers employed under the Dublin Corporation Probation Service comprised primarily of volunteers from charitable organisations such as the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the Legion of Mary. The process of enlisting these volunteers was helped by the efforts of the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. In 1945 Justice H.A. McCarthy noted that there were only six full-­time probation officers operating in the city of Dublin. However, these were: greatly helped by a body of voluntary workers, who, thanks to the efforts of His Grace, the Archbishop of Dublin, are rendering a signal service. They number 40, men and women, and they are drawn from the Legion of Mary … Furthermore, again through the instrumentality of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, Evening Classes for Boy Probationers have been formed in each of the three police districts. (1945: 47)

McCarthy also highlighted the fact that the probation system had not been extended throughout the country. However, he recognised that the Society of St Vincent de Paul: with a great tradition of service to the citizens had been declared by the Minister for Justice, a ‘recognised’ Society for the purpose of supervising Offenders, pursuant to the provisions of the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914. Under this Act the Minister has power to ‘recognise’ any Society which has amongst



Rationalities underpinning the system101 its objects the care and control of persons under the age of 21 years whilst on Probation. (1945: 49)

Fahy, writing in 1942 about the reformatory school system, highlighted the fact that an: excellent system of after-­care has been developed by the St. Vincent de Paul Society, collaborating with the Society of St. John Bosco … Prior to the discharge of a boy the local Conference is notified by the Conference of St. John Bosco, Dublin. Full particulars of the boy are furnished before he returns home, and a member of the Conference visits the home to familiarise himself with the home and surroundings. (1942: 72)

The Criminal Justice Administration Act 1914 codified certain informal alliances between the courts and specific religious groups and enabled these groups to engage in activities designed to monitor juveniles placed on ­probation. It provided explicit recognition of the role of certain religious and philanthropic organisations in the provision of care for young offenders. It also provided a mechanism whereby these groups could operate in the absence of an emerging and centralised probation service. Speaking of the work of members of the Legion of Mary who ‘assisted’ probation officers, McCarthy writes that: they get in touch with the Probationers in their respective districts, show a friendly and practical interest in their doings, take them for walks in the evenings, and arrange outings and entertainments for them, finishing up with a Retreat, which is always excellently and enthusiastically attended. (1945: 48)

He similarly describes the work of the Christian Brothers and the Society of St Vincent de Paul in this regard. Elsewhere, McCarthy describes the obvious religious nature of the support given by those assisting the probation officers. He notes in relation to their activities that ‘excursions and outings are arranged, throughout the year, and the Spiritual Director conducts an annual Retreat for both boys and girls, and it is very largely attended’ (1948: 10). Voluntary organisations, particularly the Legion of Mary and the Guild of St Philip, provided aftercare for prisoners released from St Patrick’s Institution. Osborough, writing in 1975 notes: The assistance of the part-­time voluntary worker has continued to be encouraged. In 1966 the establishment of a second praesidium of the Legion of Mary made possible more intensive visiting, which was thought especially desirable when the home environment fell short of the ideal. Support of voluntary effort is reflected above all in the grant from public funds to the Guild of St Philip. (1975: 108)

Probation was to become a more secularised profession towards the second half of the twentieth century; however, it did maintain some links with

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Catholic religious and community-­based voluntary organisations into the late twentieth century. Youth work Within the context of the Irish juvenile justice system, youth work continues to be an effective means of regulating certain classes of young people. It is most prominent in the areas of prevention, education and early intervention. A large network of Garda Youth Diversion Projects and Young Persons’ Probation Projects have evolved, which operate under the management of various community-­based or youth work organisations. Foróige, Catholic Youth Care and Youth Work Ireland affiliated members are responsible for managing the majority of the one hundred Garda Youth Diversion Projects operating throughout Ireland, with most of the remaining ones being managed by community-­based organisations. These projects provide a range of youth work type activities aimed at changing behaviours, attitudes and lifestyles of project participants. In the late twentieth century youth work gained greater recognition in government circles as an effective strategy in diverting young people away from the formal criminal justice system. In addition, the government has provided direct funding for a wide range of youth work initiatives in the community since the 1980s. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs currently funds programmes for young people under two headings: Special Projects to assist disadvantaged youth and the Young People’s Facilities and Services Fund (YPFSF). The Special Projects grants are aimed at out-­of-­school projects for disadvantaged youths with priority given to youth work initiatives, young homeless people, substance abusers and young travellers. It is operated by the Vocational Education Committees on behalf of the Department. The YPFSF was established in 1998 to assist with preventative strategies for young people between 10 and 21 years from disadvantaged areas who are deemed to be ‘at risk’ from the dangers of substance abuse. Both schemes fund a range of initiatives including: resource centres; youth projects; traveller projects; homeless initiatives; education projects; homework clubs; and arts programmes.5 In 2003 an Oireachtas Joint Committee report on the Effectiveness of Youth Clubs in the Local Community concluded that youth clubs provide a range of effective strategies for dealing with a variety of ‘social problems’ in the child’s environment. In the same year the government published the National Youth Work Development Plan 2003–2007 which was the work of the National Youth Work Advisory Committee taking as its starting point the definition of youth work given in the Youth Work Act 2001. The plan aimed at enhancing the infrastructure supporting the development of youth work on a national



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level and the encouragement of professionalism and standards in the youth work sector (Department of Education and Science, 2003). Prior to this, youth work in Ireland had not developed a coherent national policy or infrastructure. However, it had been effective in supporting crime prevention initiatives such as the original Garda Youth Diversion Projects following the recommendations of the Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder in 1992, which envisioned youth work playing a more significant role in the juvenile justice system. This represented a significant shift in government policy towards crime-­prevention-­type initiatives that had become popular abroad, in particular, the Safer Cities Programme in the UK and the Crime Prevention Council in Denmark. A decade earlier in September 1983 a National Youth Policy Committee had been established by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, amid government concerns in relation to the number of alienated young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.6 The Committee was chaired by High Court judge and former Fine Gael TD, Declan Costello, and included within its terms of reference the consideration of recommendations for ‘a National Youth Policy which would be aimed at assisting all young people to become self-­reliant, responsible and active participants in society’ (Dáil Éireann, 1984b: 8). The National Youth Policy Committee: Final Report (Costello Report) viewed youth work as having a crucial part to play in the prevention of juvenile delinquency. Certain categories of young people were seen as at risk of offending as a result of a combination of factors existing in their environment, including poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, early school-­leaving and family breakdown. The final report, which was published in 1984, called on the government to publish a youth policy outlining the future development of youth work services. However, this did not happen until the enactment of the Youth Work Act 2001. Four years earlier, the Report of the Committee Appointed by the Minister of State at the Department of Education: Development of Youth Work Services in Ireland (1980) had stressed the role youth work had to play in relation to socially disadvantaged young people. However, in general, youth work in Ireland has been characterised by its lack of central co-­ordination and its ­reliance on voluntary organisations.7 Lalor et al. (2007: 274) note: from the late 1980’s until the early 2000’s, youth organisations continued to develop their own programmes and services often … through agreements and/or contractual relationships with VEC’s and other statutory services and making use of a proliferation of funding opportunities. This has meant that a single youth service or project might have staff funded from a variety of different sources: Special Project for Youth funding from the Department of Education; funding from a local Drugs Task Force for a youth drugs worker; a Garda Special Project worker funded by the Department of Justice, and so on.

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The existence of these relationships facilitated the development of a large network of organisations targeting ‘at risk’ young people in response to a range of ‘problems’ such as drug and alcohol use, early school-­leaving, anti-­social behaviour, low self-­esteem and offending behaviour. This has also resulted in the emergence of a shared vocabulary of ‘risk’ that is used to describe, identify, classify and segregate those children who are the targets of their programmes. Within the context of youth work, the Costello Report noted that the term ‘at risk’ refers to ‘young people who, through personal difficulties or social disadvantage are particularly vulnerable to problems such as ill health, non-­attendance at school, involvement in criminal activity, substance abuse, and general alienation from provisions availed of by other young people’ (Dáil Éireann, 1984b: 272). Like probation, in Ireland the role of voluntary and religious organisations in governing delinquency was significant. Rev. Walter Forde in Growing up in Ireland describes the prevalence of the Catholic Church in the development of youth services in Ireland: When I was first involved in youth work, almost thirty years ago, every youth club in the country had a clergyman either actively involved or associated in some way with the group … At that time in the early 60’s, a number of bishops had seen the value of having priests trained in youth work at professional courses abroad. The development of youth services in their areas tended to centre around these men on their return (1995: 40).

The Report of the Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency (Dublin Corporation, 1958) considered alternative preventative strategies aimed at governing the problem of delinquency. It called for more co-­ ordination between voluntary and non-­ voluntary organisations involved either directly or indirectly in youth work. Among its suggestions was the establishment of a permanent organisation to be known as the Dublin City Youth Board. The board was to be a voluntary body comprised of representatives of Dublin Corporation, of the Department of Justice, of the Educational Authorities, the Gardaí, and of Voluntary Organisations concerned with youth development and would have power to appoint sub-­committees on which experts could be asked to serve. In suggesting this, it envisaged the formation of alliances between these various organisations in order to devise more effective preventative strategies for governing the youth population of Dublin. A decade earlier, in 1948, Comhairle le Leas Óige was established. It operated under the direction of the City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee and included in its aims the development of programmes to meet the needs of young people. It supported youth clubs by providing grants, training courses, liaison officers and part-­time teachers. The Comhairle’s



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main activities included woodwork, metalwork, arts and crafts, physical training and boxing. In 1949 the work of the organisation received the official stamp of approval of the Department of Education: Good work for the youth of Dublin was done by Comhairle le Leas Óige during the session 1948–49 … Religious Instruction in the centres was in the capable hands of the chaplain, who in each case organised a successful Annual Retreat  … Visitors were much impressed by the wide range of exhibits and the high ­standard of finish. From the girls’ clubs came a well-­arranged group of finely coloured artificial flowers and some ingenious rugs and tea cosies. The boys submitted attractive specimens of book-­stands, fire irons and wood carving. (1949: 40)

Comhairle le Leas Óige, which was to become known as the City of Dublin Youth Services Board, organised a number of clubs for young people and the training of youth leaders throughout Dublin. While other VECs became involved in supporting youth work services, Dublin city remained the only area with a firmly established statutory youth work provision.8 The problem of juvenile delinquency was also framed within the context of the potential dangers to the unemployed youth. The Commission on Youth Unemployment (1951) linked delinquency with unemployment. It highlighted a specific danger to the young unemployed person and suggested ‘special’ measures for the more effective government of this ‘problem’. The Report of the Commission on Youth Unemployment states that ‘the underlying aim of these special measures should be to keep unoccupied boys and girls under educational control and give them a sense of personal and social responsibility’ (1951: 12). The Commission made a number of recommendations, including the raising of the school-­leaving age to sixteen years. It also envisaged the formation of alliances between groups interested in youth development, employment and delinquency. The Commission was chaired by John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin, and his religious influence is evident. The following were essential elements of the proposed scheme: co-­ operation with ‘Ecclesiastical Authorities’ and adequate provision of religious instruction; preservation of the family unit; voluntary co-­operation of youth; opportunity to learn; attractiveness of activities; co-­operation with voluntary organisations. Activities were to include: arts and crafts; domestic economy; horticulture; office routine and activities; talks on a variety of subjects; reading, writing and arithmetic; singing; dancing, physical training, boxing, athletics, swimming; camping; and competitions (1951: 70–1). Lalor et al. (2007) note that in terms of the development of youth work services, the first significant statutory development occurred in the early 1940s and was in part a result of pressure from John Charles McQuaid, who appeared to be anxious to deal with the problem of youth unemployment.

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They note that youth work in Ireland has largely been driven by voluntary organisations, such as Catholic Youth Care, Macra na Feirme, Foróige, Youth Work Ireland and Ógra Chorcaí, which were established from the 1940s on and remain prominent in the youth justice field today. McQuaid’s efforts resulted in the eventual establishment of Comhairle le Leas Óige, under section 21(2) of the Vocational Education Act 1930. According to Garvin, in the early 1940s McQuaid was concerned by vocational education and its potential for ‘non-­Catholic or even anti-­Catholic thought’ (2005: 174). As has already been noted, the influence of McQuaid during this period was significant and he was responsible for the establishment of a large network of alliances between state and voluntary groups, particularly religious organisations.9 Organisations, such as the Legion of Mary, which were active in the area of youth work, were used by McQuaid to further the influence of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church already had a controlling influence on the educational system. Garvin (2005: 167) notes: By the time independence came, virtually the entire educational system on the island was controlled by clerics … The underground Dáil government of 1919 had no ministry of education; it seems that such a ministry, or to use the Irish term, department, was seen as superfluous or even impertinent. The idea that priests should control education appeared natural, inevitable and desirable.

This influence was considerable in the area of services to young people and McQuaid utilised his unquestioned authority to direct both the religious and laity into certain state-­aided projects (Cooney, 1999). In particular, this can be seen with the establishment of a home for delinquent girls run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge in St Anne’s in Kilmacud and schools for girls on probation run by the Sisters of Charity.10 McQuaid’s considerable influence is also evident in the context of the development of social work services in Ireland (Skehill, 2003). As already mentioned, the Catholic Church had an almost total monopoly on education in Ireland shaping the state’s educational policy, post-­independence. Within this context, the relationship between the state and government was aptly summed up by the Minister for Education, Thomas Derrig, in a speech in relation to educational policy: ‘We have the happy position that we have Church and State working hand in hand’ (Dáil Debates, vol. 94, 9 June 1944). These developments must also be seen within the wider context of McQuaid’s development of the Catholic Social Service Conference (CSSC). The CSSC resulted from the amalgamation of a large number of Catholic organisations under the stewardship of McQuaid. It was originally established in April 1941 with the aim of meeting the needs of the poor in Dublin. A year later McQuaid established a youth department of the CSSC with the aim of running a number of youth training centres for young people who had



Rationalities underpinning the system107

offended. The initiative had the support of the government and a wide range of voluntary organisations and resulted in the opening of a number of these centres for young people (Cooney, 1999). The Catholic Youth Council was established in 1944 by McQuaid as a sub-­ committee of the CSSC.11 It actively sought engagement with young people through a network of youth clubs and also administered playgrounds for Dublin City Council and Corporation. It remains active today under the name Catholic Youth Care (CYC), and provides youth services mostly in the greater Dublin area under contract from the vocational educational committees. It also manages a number of Garda Youth Diversion Projects and provides outreach workers who link in with community groups. It is engaged in a range of initiatives aimed at young people ‘at risk’ under the guise of crime prevention, drugs prevention, youth employment and education. Although the profile of those working with CYC has changed significantly, its ethos remains the same, as stated in a 2004 CYC publication: ‘For many years students at Holy Cross, Clonliffe and priests in parishes were generous and effective youth ministers. The decline in the number of priests and the reduction in parish staff, places a responsibility on lay people to play an active and leading role in the evangelisation of young people’ (Ni Chionnaith, 2004: 22). The influence of Catholic religious organisations in this area was not confined to Dublin. The survey of youth clubs in Cork City in the mid-­1940s already referred to, illustrates the degree to which religious organisations had successfully colonised the youth work field. Their strategy combined a concern for the welfare of the child with an overriding spiritual imperative. An example of this is the Peter and Paul’s Boys Club which was run by the Legion of Mary and catered for sixty boys between fourteen and eighteen years. The aim of the club was to ‘keep boys off the streets and bring them under Catholic influences’ (Christus Rex, 1946: 47). However, the development of youth clubs in Ireland can be traced to the beginning of the twentieth century. These clubs were primarily established as a response to the perceived danger posed by idle young males from deprived urban areas. An example is the Dublin Boys Club which was founded in a premises provided for by the Carmelite Fathers in Clarendon Street in 1911 (Walsh, 2010). This eventually became known as the Belvedere Newsboys’ Club and catered for young boys who sold newspapers on the streets of Dublin. The delinquent and the delinquent class were viewed as targets for temporal and spiritual interventions by clubs such as those mentioned above. In 1922 Rev. Boyd Barrett called for an ‘awakening of the social sense’ within young people towards those less fortunate. Boyd Barrett sought to incite the more ‘privileged’ school boys to carry out a form of Christian ‘social work’ for the benefit of their less privileged counterparts in the poorer classes. This

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amounted to the evangelisation of these classes by those educated within the Christian tradition. Boyd Barrett writes: when our Irish boys are told that in the slums of Dublin and Belfast there are many men and women with as little education in religion as the Pathans of the North Indian frontier, they are stirred up still more. They yearn to help on Christian Social Work, so that the number of such hapless ones may be immensely diminished. (1922: 24)

The idea of a Catholic lay apostolate to the poor had developed through the work of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, which was active in the area of ‘social work’ in Ireland in post-­independence Ireland.12 Other organisations such as the Legion of Mary and the Christian Brothers became active in the area of youth work in the early twentieth century. The work of the lay apostolate to the poor is evident in the development of the aforementioned Newsboys’ Clubs that targeted young people between twelve and sixteen years who sold newspapers on the streets of Dublin and Cork. These clubs were designed to instil Christian values in these young people through the medium of youth work and spiritual activities. The target of their apostolate was the delinquent and potential delinquent whose characters required ‘firm moulding in the fundamental principles of self-­control, of the restriction in rights for the good of all, and so forth; ideas which are implicit in the concept of Christianity, and in the narrower notion of citizenship’ (Belvedere Newsboys’ Club, 1940: 7). The boys were viewed as in need of spiritual and temporal assistance due to their deprived social condition: Already these lads are hardy veterans of the struggle for existence which many of them, often undernourished and ill-­equipped, have been obliged to wage incessantly from early childhood. Neglected, as many of them must be, by harassed parents; educated as they all have been in overcrowded classrooms under a system of education which has all the faults and few advantages of mass-­ production. (Anon, 1945: 104)

In the context of the development of youth work in Ireland the young person is often characterised as a problem to be governed and in need of constant surveillance. This in turn serves to justify a range of interventions. However, these interventions do not follow any single logic and initiatives developed in a relatively ad hoc fashion. Until the late twentieth century youth work in Ireland developed without any coherent governmental programme and with the state largely absent in terms of policy. Instead, interventions were deployed around a range of issues such as poverty, unemployment and welfare and arose primarily from the activities of certain powerful and predominantly Catholic religious groups. In the late twentieth century youth work became more secularised with the introduction of professional youth work training and qualifications. However, it still retains a strong Catholic religious influ-



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ence operating through a system of alliances established between the state and the voluntary groups. Community From the early 1950s there appears to be increasing interest in tackling the issue of juvenile delinquency outside the institutional setting. As noted earlier, the Report of Commission on Youth Unemployment highlighted the need to ‘keep unoccupied boys and girls under educational control and give them a sense of personal and social responsibility’ (1951: 12). In order to achieve this it was proposed to establish training workshops under the management of the Vocational Guidance Service. These workshops were intended ‘to absorb all youth between 14–16 years of age not attending for full-­time education’ (1951: 12). The scheme to cater for ‘unoccupied youth’ was the prototype for community training workshops that are in existence today and was the first government proposal to tackle the problem of delinquency outside the institutional setting by utilising a community-­based strategy. It was based on the premise that the unemployed or ‘idle’ youth were in danger of becoming ‘delinquent youth’. Also, towards the end of the 1950s the Report of the Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency 1958 highlighted the social and psychological factors influencing delinquent behaviour. Like the Report of Commission on Youth Unemployment it was critical of the reformatory and industrial school system and recommended the establishment of the ‘Dublin City Youth Board’. It was proposed that this board would assist those involved in dealing with the problem of delinquency, train social workers in this field and co-­ordinate existing organisations operating in this area. Although these developments represented a shift in thinking towards solutions within the community, little changed in practice and the reformatory and industrial schools remained the dominant method of governing the delinquent and potential delinquent. The Report of Commission of Inquiry on Mental Handicap (1965) pointed to the ‘school’ and the ‘family’ as sites where greater resources could be deployed in an effort to identify childhood problems at an early stage. However, it was the Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems (1970) that presented the first comprehensive set of recommendations dealing with the prevention of delinquency in the ‘community’. The report highlighted the ‘community’ and the ‘family’ as the main sites for preventative strategies calling for investment in education, youth work and family support. It claimed that ‘every effort made to improve and provide extra services for our children in “at risk” areas will yield dividends in happier and more contented families and better adjusted, better educated children and

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would be an important preventative measure for keeping children out of care’ (1970: 49). It recommended increased support for youth work and the improvement of facilities within communities, noting that ‘development in this field has very great potential if it involves a genuine community effort’ (1970: 37). These sentiments were echoed by CARE (1972), which also called for greater investment in facilities in poorer communities in order to prevent delinquency. Around this time, it would appear that ‘official’ recognition of the need for alternatives to residential provision for those children deemed to be ‘at risk’ was gaining momentum. During the 1970s a number of hostels were established to cater for homeless young people and those on probation. Also, following the recommendations of the Interim Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1975), a number of Youth Encounter Projects were established in Dublin, Cork and Limerick.13 These projects were aimed at catering for the needs of those ‘at risk’ in day facilities and were an alternative to residential care. Towards the end of the 1970s there was an increase in community-­based services for young people ‘at risk’. Specific geographical areas were targeted and pilot projects were established with the aim of providing programmes aimed at meeting the needs of these young people. Programme activities were aimed at enhancing the personal development of offending and non-­ offending young people. Many of these initiatives adopted a broad youth work approach, promoting personal development, education and social skills. The importance of youth work was recognised by government when it published A Policy for Youth and Sport (1977), which aimed to promote the development of youth work through the medium of youth clubs and other sporting organisations viewed as contributing to the overall development of young people. Like the Interim Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1975), the Task Force on Child Care Services also had included in its final report in 1980 measures to cater for young people deemed ‘at risk’ of offending. It recommended a ‘locally-­based’ childcare system and included in its recommendations the provision of ‘neighbourhood resource centres’ and ‘neighbourhood youth projects’ (1980: 270). In the same year the Report of the Committee Appointed by the Minister of State at The Department of Education: Development of Youth Work Services in Ireland (Dáil Éireann, 1980) made recommendations for the development of services for young people in the community, including: greater funding of voluntary youth organisations; greater development of youth work services by the Vocational Education Committees; support for pilot projects in disadvantaged areas; state support for counselling services; greater training for youth workers and gardaí. The early 1980s saw a further increase in the



Rationalities underpinning the system111

provision of services for young people in the community, including a range of initiatives catering for young offenders and potential young offenders such as community projects and workshops, hostels, youth encounter projects and experimental projects. The lack of research in this area was highlighted by a working party based in the Department of Social Administration, University College Dublin and chaired by Dr Helen Burke. This working party developed out of a meeting of students, graduates and staff from the department in response to the government’s controversial decision to establish Loughan House, County Cavan, as a closed detention centre for juvenile offenders. The working party carried out research in the area of youth offending in Ireland and their publication Youth and Justice: Young Offenders in Ireland (Burke et al., 1981) was the result of collaboration by staff and students from the Department. They recommended a community-­based approach to offending, highlighting initiatives such as neighbourhood youth projects, youth encounter projects, intermediate treatment, youth work and the development of community services for young people ‘at risk’. Evidence of this increasing interest in dealing with the young offender or potential young offender in the community is also to be found in the passing of legislation providing for ‘community service’. According to Walsh (2005), the enactment of the Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act 1983 represented one of the first concrete steps towards the introduction of ‘restorative justice’ concepts in sentencing in Ireland. The community service order (CSO), the first of which was made by the courts in 1984, was aimed at young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-­one and was intended to provide an alternative to the custodial sentence. The notion of dealing with the young offender in the community was also being championed by An Garda Síochána. In 1982 the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors published A Discussion Paper Containing Proposals for a Scheme of Community Policing. The paper highlighted what it saw as ‘the feeling abroad that things were getting out of control’, noting that ‘there are areas of Dublin where the Gardaí are, to put it mildly, unwelcome’ (Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, 1982: 5). The paper proposed a broad ‘community policing’ strategy advocating the reallocation of resources into the area of crime prevention. Proposals included the allocation of dedicated community gardaí, the establishment of a Community Relations Section and other crime prevention initiatives that were subsequently implemented by An Garda Síochána. Underpinning these proposals was the belief that large numbers of the juvenile population in certain areas of Dublin had become alienated from society in general and An Garda Síochána in particular and that the allocation of designated community gardaí would help to break down these barriers and also reduce crime.

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In a similar vein, the Report of the Probation and Welfare Service (Probation and Welfare Service, 1981) recommended the use of community projects and workshops as a means of educating, training and motivating offenders to become more responsible, stating that ‘continued liaison with and encouragement of community groups in widening the range of facilities for offenders in the community and developing community resources is an important objective of the Service’ (1980: 53). The Final Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1980) went further, recommending the employment of a range of initiatives within the community for the identification, surveillance and management of the ‘at risk’ child population. These include neighbourhood youth projects, family support projects and other social-­work-­type initiatives that enlist the co-­operation of voluntary and statutory groups. The participation of voluntary and community groups in conjunction with existing statutory bodies was being increasingly recognised through a shared expert language. This language – shared by social workers, gardaí, youth workers, psychologists and other professionals active in the field of juvenile justice, child protection and welfare and other related areas of expertise – ­recognised ‘community’ as a space through which young people could be more effectively governed. ‘Community’ had begun to be recognised as a key site for the government of young people. The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System (Dáil Éireann, 1985c), echoing some of the principles enunciated in the earlier reports of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1980) and the National Youth Policy Committee: Final Report (Dáil Éireann, 1984), called for a greater role for ‘voluntary and local initiatives to help the young control their aggressiveness and thirst for excitement’ (Dáil Éireann,1985c: 10). It noted that ‘the community, whose responsibility it is to ensure equity and justice, must itself assume a more active role in crime prevention … this means both greater watchfulness and a more caring attitude’ (1985c: 11). The report also called for the strengthening of resources for the Probation and Welfare Service, greater use of community service orders and ‘other restraints on liberty operable within the community e.g. compulsory residence in approved hostels, compulsory training programmes, reporting at intervals to the authorities’ (1985c: 11). Also, from the early 1990s one can see an increase in the number of community-­based initiatives employing a range of strategies aimed at young offenders and potential offenders. In particular, the twin rationalities of diversion and active citizenship underpin the work of Garda Youth Diversion Projects. These projects seek to engage targeted young people in the process of ethical reconstruction through a range of activities by encouraging them to:



Rationalities underpinning the system113 examine their own offending and to make positive lifestyle choices that will protect them from involvement in criminal, harmful or socially unacceptable behaviours. To implement this, the work involves linking young people with non-­offending peer groups and the forming of stable and trusting relationships with adults in the community. The intended impact of this process is that those who are engaged in this process develop into responsible and valued citizens and the intended outcome is that young people engaged do not offend and do not progress into the criminal justice system. (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2001: 6)

The projects employ a range of initiatives in order to enlist the young person in the process of ethical reconstruction; these include promoting personal development, building self-­esteem, challenging behaviour, exploring positive alternatives, addressing alcohol and drug use, promoting further education and a wide range of recreational and educational activities. In addition to Garda Youth Diversion Projects and Probation Projects, other initiatives have emerged promoting a range of interventions with young people ‘at risk’ that are designed to encourage them to take more responsibility for making ‘positive’ lifestyle choices. The Department of Justice’s discussion paper Tackling Crime (1997) emphasised the importance of promoting alternatives to custody. Also, the National Crime Council (2002 and 2003a), which was established in 1998 to advise government on criminal justice policy, recommended the utilisation of crime prevention partnerships based around the existing county and city development board structure (CDB). As previously mentioned, initiatives like ‘Copping On’ provide training through crime prevention and awareness programmes for those working with young people ‘at risk’. Developed as part of Youthreach, it derives its rationale from the link between early school-­leaving and offending behaviour. Originally called the Copping On Youthreach Crime Awareness Initiative it was developed by Youthreach staff in the mid-­1990s (Bowden, 1998). It aims to develop the cognitive skills of the young person and thereby reduce the likelihood of offending. This is achieved through participating in a series of exercises that seek to encourage young people to discuss and debate issues around offending behaviour. Similarly, ‘Breaking Through’ was established in 1999 as an ‘all Ireland network to promote effective interventions with young people at risk’ and aims to promote partnership and inter-­agency co-­operation between those working with young people at risk (Breaking Through, 2001: 6). Also, in 2004 Young People at Risk (YPAR) was established in Dublin’s north inner city to facilitate the integration of services and promotion of best practice for those working with young people ‘at risk’. These initiatives represent a new kind of government, where individuals deemed ‘at risk’ are encouraged to make certain lifestyle choices in return for their acceptance or re-­attachment to a ‘moral community’. The government

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of the young person is thus achieved by means of a range of initiatives that endeavour to monitor and reduce their level of risk and encourage them to self-­regulate their behaviour. Bessant argues that youth-­at-­risk projects are particularly effective: because they key into progressive ideals about the virtues of local autonomy and ‘community’. This in turn frequently dovetails with conservative agendas which are translated into moral arguments about a ‘need’ for greater individual responsibility as a means of solving those problems (re: the ‘blame the victim’ approach). (2001: 40)

Such discrete practices of control aimed at personal reform are a feature of restorative justice initiatives. Restorative justice initiatives were first piloted as a victim mediation service in 1999 and eventually formed part of the Children Act, 2001.14 They aim to effect personal change in young people by confronting them with the consequences of their actions. This process may involve the victim, the family or members of the local community and usually results in the drawing up of a contract affecting the future behaviour of the young person. Citizenship, therefore, becomes conditional upon the future conduct of the individual. Restorative justice and other diversionary initiatives are part of a range of liberal governmental rationalities that have emanated from a general dissatisfaction with more traditional criminal justice approaches that are viewed as failing to recognise adequately the rights of the victim and the needs of the community and the young person. In 2001 the Irish Penal Reform Trust in its publication, Toward a Model Penal System, highlighted the success of diversion initiatives abroad. In particular, it recommended that all children who are non-­violent first offenders be diverted from prosecution and signalled the New Zealand model of family conferencing as a model of best practice. The principles of diversion and restorative justice were a key part of the Children Bill 1999 and would also be central to the Children Act 2001. In a second stage debate on the Children Bill 1999 in the Dáil, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O’ Donoghue introduced this new radical approach stating: to sum up on conferencing, children tend to be more open emotionally than adults, more quickly prepared to say sorry and mean it and less likely to stand on ceremony, attributes that make children particularly amenable to conferencing. It is also a particularly suitable way of dealing with the irritating anti-­social behaviour exhibited by some young persons and, again this is borne out by the pilot schemes. (Dáil Debates, vol. 17, 29 March, 2000)

The restorative justice initiatives introduced in the Children Act 2001 aimed to establish two separate ways to meet the needs of offending and non-­offending children by shifting the emphasis away from residential/custodial care, to care within the community. The various initiatives under the Act are designed to



Rationalities underpinning the system115

micro-­manage the behaviour of ‘risky’ individuals by encouraging, shaming, threatening and cajoling them to reattach to the community from which they had been alienated. There are three types of restorative conferences provided for under the Children Act 2001: restorative justice conferences (An Garda Síochána); family conferences (Probation Service) and family welfare conferences (Health Service Executive). The Report on the Youth Justice Review (2006) presents a range of initiatives aimed at ‘re-­moralising’ certain classes of young people. These initiatives seek to affect some kind of ethical readjustment on the part of the young person. They take place within the privileged space of the community. ‘Community’ here is invested with a quality of ‘naturalness’ and designated a suitable space for this ethical work to take place. It is within this community space that these initiatives focusing on the ethical transformation of the young person operate. In this way, the goal of ensuring a more effective regime of self-­government is achieved through a myriad of governmental techniques that stretch from the cradle to the grave. The Report on the Youth Justice Review (2006) catalogues these ‘ethical’ projects under the following headings: initiatives aimed at young offenders or children at risk of offending; preventative initiatives aimed at poverty and social exclusion; and initiatives with a broad target group. The designation of ‘community’ as a separate space outside the formal justice system where the rights of the child can achieve greater recognition has also been influenced by developments in international law and standards. In particular, the Beijing Rules (United Nations General Assembly, 1985) and the Riyadh Guidelines (United Nations General Assembly, 1990) highlight the potential negative effects of detention on children’s personal development and promote the use of diversionary initiatives. Detention is here viewed as a last resort only to be utilised when all other alternatives have been exhausted. Since the 1970s one can see the gradual emergence of a broad consensus in favour of such community-­type initiatives. Within this community space young people are encouraged to become less ‘risky’ in the sense that they are invited to align themselves closer to certain behavioural norms through a range of community-­ type initiatives. The concept of active citizenship is often employed to achieve this aim by granting young people certain rights, which are conditional on them acting appropriately, in other words becoming active citizens. This process of empowering young people to become active citizens is usually described as ‘involving’ the young person in decisions affecting their lives or enhancing their participation in ‘civic society’. Dáil na nÓg, the national youth parliament which was established in 2001, aims to encourage this kind of active citizenship.15 Various county councils, through their county development boards (CDBs) have also established local youth councils (Comhairle na nÓg) that feed into this national youth parliament.

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These developments should be seen within the wider context of a growing willingness on the part of government to engage with the principles of communitarianism. Pobal was established by government as a limited company to manage Irish and EU funds, promoting a wide range of initiatives operating in marginalised communities, including: community graffiti reduction programmes; RAPID (revitalising communities by planning, investment and development); dormant accounts; grants for community and voluntary organisations; community services programme; community-­ based CCTV scheme and the local development social inclusion programme.16 Also, the Irish Youth Justice Service currently promotes a range of community-­based initiatives to govern ‘risky’ behaviour through six Local Drugs Task Forces (IYJS, 2008a). These community-­based initiatives are a core element of the IYJS’s strategy to govern the young offender and potential young offender. ‘Psy’ expertise At the time of writing the HSE have plans to develop a national Assessment, Consultations and Therapy Service (ACTS) providing on-­site therapeutic provision to special care and detention units in addition to a limited service in the community. The service will aim to ‘assist the courts, the HSE and the Irish Youth Justice Service in planning for the care of individuals’ (Hough, 2011). In addition to this, on 2 April 2012, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, gave a commitment to provide enhanced provision of specialist therapeutic services for children in residential institutions, in both the children detention schools and special care units operated by the Health Service Executive as an interim measure in advance of completion of the new National Children Detention Facility at the Oberstown campus in Lusk. Also a specialist multi-­disciplinary service is to be established for this purpose with the recruitment of a director to manage the service.17 This follows a recommendation of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report (2009), which called for the establishment of multi-­disciplinary assessment services for young people ‘at risk’ and those in care and detention. However, in general, psychological and psychiatric service provision for young people in children detention schools, high support and special care units have remained somewhat limited with some units having full-­time, on-­ site provision and others sharing services with other units or accessing private services. Before it closed in March 2010, Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre had a full-­time psychologist. With regard to St Patrick’s Institution, there is a full-­time psychologist on site, access to a specialist in adult psychiatry who visits three times a week and a psychiatrist specialising in addiction problems visiting once a week. There is also an in-­reach psychiatric service from the Central Mental Hospital once



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a week. In a recent visit to St Patrick’s in 2011 the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture highlighted the need for young people with mental health problems to be treated by psychiatrists and psychologists specialising in child and adolescent mental health (Council of Europe, 2011). It also highlighted the need for the presence of a community psychiatric nurse. St Patrick’s has also been the subject of harsh criticism by successive visiting committees for many years because of the lack of psychological and psychiatric services for inmates. In relation to children in open units or Garda Youth Diversion Projects, mainstream services are generally accessed. In terms of mainstream schooling the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) provides a psychological service to young people attending primary and secondary school education experiencing educational/emotional difficulties, however, this service is significantly under-­resourced with many children having to access services privately.18 Two pieces of legislation which have influenced developments in this area are the Children Act 2001 and the Child Care Act 1991. The Children Act 2001 provided a new legal framework for the care, protection and control of children emphasising that a child’s development should not be adversely affected by any legal penalty imposed. Prior to this the Child Care Act 1991 imposed responsibility on health boards to provide for the protection and welfare of children in their care. However, in comparison with other jurisdictions, children’s psychological and psychiatric services in Ireland have been slow to develop with provision generally emerging on an ad hoc and piecemeal basis. Apart from the above mentioned services, the psychological sciences have a significant influence on the way that young people are treated within the juvenile justice system by professionals working in the areas of social work, youth work, community development, family support, education and crime prevention. Evidence of the increasing prominence of this psy expertise can be seen at all levels of the juvenile justice system where young people are counselled, mentored, empowered, motivated, diverted and assessed. This has resulted in the emergence of a new expert language which is utilised to measure the degree of risk associated with each young person, whether that be in a social work, youth work or crime prevention settings. The Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1980) was to be a catalyst for many of the legislative and policy changes that would eventually shape the twenty-­first-­century juvenile justice system. In the context of the development of the Irish childcare system, O’Sullivan (1999) has noted that the publication of the report set in train a series of legislative developments that resulted in the gradual repeal of the Children Act 1908 and resulted in the slow process of introducing modern child care policies

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and legislation. The report was also significant in that it was grounded on the philosophy of governing the child through the family: ‘Since we consider that the primary emphasis of children’s services should be on the child within the context of the family, we attach particular importance to the services which can help families to care for their children in their own homes’ (Department of Health, 1980: 115). It recommended a range of initiatives aimed at the assessment, classification, prevention, treatment and management of children, including: clinics for assessment and treatment of childhood disorders; initiatives for education of parents and children; projects aimed at diversion and supervision; initiatives to support, advise and supervise children; neighbourhood youth projects; residential assessment centres; family support projects; hostels; long-­ and short-­term residential care; centres for severely disturbed children; playgroups; nurseries. The family was to become a prominent site through which the child would be governed and around it evolved a range of strategies aimed at diagnosing maladjustment, delinquency and failure. The report championed a broad social work approach based on a process of assessing the risk to the child and deciding on the appropriate child-­or family-­centred response. Within the context of the juvenile justice system, it stipulated when intervention is required and recommended that ‘a child should be deemed in law to be in need of care where the circumstances of the child’s life are such that his moral, physical, educational, emotional, intellectual, or social well-­being or development is substantially impaired’ (1980: 274).19 This recommendation sought to place social workers and psy experts at the centre of the process of governing children. To give them licence to select those children in need of protection or ‘at risk’, and the form of intervention deemed most appropriate. In the context of regulating delinquent juvenile behaviour specifically, the Task Force report viewed the role of social work as pivotal in supporting, advising and supervising the child and ‘guiding children away from delinquent activities and associations, and encouraging them to participate in beneficial social activities’ (1980: 124). Probation officers, who were already operating a social work model, were encouraged in their role in assisting, befriending and guiding those who had become involved with the criminal justice system or were in danger of becoming so involved. The rationality behind social work is one of the most prominent rationalities operating in the field of juvenile justice. Parton (1991) views it as occupying the space between the respectable and deviant classes and in the process mediating not only between the excluded and the state agencies, but also crucially between those state agencies themselves. The report of the Task Force viewed social work as an essential mediating strategy to be employed as an alternative to the previously dominant religious institutional strategy. This was part of an emerging



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discourse of more liberal forms of governance that had begun to find expression in the early 1970s. The psychological sciences were central to the Task Force report’s thesis that the child is someone who is ‘in the process of formation’. The child’s identity is tied up with this notion of being in the process of development. It is given the status of being ‘vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’ and as having certain basic needs. These needs are primarily located within the context of the family and the report argues that the deprivation of these needs results in failure to develop normally. The notion of the ‘natural’ family unit is invoked as a benchmark of normality and as a space in which the child can develop normally. The invocation of these norms allows the report to define the ‘at risk’ child and to calculate and speculate upon levels of deprivation and risk in the population. The report bemoaned the lack of accurate statistical data relating to risk: statistics on child care services in Ireland are not very sophisticated or comprehensive and we are therefore uncertain about the number of deprived children and children at risk. However … we describe a range of family conditions and behaviour characteristics which may indicate risk deprivation and bearing these in mind, we consider that some of the available statistics can be presented as useful indicators of the approximate extent of some aspects of the problem. (Department of Health, 1980: 40)

It goes on to present statistics relating to the age of the population, living conditions, unemployment, number of one-­parent families, number of separated parents, truancy and crime. These indicators of risk facilitate the measurement of deprivation and potential deprivation in the child population and allow the report, on the basis of its enquiries, to suggest that quite a significant proportion of the children surveyed could be described as emotionally deprived or at risk for reasons other than physical deprivation. Prior to this, in Ireland, there had been little research into the psychology of criminal behaviour. A number of independent empirical studies had looked at the specific characteristics of delinquents.20 These studies approached the problem of delinquency from a psycho-­social perspective, concentrating on the developmental needs of the child. In addition, CARE, a group campaigning for the welfare of children in Ireland, had highlighted the effects of childhood deprivation.21 The First and Second Interim Reports of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons (Dáil Éireann, 1975 and 1975a) considered the juvenile delinquent from a psychological perspective and made recommendations in relation to the establishment of residential and day assessment facilities for juvenile offenders and for the provision of psychological reports on juvenile offenders. The reports listed among the risk factors

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in relation to juvenile delinquency: familial strains, lack of parental control and guidance, poverty, bad housing, drab and frustrating environment, want of suitable recreational facilities, insufficient early diagnosis and treatment of both organic and personality disorders, inadequate education (particularly in civic responsibility). The Second Interim Report considered the provision of treatment for juvenile offenders and potential offenders. However, what is most significant about this report is the way that it inserts the concept of the individual’s ‘psyche’ and related observational data into the risk assessment process. Such considerations were to be utilised in constructing a typology of delinquent and potentially delinquent types. It notes: In the case of juvenile offenders, a particular crime may be committed by an illiterate youngster in a moment of bravado, an aggressive sociopath or a paranoid schizophrenic patient at a time of delusional crisis. Psychiatrists’ assessments take account of the individual’s psyche and are not based exclusively on the behaviour he has displayed. (Dáil Éireann, 1975a: 3)

It also recognised five different categories of ‘patient’: ‘illiterates; cultural delinquents; character-­ disordered delinquents; aggressive sociopaths and neurotic incidental offenders’. It recommended that: priority should be given to the establishment of a closed school to which boys up to 16 years of age could be sent who are found to be unmanageable but who are not psychiatrically disturbed [and in relation to girls] one special residential school … to which girl offenders between 12 and 17 years could be committed by the courts. As these girls are likely to be seriously maladjusted, the school should accommodate no more than 25 and should have a ‘closed’ regime. (Dáil Éireann, 1975a: 10-­11)

Prior to this the Kennedy Report had recommended that facilities for the assessment and identification of delinquency be established. In particular, it recommended the establishment of ‘remand homes’ that would function as assessment and observation centres. It also called for reports on the behaviour and character of children detained in remand homes and the provision of facilities for examination by psychiatrists and psychologists and reports by psychiatric social workers. The report recommended a model of prevention based on the early identification of that section of the population deemed to be ‘at risk’. These ‘at risk’ children are those whose ‘needs’ are not being met within the ‘normal family’ environment. The report adopts a psychological model of the stable family existing as a cohesive unit, as the optimum environment for ensuring that the child is protected. It views delinquency as resulting from parental or family failure and as a consequence recommends preventative measures aimed at the identification, assessment and treatment of certain children judged delinquent or at risk of becoming delinquent. The recommended measures include



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medical services, social services, nurseries, voluntary groups and community groups. In framing the problem of juvenile delinquency in terms of the ‘needs of the child’ the report employs the vocabulary of deprivation rather than transgression. The government of the delinquent or potential delinquent was thus considered a ‘welfare’ issue rather than an exclusively ‘judicial’ one and a central element of the report was the establishment of a more effective system for the surveillance of the ‘at risk’ population by identifying and segregating those deemed ‘at risk’.22 Prior to the publication of the Kennedy Report in 1966 Tuairim, the London-­based group, published a report criticising the provision of childcare in Ireland and called for a radical reform of the existing system. Entitled Some of Our Children: A Report on the Residential Care of the Deprived Child in Ireland, it argued from the perspective of the ‘deprived child’, believing that the treatment of delinquency should not be based on the offence but on the causes of crime. Tuairim’s ideas were influenced by much of the criminological research current at the time and specifically the work of the psychologist John Bowlby. The report bemoaned the lack of criminological research in Ireland. In the same year, the Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness (1966) recommended that the terms ‘industrial school’ and ‘reformatory school’ be dropped, as they were ‘obsolete and objectionable’. It recommended the provision of psychological services for industrial and reformatory schools and throughout the wider community, believing that delinquency in children may be ‘a symptom of emotional disturbance or other psychiatric disorder’ (1966: 75). In relation to juvenile delinquency specifically, the report noted: The general problem of juvenile delinquency is outside the terms of reference of the Commission, but, in its consideration of the psychiatric aspects of this problem, it visited some of the reformatories and places of detention. These institutions suffer from the same defects as industrial schools. Psychiatric and psychological services are most inadequate; those in charge do not receive adequate information on the background of juveniles sent to them, and there is no proper system of after-­care. The authorities of these institutions are aware of the present deficiencies and are anxious to have them rectified. (1966: 75)

It also recommended that psychiatric reports be made available to the courts when adjudicating on cases involving children. The Commission recommended the provision of psychiatric services in the community and the establishment of district and regional psychiatric clinics for counselling adolescents. It favoured the development of youth organisations as a means of governing adolescent behaviour and the suitable training of those in charge of them in order to cater for the needs of young people: ‘Youth organisations can exercise a considerable influence for good on young people. Effective youth organisation channels the adolescent exuberant energy into

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c­ haracter-­forming recreational and social activities in clubs and similar associations’ (1966: 75). The participation of voluntary organisations and others in the community in the identification of ‘at risk’ children was also considered by the Commission of Inquiry on Mental Handicap (1965). The Commission’s report maintained that ‘the problem is so great, however, and creates such a reservoir of inadequate persons and possible delinquents that an attack on the problem by all possible means is necessary’ (1965: 123). The report advocated the establishment of pre-­school centres for the early identification and education of families and children in ‘areas where there is a concentration of families in the low-­income group … The centre should aim to develop those attitudes and aptitudes which children in more favoured environments usually acquire: they should prepare and fit children to take their place in normal schools and they should help and advise parents as required’ (1965: 123). This report contains one of the first instances in an ‘official’ report of the child being identified as a psychological entity. This approach was to have a major influence on the ‘treatment’ of delinquency with delinquent behaviour being viewed as emanating from some psychological disturbance and paved the way for preventative initiatives aimed at identifying, assessing and treating relevant risk factors in the child’s environment. Conclusion The introduction of legislation providing for the certification of reformatory and industrial schools in the mid-­nineteenth century led to the establishment of a network of institutions that were to dominate the Irish juvenile justice landscape for a century. While initiatives such as probation, borstal and youth work were present from the beginning of the twentieth century they did not achieve any degree of prominence and the reformatory and industrial school model remained the dominant mechanism for regulating young people until the early 1970s. It is only from the early 1970s that we see the dominance the institutional model challenged by the emerging rationalities of psychology, social work, probation and eventually diversion. The emergence of these rationalities has resulted in the construction of a new vocabulary within the juvenile justice system where the ‘at risk’ child is viewed as possessing certain social and psychological needs. The once dominant institutional model has been replaced by community-­based initiatives, which form the foundation of the modern juvenile justice system. The principle of diversion has been enshrined in law with the enactment of the Children Act 2001 and the community has replaced the closed institution as the place to govern the ‘at risk’ child with detention being viewed as a last resort.



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Notes  1 These included: Tuairim (1966); Kennedy Report (1970); CARE (1972 and 1978); First and Second Interim Reports of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons (Dáil Éireann, 1975 and 1975a); Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1980); O’Sullivan Report (Dáil Éireann, 1980); Report on the Probation and Welfare Service (Probation and Welfare Service, 1981); Costello Report (Dáil Éireann, 1984b); Whitaker Report (Dáil Éireann, 1985c); Report of the Interdepartmental Group (1992); First Report of the Dáil Select Committee on Crime (1992).  2 See O’Sullivan (1999) and Carroll Burke (2000).  3 See Coldrey (1993: 11).  4 See O’Sullivan (1999, 2001).  5 See www.dcya.gov.ie.  6 On 7 July the same year the government established the Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism, which issued a number of reports on various aspects of the criminal justice system. The Committee was tasked with examining the administration of justice, the implementation of the criminal law and existing legislation.  7 This situation has continued. The Youth Work Act 2001, following on from the recommendations of the Costello Report (1984), was intended to provide a framework for the co-­ordination of youth work services.  8 See Lalor et al. (2007).  9 See Cooney (1999). 10 Cooney (1999) notes that McQuaid ‘inspired’ the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Refuge to establish a home for delinquent females. St Anne’s, Kilmacud, was founded in 1944 and certified a reformatory and industrial school. It catered for females under seventeen years of age who had been convicted of ‘sexual offences’ or having ‘tendencies’ towards sexual immorality. It was some five years later before the Children (Amendment) Act 1949 provided statutory authority for the committal of females to St Anne’s. St Anne’s operated until 23 July 1984 when it ceased to be certified at the request of the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Refuge. 11 According to a history of the CYC, the organisation had its origins in the ­co-­operation between Archbishop McQuaid and Minister Seán Lemass TD (Ni Chionnaith, 2004: 22). 12 C.K. Murphy (1944) outlines the development and meaning of the Lay Apostolate of Charity with regard to the Society of St Vincent de Paul. 13 The Interim Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1975) made a large number of recommendations, including: the establishment of a number of neighbourhood youth projects; the provision of small residential units for very young children; the existing school at St Joseph’s, Clonmel, be replaced by a special school providing residential care for sixty boys; the provision of a special residential centre in Dublin for disturbed boys between fifteen and eighteen years; the establishment of a special school in the Dublin area for twenty-­five to thirty boys aged twelve to sixteen years who cannot be dealt with in existing residential institutions; a special residential centre in Dublin for severely

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disturbed girls aged between fourteen and eighteen years; a residential assessment centre for ten girls in Dublin; the establishment of a special school in the Dublin area for twenty-­five girls aged from twelve to seventeen years who are too difficult or disruptive for existing facilities. 14 A victim/offender mediation service was piloted at Tallaght District Court in 1999. It received funding from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and took referrals from Tallaght and Naas courts. 15 www.dailnanog.ie. 16 www.pobal.ie. 17 See www.iyjs.ie. 18 See Kilkelly (2007). 19 This view was not unanimous and reservations were expressed that ‘the system proposed in the Main Report will lead to greater intervention by the state in the lives of a greater number of children, in direct contravention of the principle of minimum intervention which is intended to inform the rest of the Report … More and greater intervention means two things: wasteful expenditure by the state and damage to many children who would be better off left alone’ (Department of Health, 1980: 341). 20 See Power (1971); Flynn et al. (1967); Hart (1968 and 1970); Hart and McQuaid (1974); O’Connor (1963). 21 CARE published two influential papers in this regard: Children Deprived: The CARE Memorandum on Deprived Children and Children’s Services in Ireland (1972) and Who Wants a Children’s Prison in Ireland (1978). 22 The report states: ‘The whole aim of the Child-­Care system should be directed towards prevention of family breakdown and the problems consequent on it … The Child Care Division should have liaison with those likely to encounter at-­risk families … Where parents are inadequate to cope with their responsibilities a system of identification and support should exist to deal with the problem … The work of voluntary organisations and individuals and of State organisations should be co-­ordinated and given effect perhaps through the establishment of social Centres and local Committees’ (Dáil Éireann, 1970: 66).

The technologies employed to govern

5

The technologies1 employed to govern

Introduction Within the context of this study technologies are categorised as disciplinary and pastoral. Examples of disciplinary technologies include detention centres and reformatory and industrial schools, where there exists ‘a detailed structuring of space, time and relations among individuals, through procedures of hierarchical observation and normalising judgement’ (Rose, 1996b: 26). Pastoral technologies, on the other hand, involve some form of pastoral relationship where the subject’s conduct is governed by a range of techniques such as ‘confession and self-­disclosure, exemplarity and discipleship, enfolded into the person through a variety of schema of self-­inspection, self-­suspicion, self-­ disclosure, self-­decipherment, and self-­nurturing’ (Rose, 1996b: 26). These two kinds of technologies are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there are usually elements of both technologies to be found existing side by side. However for present purposes such technologies are categorised according to whether they are explicitly disciplinary or pastoral. Disciplinary technologies Disciplinary technologies are employed in response to certain offending behaviours or as a result of judgements with regard to the potential risk posed to or by certain individuals. What results is the creation of a range of governmental spaces designed to cater for a population of young people, which operate on a sliding scale between those ‘at risk’ of offending and those who have already offended. Historically, these technologies have included prisons, borstal, industrial and reformatory schools, detention centres, detention schools, special care units, high support units and assessment centres. Reformatory and industrial schools While the reasons for committal to reformatory and industrial schools may have differed, the principles underpinning both these institutions were similar. Section 44 of the 1908 Act does not specify any difference in the

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regimes between the ‘industrial school’ and the ‘reformatory school’. In the case of the former it refers to ‘children’ and in the case of the latter ‘youthful offenders’ who are ‘lodged, clothed and fed as well as taught’. These technologies were based on the containment of children within a closed institution and their subjection to a strict disciplinary regime. The regimes in the schools were grounded on the establishment of a strict disciplinary code characterised by explicit rules and regulations to which all inmates were subject. In relation to industrial schools strict observance of order and regulations was expected from children at all times in the hope that they would internalise the desired moral outlook. This process of internalisation of moral values was very much part of the governmental technology envisioned by John Lentaigne, the first inspector of the reformatory and industrial schools, when he described the industrial school as a: home for the children placed in it, where their training and the formation of their character is accomplished. The teachers, living amongst them, if in earnest, acquire influence over them; their whole life, the very tone of their voice, their every action unconsciously leads the children to think with them, and the character of the child in the main reflects the character of the teacher. (Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools of Ireland, 1871: 26)

In relation to reformatory schools, a regime of strict discipline was intended to cultivate ‘good habits’ through a similar process of internalisation. Louis Foley, a former manager of St Kevin’s Reformatory School in Glencree, noted that this ‘moral training’ had two elements: The first lies in impressing the ideals on the minds of the young. These ideals win their appreciation, their esteem, and their affection … Advice, encouragement, approval, help greatly in winning the young to the ideals of virtue … The second element in moral training is the discipline of the will. The will is disciplined by habits … In the beginning, at least in the case of a child, the repetition is carried automatically, but, at some stage in the process, self-­control must rise into consciousness. (1923: 35)

One of the main tools employed to facilitate this moral training was the strict regimental regime adopted in these schools. Although the specifics of the regime may have differed from school to school, a common factor was the existence of a timetable that organised the daily activities of those ­children detained. The timetable acted as a tool for regulating the behaviour of the children facilitating constant supervision and obedience. Lentaigne’s original rules and regulations for certified industrial schools stipulated that a timetable must be posted in a conspicuous part of the Institution. Later rules and regulations approved in 1933 insisted that ‘A Time Table, showing the Hours of Rising, Work, School Instruction, Meals, Recreation, Retiring, etc., shall be drawn up, shall be approved by the Inspector of Industrial Schools,



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and fixed in the Schoolroom, and carefully adhered to on all occasions. All important deviations from it shall be recorded in the School Diary’ (Rules and Regulations for the Certified Industrial Schools, 1933). Every moment of the child’s life within the school was the object of close supervision, including their sleeping and waking hours. In this sense, the observance of time itself becomes a disciplinary technique. The very existence of the individual was to be recalibrated in accordance with the measurement of time. The process of reforming the character of the individual was inextricably linked to the measurement of time. The Christian Brothers manual of ‘school government’ highlights the importance of the regulation of time for the efficient running of a school: Another most essential point is, having an effective routine, or distribution of time. No Brother really in earnest or who aspires to a successful management of his school, would think of conducting it, even for a day, without a settled plan or well-­arranged scheme of lessons. A distribution of time ought to be so arranged, as to secure the constant employment of the children, and thus serve to promote both industry and order. (Christian Brothers, 1865: 93)

Children were generally housed in large dormitory-­style quarters with little or no privacy, eating and washing being a communal activity. Every aspect of the child’s life was regulated and observed: sleeping, eating, washing, dressing, schooling, training and religious education. Even the ability to speak was strictly controlled by imposing a rule of silence at certain times. Some light is thrown on the rationale behind the use of silence in the ‘training’ within these institutions in a report of the inspector of reformatory and industrial schools of 1894 in relation to Philipstown, then the largest reformatory school in Ireland: ‘Silence is enforced in the schoolrooms, dormitories, lavatory and during drill and roll-­call; but at meals and at other times no undue restraint is imposed. The result of discipline of this kind is to give the boys a manly and open manner and to teach them to use with moderation the liberty accorded to them’ (Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools of Ireland, 1894: 4). For the Christian Brothers, the means of establishing order in their schools was to employ a combination of ‘vigilance, silence and signal’. Their manual of ‘school government’ published in 1865 outlines how these elements are to be combined. Silence was regarded as the key and ‘more than anything else, marks the character of the school and the system of education pursued in it’ (Christian Brothers, 1865: 133). The manual outlines how speaking should be kept to an absolute minimum with the teacher using signals to regulate the children. According to the manual, ‘the signal signs should be made gently and gracefully, and should correspond as nearly as possible with the movement or evolution to be performed’ (1865: 134). In 1936, the Report of the

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Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System 1934–1936 was critical of the imposition of silence in reformatory and industrial schools in certain circumstances as, ‘a harsh and unnecessary measure’ and recommended it be abolished. Section 54 of the Children Act 1908 gave the managers of reformatory and industrial schools power to make rules and regulations relating to the management and discipline of their schools. In 1933, rules and regulations approved by the Minister for Education were adopted by all industrial schools in Ireland. The template for these was adapted from Lentaigne’s original rules and regulations of 1870 and retained their form and ethos. The rules and regulations governing reformatory and industrial schools detailed the manner in which these institutions should be run. They outlined the type of clothes to be worn, diet to be supplied, method of schooling, religious instruction and industrial education. They also set out the manner in which discipline and punishments were to be administered.2 The manager of an institution was authorised to administer punishment in the case of misconduct while punishment for serious misconduct was to be entered into a ‘punishment book’ that was to be kept for inspection. Lentaigne’s original rules and regulations state: ‘The manager must, however, remember that the more closely the school is modelled on a principle of judicious family government the more salutary will be its discipline, and the more effective its moral influences on the children’ (Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools of Ireland, 1871: 82). The Christian Brothers, in their manual of school government, detailed the manner in which pupils were to be ‘corrected’ in their schools. Such correction included ‘correction by words’, ‘correction by penances’, ‘correction by tasks’ and ‘correction by slaps’. The manual outlines the circumstances in which ‘slaps’ may be given and the manner of giving them. It notes: ‘The slap should be given on the palm of the hand, and on no other part. The boy should be prevented from crying aloud or murmuring after he has been slapped, and should he persevere after having been warned of its impropriety, he should be made stand at the line until directed to return to his place’ (Christian Brothers, 1865). In the twentieth century punishment was to be retained as an important part of this disciplinary technology. A circular issued by the Department of Education in 1946, entitled Discipline and Punishment in Certified Schools, recognised punishment as playing ‘an important part in the training and discipline of the young’ and states that ‘its use as a means of correction demands much discretion, especially in the case of children detained in Certified Schools’ (Department of Education, 1946: 1). In Lentaigne’s original rules and regulations punishments included: forfeiture of rewards and privileges; reduction in the quantity or quality of food; confinement in a room or lighted cell for no more than three days; moderate personal correction; no other



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forms of grave correction without the authority of the Inspector’ (Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools of Ireland, 1871: 82). The Rules approved by the Minister for Education after 1933 included: moderate childish punishment with the hand; chastisement with the cane, strap or birch. The use of these forms of punishment in reformatory and industrial schools needs to be viewed in the light of societal attitudes to corporal punishment in Ireland in the twentieth century and the fact that corporal punishment was not outlawed in mainstream schools in Ireland until 1982.3 Two other elements common to the regimes of industrial and reformatory schools were religious instruction and industrial education. The day was usually punctuated with prayers or religious instruction and the majority of the institutions had their own place of worship on site. In terms of religion, it should be borne in mind that the education system in Ireland was predominantly Catholic and religion was interwoven into mainstream schooling in Ireland. Titley quotes Bishop Kinnane of Waterford addressing the annual convention of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland in March 1937: We are fortunate in Ireland that our educational system approaches so nearly to the Christian ideal. We are fortunate in the harmonious relations existing between church and state and in the position accorded to religious and moral education in our curricula … This happy state in our educational system is a matter for special congratulation at the present time when there are so many agencies at work to poison and corrupt our youth. (Titley, 1983: 141)

The Rules and Regulations for Certified Industrial Schools state in relation to ‘Religious Exercises and Worship’ that, ‘Each day shall be begun and ended with prayer. On Sundays and holidays the children shall attend public worship, at some convenient church or chapel’ (Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools of Ireland, 1871: 81). In particular, the Christian Brothers had developed a highly successful and respected system of education outside of the reformatory and industrial schools that combined secular and religious instruction with strict discipline. Similar regimes were maintained in the Magdalen institutions that were run by many Catholic religious congregations. As part of these regimes the inmates were forced to work in the institutions’ laundries. These institutions operated without any legal basis but with the full knowledge of the courts, which gave tacit recognition to their existence. Many of the religious congregations who operated reformatory and industrial schools also incorporated a Magdalen laundry into the same complex. Girls were often transferred from a reformatory or industrial school to a Magdalen institution in what Smith (2007) has described as a form of ‘pre-­emptive’ action. Industrial training in the schools was dictated by the local school management with the result that differences arose between the institutions. The

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regimes adopted by the Christian Brothers differed from other orders. A wide range of management styles evolved in the schools with the result that the overall system lacked uniformity. Training for the girls detained at reformatory schools normally consisted of cooking, dressmaking, laundry work, needlework and housewifery. While the boys were typically trained in boot-­ making, tailoring, bread-­making, carpentry, farm work, gardening, laundry work and poultry-­keeping. However, the majority of those detained in these schools did not find employment in these trades but rather ended up getting farm work or working as general labourers.4 Reformatory and industrial schools were highly regimented disciplinary sites designed for the regulation of certain categories of juveniles. Within these institutions time and space were strictly regulated in an effort to ensure the submission of the individual’s will. These institutions aimed to produce industrious citizens who would be reintegrated into the community having been subjected to a strict disciplinary regime that was underpinned predominantly by Catholic religious teaching. Probably the best example of this technology is Artane Industrial School, Dublin, which was run by the Christian Brothers. Described as a ‘miniature model municipality’ it boasted accommodation for almost one thousand boys. The complex contained a church, infirmary, cemetery, schoolhouse, refectory, farm, garden, bakery, flour-­mill, theatre, music hall, workshops, a smithy; tinsmith’s shop; engine fitter’s shop; wheelwright’s shop; shoe shop; tailoring department; painting and decorating room; and harness shop, dormitories, bath-­house and a residence for the Brothers. As well as industrial and scholastic instruction, drill formed an integral element of the institution’s regime. Inmates were classified according to age and trade and their existence was strictly controlled with military precision, their movements within the complex regulated by bugle calls (Special Supplement of Artane Industrial School, 1894: 62). Each reformatory and industrial school represents a disciplinary enclosure designed to reform those detained within its walls. The space within these enclosures was specifically designed for the training of those confined. Each enclosure was sub-­divided into a series of discrete sites for the micro-­management of the child. These included the schoolroom, workshop, refectory, dormitory and chapel. The individual was subjected to constant surveillance. By means of these technologies, those young people who were deemed ‘at risk’ were segregated and subjected to a separate disciplinary regime. The schools represented an assemblage of panoptic architecture, reformative ideals and Catholic religious discipline. The system of education employed by the Christian Brothers typified this particular brand of reformative technology combining religious and secular instruction but with the ­religious element to the fore:



The technologies employed to govern131 The system required that the instruction in secular as in religious knowledge should be imparted in a religious atmosphere, to be created by the child’s surroundings, the example of the teachers, and various devotional practices. The school building was surmounted by the cross; in each class-­room the place of honour was given to the image of the Crucified and the statue of the Mother of God … The child’s first act after having entered the school-­room each morning was to kneel, commend himself to Divine protection, and beg for a blessing on the day’s work. (Christian Brothers, 1916: 191)

Penal technologies The borstal regime was also aimed specifically at reforming the character of the individual through strict discipline and training. A regime of hard work and physical discipline was designed to create an ‘industrious citizen’. From the moment of reception into the borstal institution the individual’s character and fitness was assessed with this purpose in mind: Before committal of an inmate to the Institution, the Governor is supplied with the boy’s history, antecedents, etc. On his reception at the Institution, the inmate is interviewed by the Governor. In the first instance he is given a choice of trade, at which trade he spends a probationary period of one month. The Governor then receives a report from the Instructor in charge. If the boy has shown reasonable promise, he is allowed to continue at this trade, otherwise a change of occupation is affected. Following his interview with the Governor, the boy is subject to a thorough examination by the Medical Officer; he receives a bath and is supplied with his clothing outfit. (Department of Justice, 1948: 4)

The borstal system sought to reform the character of the individual by subjecting him to physical and moral discipline. The inmates’ time and physical activity was highly regulated. A daily regime – including hygiene, meals, physical activity, work, instruction, recreation and rest – was designed to instil discipline and reform the character of the subject. The training was for the most part vocational, including such trades as cabinet-­making, shoemaking, gardening and general labouring. The aim was to produce an employable individual who was less likely to offend. In this sense, the borstal system viewed risk factors such as poor education, peer influence and unemployment as key in addressing offending behaviour and reforming the character of the individual: The sympathetic and corrective methods of training employed by the Institution undoubtedly effect a change of character. The discipline and well-­regulated life have fitted the boy for the labour market. He is sturdier, more confident and more industrious … a more enlightened appreciation of the work of the Borstal Institution by employers throughout the country would undoubtedly be an effective mode of approach to the serious problem of the young delinquent. (Department of Justice, 1948: 19)

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The borstal institution was transferred to the Mountjoy complex in 1956 and in 1960 a Statutory Instrument detailing regulations for a new institution were drafted. Section 10 of the Regulations governing St Patrick’s Institution facilitates the adoption of the general rules for the government of prisons in respect of St Patrick’s (St Patrick’s Institution Regulations, SI No. 224 of 1960). This essentially means that St Patrick’s is for the most part governed by the Rules for the Government of Prisons, SI No. 320 of 1947. These rules outline the manner in which prisoners are to be classified and managed within the institution. According to the Regulations, all aspects of their existence are to be closely regulated. In the case of their diet, the rules state: all prisoners shall be supplied with a sufficient quantity of plain and wholesome food in accordance with such dietary tables as may from time to time be approved by the Minister … The diet of any individual prisoner, not being a patient in the infirmary, may be increased or altered, or in the case of any prisoner who persistently wastes his food, may be reduced, on the written recommendation of the medical officer. (Rules for the Government of Prisons, 1947: 25–7)

Other rules serve to govern the accommodation, health, and restraint of those prisoners that are confined within the institution. The rules state that the basic unit of confinement, the cell: shall not be used for the separate confinement of a prisoner unless it is certified by the Minister to be of such a size, and to be lighted, warmed, ventilated, and fitted up in such a manner as may be requisite for health, and furnished with the means of enabling the prisoner to communicate at any time with an officer of the prison … Each prisoner shall occupy a cell by himself by day and by night (except otherwise directed). (1947: 3–4)

In addition to rules governing communication, punishment, employment and religious instruction, there are special rules for different classes of prisoners. In particular, Part 111 of the Rules outlines certain rules for the government of certain classes of juvenile prisoners and those between seventeen and twenty-­one years. For the purposes of organising the space, communication, exercise, instruction, employment, recreation and discipline, the rules distinguish three separate classes of juvenile prisoner: juvenile prisoners awaiting trial; juvenile offenders under conviction; prisoners between the ages of seventeen and twenty-­one. These Rules are aimed at regulating the prison space and by means of this regulation imposing discipline on these classes of prisoner in varying degrees. Rule 214 states that all prisoners who are under seventeen years and are either on remand or awaiting trial shall be referred to as ‘un-­convicted’ juvenile prisoners and ‘shall be formed into two divisions, being formed by the Governor and the chaplain: a) Those who have not been



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in prison before and who are well conducted in prison, who shall be kept separate from b) Those who have been in prison before, or who misbehave in prison’ (1947: 214). Also, juvenile offenders were to be kept separate from adult prisoners. Rule 224 states that the juvenile offender ‘shall take exercise, receive school instruction, and be seated in chapel, apart from and, if possible, out of sight of adult prisoners, with whom he shall not, on any occasion, be ­permitted  to come into contact’ (1947: 224). Rule 230 states that prisoners  between ­seventeen and twenty-­one years are to be ‘collected in a prison or part of a prison set apart for the purpose’, and be subjected to ‘special rules’. The rules provide for the separation of juveniles under eighteen years from adults by means of a separate school with a capacity of forty-­four beds. In addition to the strict regulation of space and the segregation of each individual, the regime in St Patrick’s is highly structured with inmates restricted to set times for meals, recreation, training and sleep. Like the reformatory and industrial schools the division of time and space is an integral part of this disciplinary institution. The individual and his activities are regulated utilising a series of disciplinary techniques. The cell, the workshop, the chapel and other discrete spaces within the institution facilitate the orderly distribution of inmates within this enclosed disciplinary space. In this way, St Patrick’s operates as a closed disciplinary institution utilising panoptic techniques to regulate those individuals who have been judged unsuitable to be dealt with in the ‘community’. Defined as a medium security facility, St Patrick’s is managed by the Irish Prison Service. It was built in the 1850s and is part of the Mountjoy prison complex. It has been the subject of sustained criticism from a number of sources including visiting committees, prison chaplains and non-­governmental organisations for most of its existence. The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System (Dáil Éireann,1985c) was highly critical of the regime in St Patrick’s for its failure to provide an ­environment conducive to rehabilitation. In 2006, the Institution was criticised by the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) for its lack of educational, recreation and training facilities (Council of Europe, 2007). Subsequent to this facilities at the Institution were improved with the addition of workshops and a new school room.5 In his annual report for 2010 the inspector of prisons noted that St Patrick’s ‘is in reality two s­ eparate institutions – one for juveniles between the ages of sixteen and eighteen years and the other for adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-­one years’. In February 2011, the Ombudsman for Children, p ­ ublished a report, Young People in St Patrick’s Institution. In it she was highly critical of a number of aspects of the regime at St Patrick’s ­highlighting its failure to adequately provide for the needs of young people detained there.

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St Patrick’s is essentially a disciplinary technology for governing young people between sixteen and twenty-­ one years who are sentenced or on remand. There is a limited range of pastoral technologies employed in order to achieve some rehabilitative effect on inmates. The regime is essentially a penal one with inmates contained within panoptic prison architecture. Space and time are tightly regulated and inmates are subjected to constant surveillance in a regime managed by prison officers. Children detention schools The principal aim of children detention schools (CDS) is the reintegration of young people into society with the overarching principles of education and care. The Children Act 2001 states that they are to be reintegrated into the community as persons who observe the law and are capable of making a positive and productive contribution to society. Section 158 of the Children Act 2001 sets out the principal objective of the schools as providing appropriate educational and training programmes and facilities for children referred by the courts. The Act also states that this shall be done by: having regard to their health, safety, welfare and interests, including their physical, psychological and emotional well-­being; providing proper care, guidance and supervision for them; preserving and developing satisfactory relationships between them and their families; exercising proper moral and disciplinary influences on them and recognising the personal, cultural and linguistic identity of each of them. Each CDS aims to strike a balance between providing for the care and education of the young people and containing the risk they pose to society. In 2004 the Department of Education and Science published its Standards and Criteria for Children Detention Schools and it is with reference to these standards that the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) carry out their inspections of Children Detention Schools in Ireland. The Standards outline the purpose, ethos and philosophy of the schools and how children in the schools are to be cared for in terms of their health and welfare, education, safety, security and their needs. In addition a number of policies have been approved for the schools by the Board of Management. These policies cover the following areas: behaviour management; supervision; notifiable incidents; Garda vetting; medication; separation; complaints; good practice; bullying; and safeguarding policy. Each young person detained is risk assessed by the staff. In this regard, in 2004 the Expert Group on Children Detention Schools published a document Standards and Criteria for Children Detention Schools and under the heading ‘Residential Placement and Segregation’ it states:



The technologies employed to govern135 • R  esidential placement of an individual child will be determined by the pre and post conviction status and a risk assessment of the individual child. • Risk assessment is seen as an on-­going process beginning with the initial admission of a child. The risk level for a given child may change based on a child’s behaviour and the risk factors which are present. • The factors of age and offence type are significant features in the risk assessment of a child but would not be predetermining factors regarding placement. (Department of Education and Science, 2004: 14)

Having assessed the risk that the child poses to society, themselves and staff at the school a child is given a suitable placement. The regime into which the child is placed will be determined by this risk assessment. The Expert Group on Children Detention Schools includes as one of its principles for the operation of children detention schools that the, ‘delivery of services and interventions shall be based on the risks and needs of the individual child with due regard to the interests of the wider community’ (Expert Group on Children Detention Schools, 2006: 13). The language of ‘risk assessment’ is here employed to manage any conflict that might occur between issues of care or control. The assessment of the needs of the child and the risk to the community is presented as a scientific process justifying the ‘appropriate’ management of the child. Once admitted to the CDS the child is assigned a key worker who plays a role in the ongoing assessment and progress of the child throughout his or her stay in the school. In addition to ensuring a level of security based on the perceived risk, these schools provide a range of pastoral technologies aimed at reintegrating the child into the community. There are a range of activities provided in the schools, including mainstream education, indoor and outdoor activities, pro-­social modelling programmes, counselling and limited outreach programmes. These technologies emphasise the educational and psychological development of the child and seek to include the families of the children where possible with children being allowed to contact their parents on a regular basis. A significant feature of this technology is the use of the ‘care plan’, which is prepared in respect of each child. This plan sets the psychological and moral goals that are to be achieved in relation to each individual. As such, the transformation and reintegration of the child is viewed as a work in progress. The Standards and Criteria for Children Detention Schools (Department of Education and Science, 2004: 13) stipulate that each school should have: a written care plan for each young person entering its care. The plan is developed in consultation with parents/guardians and the young person concerned and is subject to regular review. The plan stresses the need for regular contact with the family and prepares the young person for leaving care. The plan promotes the general welfare of the young person including appropriate provision

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to meet his/her educational, health, emotional and psychological needs. The experience of young people is enhanced by positive working relationships between professionals.

These plans have the effect of engaging a range of professionals, the family and the individual in the process of governing the young person’s present and future behaviour. The young person’s reintegration into the community is viewed as a ‘care issue’ and he or she is encouraged to participate in this process of reintegration. Both disciplinary and pastoral techniques are employed in order to govern the behaviour of those detained. The Standards and Criteria for Children Detention Schools 2008 state that individual offending behaviour programmes consistent with the young person’s assessed needs should be in place and that there should be mechanisms in place to develop, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of offending behaviour programmes (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 2008: 22). High support and special care As we have seen above, young people detained in detention schools are managed within a regime of ‘care’ rather than punishment. Those staffing the schools are appropriately trained to deliver this regime of care as opposed to the employment of prison officers in an institution like St Patrick’s. Similar regimes are employed in high support and special care units. The Social Services Inspectorate describe high support units (HSUs) as ‘open units’ offering an enhanced service to young people in comparison with mainstream foster and residential care placements (Social Services Inspectorate, 2006). There is normally a high ratio of staff to young people, with access to education, training, assessment and therapy provided on site by specialist staff. Access to these units is based on an assessment of risk and this assessment continues throughout the young person’s tenure in high support. Different units adopt different approaches; however, what all high support units have in common is the exceptional needs of the children they deal with and the therapeutic emphasis of the regime. As already noted, the essential difference between high support and special care is the level of security involved. Special care is regarded as a ‘placement of last resort and can only be justified if it can be shown that the level of security required is the paramount consideration’ (Department of Health and Children, 1998: 13). The special care unit is a technology designed to manage the behaviour of those young people who cannot be managed within mainstream technologies such as schools, diversionary initiatives or other community-­based initiatives. Within these units children are subjected to intense supervision and assessment from the moment of admission to discharge. This is justified on the basis of the ever-­present risk to the young



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person and to the community. The disciplinary regime utilised to manage young people within these units is rationalised on the basis of its therapeutic content. In this sense, incarceration is always viewed as a last resort and necessary for the care and protection of the young person. In 2005 the Special Residential Services Board reviewed the admission criteria and processes for special care. The following year the SRSB carried out a review of the criteria for the appropriate use of special care. It noted that special care units were intended to provide short-­term interventions designed to ‘stabilise an “extreme” situation which has been persistent and severe, following a risk assessment … [and to] … improve the welfare and development of young people in a model based on relationships, containment and positive reinforcement’ (Special Residential Services Board, 2006: 3). It noted that programmes are designed to ‘stabilise’ the ‘out of control’ young person and effect their onward placement within the system. It recommended that programmes in the units should include a key worker relationship model in a multi-­disciplinary setting, a defined model of care consistent with best childcare practice, full educational provision, speech and language therapy, accessible psychological and psychiatric services, medical service, allocation of a social worker and a social and family reintegration programme in accordance with the care plan. A risk assessment is carried out in respect of each young person who is the subject of a Special Care Order. This is followed by the assignment of a key worker and the implementation of a care plan. The care plan is developed by the child’s social worker in consultation with other parties. The implementation of a care plan is a statutory requirement legislated for by the Child Care Regulations (Placement of Children in Residential Care) 1995, section 23(1). The units utilise a range of therapeutic, educational, recreational and life-­skills programmes that are employed with the aim of eventually moving the young person to a less secure setting. The special care regime is designed to restore some degree of control to the individual whose behaviour is regarded as being ‘out of control’. It aims to teach the child to self-­regulate their behaviour through externally imposed technologies such as restriction of movement, restraint and in some cases medication. The required adjustment of the young person’s behaviour is plotted within the co-­ordinates of the ‘care plan’ and the ‘key worker’ who is assigned to each young person measures this progress. The professionals who work in these units are expected to act as positive role models and actively engage with the young person. A road map is drawn up for and in consultation with the young person, based on his or her perceived needs. The psycho/ social journey of the young person is plotted using various tools that aim to measure his or her progress during the period of detention. A team of professionals constantly monitors the risk status of each individual until his or her

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eventual exit from the unit. Within this framework the young person is governed through the use of a range of professional reports, including: psychological reports; educational reports; psychiatric reports; key worker reports; care plans; a social history; a family history; a placement history; speech and language reports; social worker reports; and medical reports. The Child Care (Special Care) Regulations 2004 stipulate that a ‘case record’ and ‘care plan’ be maintained in respect of each young person detained.6 These records are important tools in the technology of special care in that they facilitate the construction of the identity of the child who is subject to the special care regime and dictate the manner in which he or she is governed for the duration of the detention. The case record includes the following information and documents relating to the child: name, address, sex and religion; family details; court orders or other orders existing in respect of the child; medical, psychological and social reports, including background information on the family; educational reports; copy of care plan; and numerous other reports relating to the child outlined in the regulations. The care plan covers the aims and objectives of the placement; access arrangements; support to be provided; service provision, support or treatment for the child or the family; and arrangements for review. High support and special care represent a combination of disciplinary and pastoral techniques designed to manage the ‘out of control’ young person. As technologies of government they are presented as forms of ‘care’ and their regimes are rationalised through the language of psychology and the social sciences. As such, governing is portrayed as ‘treatment’ and incarceration and intervention is justified on the basis of risk assessment. Expert languages are utilised to govern and difficult behaviour is redefined as an infringement of certain psycho/social norms. Central to this process is the construction of the ‘difficult’ young person as simultaneously ‘troubled and troublesome’. The provision of special care under the Children Act 2001 reflects growing recognition that certain forms of juvenile behaviour formerly classified as ‘criminal’ are now being identified as ‘welfare’ issues. As such, the emergence of the concept of ‘special care’ is a significant development within the context  of juvenile justice and child care legislation because prior to this the detention of a child could only occur as a result of a criminal charge or a conviction. Indeed, some have found it worrying that the special care order has been introduced as part of the Children Act 2001, arguing that this undermines the distinction between the welfare of the child and juvenile justice.7 By means of the language of ‘protection’ and ‘welfare’ a separate space has been marked out where the ‘difficult’ or ‘troublesome’ child can be governed. Politically, this space is viewed as less controversial because the restriction of the child’s liberty is justified on the basis of a ‘scientific’ knowledge of the individual. In this regard:



The technologies employed to govern139 The psy disciplines, partly as a consequence of their heterogeneity and lack of a single paradigm, have acquired penetrative capacity in relation to practices for the conduct of conduct. They have not only been able to supply a whole variety of models of selfhood but also to provide practicable recipes for action in relation to the government of persons by professionals in different locales. Their potency has been further increased by their ability to supplement these practicable qualities with a legitimacy deriving from their claims to tell the truth about human beings. (Rose, 1996b: 34)

Pastoral technologies The diversion programme An Garda Síochána has operated a scheme for diverting certain classes of juvenile offenders from the formal justice system since 1953. The Garda Juvenile Liaison Officer Scheme for cautioning young offenders was put on a formal basis in 1963 and on a statutory basis with the enactment of the Children Act 2001. The main philosophy underpinning the Programme is that of diverting the young person away from the court system in the belief that to do so will avoid the labelling of them. A central element of the Programme is the pastoral relationship that the young person engages in with the juvenile liaison officer (JLO) and other significant individuals. These relationships are the foundation upon which this technology is based. The programme when originally introduced in 1953 was aimed at young people under fourteen years who had committed minor offences. Discretion was given to the local superintendent to issue a warning in the presence of the child’s parents if satisfied ‘a) that the offence can be regarded as a childish lapse, b) that the child is not of a criminal disposition, c) that his parents can be relied upon to discipline him and to take steps against his offending in the future and d) that the injured party does not desire to see the child prosecuted’ (An Garda Síochána, 1953: 1). The system as it existed then sought to enlist the support of the parents in disciplining the young person. In this sense, the primary relationship utilised was that between the parent and child with the garda formally administering the warning. An Garda Síochána exercised significant discretion in deciding the suitability of the offence and the ‘criminal disposition’ of the offender. With the eventual formalisation of the programme for cautioning juveniles in 1963 the position of JLO was created. This extended the role of An Garda Síochána in the diversion process beyond merely ‘warning’ the juvenile offender. JLOs were to engage with the offender and his or her family in an effort to ensure the successful readjustment of the offender’s behaviour. Although, those offenders deemed suitable for inclusion on the programme

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were being diverted away from the court system, they were being inserted into the criminal justice system at a different level. At a symbolic level the shadow of the prison hangs over this diversionary technology as the ‘last resort’. As has been seen, one of the main rationalities underpinning diversion is the perceived failure of the prison. Within the context of the diversionary process the identity of the offender is constructed through a process of inscription. This is achieved by entering the juvenile’s personal details in the official Garda records. Offenders are classified within different categories: suitable or unsuitable for inclusion on the Programme; suitable for formal or informal caution: suitable or unsuitable for ‘supervision’. Gardaí are given responsibility for making these judgements based on their experience and set criteria.8 In addition to forms designed to capture information relevant to each offender, JLOs are required to prepare background reports on each offender. These forms and reports represent the practical dimension of this particular technology. They embody a series of judgements surrounding the offender and the offence. They detail his or her ‘criminal status’; previous history; risk of offending in the future; willingness to admit guilt for the offence; views of the victim; views of the detecting garda; and willingness to engage with the process of diversion. An identity is thus constructed using this process of inscription whereby the offender is contained within a matrix of relationships with gardaí, the victim, the criminal justice system and the crime committed. The offender is bound within this matrix of relationships by means of a number of factors: an admission of guilt; the threat of possible sanction for failure to co-­operate with the programme; a willingness to participate in his or her future ethical reconstruction. Depending on the nature of the offence, the offender may be dealt with by formal or informal caution. The former involves the administering of a formal caution followed by a period (usually twelve months) of supervision by the JLO.9 The latter involves a caution given by the JLO in the presence of the offender’s parents. In both instances there is an attempt to develop a pastoral relationship between the offender, the garda and the offender’s family with the aim of reconstructing the ethical life of the young person. There is also a confessional aspect to the process, whereby the offender is engaged in the formal ritual of admitting guilt in front of gardaí, family members and in some cases the victim. In the case of the formal caution the cautioning officer will normally be a garda of at least inspector rank and the victim may be present. In this sense, like the restorative caution, there exists a dynamic of shaming and reintegration. From the beginning the element of supervision with regard to the young person has been an integral part of the scheme. Gardaí utilised the scheme as a method of surveillance of the ‘at risk’ child within the juvenile population:



The technologies employed to govern141 The aims of the Scheme are to prevent children and young persons under the age of seventeen years, who are at risk, from becoming involved in deviant and criminal behaviour; and in cases of those who have already offended in a minor way, divert them into legitimate activities, and prevent them from becoming adult criminals. Under the Scheme, a minor under the age of seventeen years … may be dealt with by caution as an alternative to court proceedings, and may be subject to the surveillance and guidance of the Juvenile Liaison Officer until the age of seventeen is reached. Supervision may be withdrawn before reaching this age if it is considered that no risk is involved. (An Garda Síochána, 1978: 28)

This process of surveillance stretched beyond merely interacting with the offender and the offender’s family with the JLO interacting with parents, teachers, probation officers, social workers, welfare officers and youth workers. By becoming involved in youth and other clubs operating in the community the JLOs were ‘in a better position to assist juvenile offenders and their families and to guide the young offender away from a life of crime (An Garda Síochána, 2002: 109). In this way, the JLO was viewed as a specialist police officer with an aptitude for operating within a variety of social settings and trained to negotiate a package of strategies designed to govern the young offender or potential young offender. Such officers ‘were appointed on the basis of their experience, aptitude and commitment for dealing with the youth and because of their involvement with general community affairs’ (An Garda Síochána Annual Report, 1984: 26). The Diversion Programme is now primarily a pastoral technology in that it encompasses a network of relationships at the centre of which is the JLO. The young person who is the subject of the programme is enlisted in a series of social strategies designed to adjust his or her behaviour. These strategies depend upon the co-­operation of a variety of individuals such as teachers, youth workers, counsellors and family members who are also given responsibility for monitoring the offender who remains under the supervision of the JLO. This process of supervision takes place within a range of sites: the home, youth clubs, schools and the community. An Garda Síochána is the fulcrum around which this system revolves. The JLO creates an identity for the young person by making certain judgements as to his or her risk of future offending. This process of inscription, an important element of this governmental technology, creates a new identity for the young person according to the perceived risk he or she poses and thus facilitates the future management of his or her behaviour. In this regard, Ericson and Haggerty note that, ‘the most mundane aspects of police work – routine surveillance, form filling, and indeed the forms themselves – reveal a great deal about how the culture classifies people in terms of their identities and, through the power of risk classification, keeps them in their places’ (1999:

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166).The classification of young people according to their future likelihood of offending ultimately determines whether they are to be subject to a one-­off warning or a lengthy process of supervision. Gardaí are here operating as risk managers. The Diversion Programme is grounded on the following elements: the belief that entry into the criminal justice system will be detrimental to the future development of the young person; the employment of a risk-­based knowledge in relation to future offending; the belief that gardaí are best placed to calculate the level of risk, the degree of supervision required and manage the process; the employment of a pastoral philosophy that enlists the support of a range of individuals, including gardaí, parents, the victim and other interested parties; a requirement on the part of the offender to engage in a process of confession of guilt for the offence committed; and the belief that such a confessional process will result in a change in behaviour on the part of the young person. Restorative justice initiatives The confessional aspect whereby the offender admits guilt is an essential element of restorative justice initiatives. In the context of the Diversion Programme, the JLO acts as a mediator between the victim and the offender and each juvenile liaison officer is given training in basic mediation skills in order to carry out this function. The ultimate aim is to achieve some form of ethical resolution for the victim and the offender. With regard to An Garda Síochána there are two types of restorative justice initiatives and both come within the scope of the Diversion Programme. The first, as mentioned above, involves the offender, the victim and the JLO and will result in an expression of guilt on the part of the offender and may result in some kind of reparation. This is referred to as a restorative caution. The second type of restorative event provided for under the Children Act 2001 is the restorative conference. Section 29 of the Children Act 2001 provides for the holding of such a conference. The restorative conference brings together the victim, the offender’s family, relatives or other persons deemed appropriate. A restorative event will normally be chaired by the JLO but there is provision in certain circumstances to have another person as chair. The restorative event is essentially an examination of the reasons why the offender committed the offence and allows for an exploration of the factors influencing his or her conduct. These usually include psychological, familial or broadly social factors. The event aims to evoke feelings of shame in the offender in the hope that this will bring about a psychological change and result in an adjustment of their future behaviour. The presence of the victim is used to confront the offender with the ‘reality’ of his or her crime.



The technologies employed to govern143 In addition to humanising the harm, the behaviour is challenged and an opportunity is afforded to the offender not only to apologise but to take some action to ‘undo’ the harm. This act of ‘restoration’ may be by way of replacing goods stolen, compensating for a loss, mending some damage caused or agreeing conditions for future behaviour designed to reassure the victim that the offending will not re-­occur. (An Garda Síochána, 2004: 11)

The restorative event normally results in the drawing up of a contract that is signed by the offender in which he or she agrees to undertake some future course of action. Section 39 of the Children Act 2001 provides for the formulation of an ‘action plan’ as a result of the conference. This can include: an apology; financial reparation; participation in certain activities; staying away from certain places; remaining at home at specified times; or any other matter that is viewed as being in the child’s best interests or would make the child more aware of his or her criminal behaviour. The conference may be reconvened at any time in order to discuss any aspect of this action plan. The action plan is in effect a moral contract drawn up by the offender, the victim and others outlining the proposed future conduct of the offender. The restorative conference is a governmental technology designed to reshape the conduct of the offender in accordance with certain ethical co-­ ordinates. The event itself takes place within a ‘community space’. This space is located outside the formal justice system. The offender is regarded as having offended against the ‘community’ and through a ritualistic process of moral and psychological realignment is reattached to this virtuous community. Watchel, whose Real Justice is used as a training manual for police forces throughout the world, describes the effect of this ‘emotional event’ as follows: The term micro-­community has been used to describe the relationship between those who are brought together in a conference. Initially, the common bond which the participants share is the offence. By the end of the process they also share the experience of the conference itself, an emotional event that forges relationships between participants. Long after the conference those relationships will be quietly acknowledged by a wave or a knowing smile whenever participants encounter one another. Police officers have often told how an offender from a conference they facilitated now waves when they see each other on the streets. (1997: 194)

The restorative conference is a carefully choreographed technological process and the ritual of shaming and reintegration is enacted in accordance with a defined script.10 The seating arrangements and the order in which individuals are required to speak are carefully controlled in order to achieve maximum impact. All in all, this is a carefully structured ritualistic process designed to effect a psychological and moral change in the offender. The identity of the offender is reconstituted by his reintegration into the ‘community’. This new identity is, however, conditional on his or her abiding by the terms of the

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agreed action plan. The individual is thus given conditional membership of the ‘moral community’ subject to a period of supervision.11 There are a number of important elements of this technology: the sanctioning of an ethical space, a ‘micro-­community’ within which the conduct of the offender can be adjudicated upon and governed; the construction of a ritual designed to impact psychologically and ethically on the individual; the pastoral relationship existing between the JLO and the individual; the presence of those other members of the ‘community’, including the individual’s family, who can exert a ‘moral pressure’ on the individual in the hope of effecting a change in his or her future behaviour; and the presence of the victim as signifying the harm done and the need for reparation. Supporters of the restorative model argue that it better represents the rights of the victim and the community and the resulting ethical reconstruction of the offender takes place within a space where the interests of the victim, offender and community can be resolved in a way that cannot be achieved in the court system. According to Lockhart: Restorative approaches are ‘inclusive’ in that they take account of the interests of victims, offenders, and, sometimes, the wider community in addition to the public interest in deciding how best to deal with a case; they extend the range of those who are entitled to participate in the process of dealing with the offender; and they extend the range of potential outcomes of the process to include restoration for the victim and reintegration of the offender into the community. (2002: 748)

In this sense, the restorative event can be viewed as a moral technology that purports to uphold the rights of those who participate in it while at the same time dispensing justice to the offender. In attempting to balance the rights of the individual and community it is typical of more modern forms of liberal governance that seek to enlist the support of a range of individuals in the young person’s environment in order to encourage behavioural change.12 In this regard, the pervasive image of the perpetrator of crime is not one of the juridical subject of the rule of law, nor that of the social and psychological subject of criminology, but of the individual who has failed to accept his or her responsibilities as a subject of the moral community. Punishment by shaming and reform by ethical reconstruction seek to reconstruct these ethical self-­ steering mechanisms. (Rose, 2000: 205)

Garda youth diversion projects The Comprehensive Guidelines for Garda Youth Diversion Projects (Dublin Institute of Technology, 2003) suggest reasons for referring individuals to a project. The criteria includes: poor school attendance/early school-­leaving;



The technologies employed to govern145

offending behaviour/offending peer group; known to JLO/local gardaí; alcohol/drug use; family involvement in crime; and difficult relationship with parents/authority figures. Within this process of referral each project participant is defined by a specific combination of risk factors. The guidelines recommend a maximum of ten factors for identifying a young person as suitable to participate on a project. However, although some risk factors are suggested, there is no definitive list of risk factors to be employed. It would appear that a decision in relation to what risk factors are suitable is to be taken by the referral committee. Having decided that an individual is suitable to be referred to the project the referral committee decides on the level of intervention required for each participant. The use of risk profiling has become a more prominent feature of these projects and the juvenile justice system in general.13 Methods of inscription employed by project staff create a new identity for the project participant. This identity is constructed by project staff and recorded on specific report forms. The participant is profiled as high, medium or low risk depending on the judgement of the project staff. The category ‘at risk’ is thus utilised to facilitate the targeting of certain individuals and populations. The projects employ a risk-­based knowledge in order to manage certain classes of young people. In the process both communities and individuals are profiled according to their level of risk. Projects are inserted into more marginalised communities that are judged to have a higher risk profile and once established these projects enlist the co-­operation of a range of groups and individuals in order to supervise the behaviour of the target population with the aim of preventing crime and encouraging certain kinds of behaviour. The Comprehensive Guidelines for Garda Youth Diversion Projects (2003) define Garda Youth Diversion Projects as ‘community based, multi-­agency crime prevention initiatives which seek to divert young people from becoming involved (or further involved) in anti-­social and/or criminal behaviour by providing suitable activities to facilitate personal development and promote civic responsibility’ (2003: 1). Once the process of risk identification has been completed participants are managed in accordance with their risk rating. The decision as to what activities are appropriate for each participant is made by the project co-­ordinator in consultation with the project committee. These will generally take the form of youth-­work-­type activities in a group setting or individual one-­to-­one work or a combination of both. The projects employ the ‘at risk’ category to define those participating on them. This definition is sufficiently broad to include both offenders and those who have never offended. This technology operates on the cusp of justice and welfare and as a result of this tensions can exist around the issues of care and control. This is best illustrated by the figure of the project co-­ordinator, who takes on a pastoral role in relation to project participants. By organising activities aimed at adjusting

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the behaviour of the young person and negotiating with outside groups and agencies the co-­ordinator manages the process of rehabilitation of the young person, negotiating strategies designed to facilitate their care and control. Rose notes that: Within this new territory of exclusion, a whole array of control agencies – police, social workers, doctors, psychiatrists, mental health professionals – seek to link up in circuits of surveillance and communication in a perpetually failing endeavour to minimise the riskiness of the most risky. They form a multiplicity of points for the collection, inscription, accumulation and distribution of information relevant to the management of risk. (Rose, 2000: 199)

Garda Youth Diversion Projects are a risk-­based technology that target young offenders and potential young offenders. These individuals are encouraged to become more responsible through the employment of certain pastoral-­type strategies designed to affect an ethical transformation with the individual being portrayed as someone who is free to choose from a range of lifestyles. Probation Like the above-­mentioned governmental technologies, probation aims to take account of the specific character of the individual to be governed. As previously mentioned, the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 provided the judiciary with an alternative to detention in certain circumstances and recognised certain criminological factors such as the ‘character’ and the ‘antecedents’ of the offender. The Act also allowed the court, when deciding on an appropriate sentence to take into account the individual’s age, health and mental condition and the nature of the offence, or the particular circumstances under which the offence was committed. Section 96 of the Children Act 2001 goes a step further in relation to juvenile offenders by outlining a specific set of sentencing principles. This is one of the Act’s key contributions in that it recognises the importance of preventing interruption of a child’s education, training or employment and protects the relationship between children and their families by allowing children to remain in their own homes. Section 96 sets out certain principles relating to the sentencing of children taking account of: the child’s education, training and employment; the child’s relationship with his or her parents and other family members; the family’s ability to deal with the child’s behaviour; the child’s need to reside at home; the child’s age and level of maturity; the principle of detention as a last resort; the difference between the child and an adult offender; the interests of the victim. Specific recognition is given to the social and psychological factors influencing the development of the child and the imperative of retaining detention as a last resort. It is against this backdrop that the technology of probation is employed. In this regard, the Children Act



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2001 has given wider scope for the technology of probation to operate. This includes a range of initiatives and sanctions that allow the probation officer to supervise the young person in a variety of settings such as the family, the community and residential accommodation. From its beginnings probation encompassed the support of a wide range of individuals and voluntary organisations that had contact with young people. The two most prominent of these were the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the Legion of Mary. The pastoral techniques employed by these organisations in their works as part of a Catholic lay apostolate were also utilised in their work assisting the courts and it is easy to see how the objectives of rehabilitation and evangelisation could become inter-­changeable in such work. The Probation of Offenders Act 1907 outlined the duties of the probation officer ‘to advise, assist and befriend’ the young person. Similarly, the Legion of Mary’s handbook (1993: 243) notes, in relation to ‘works for the young’, that: Competent legionaries, once admitted to the home, will know how to make all the members of that family feel the radiation of their apostolate. A sincere interest in the children will usually make a favourable impression on the parents. This can be skilfully utilised to cultivate in them the seed of the supernatural so that, as the children had been the key to their parents’ home, likewise they will prove to be the key to their parents’ hearts and eventually to their souls.

Likewise C.K. Murphy, a prominent member of the Society of St Vincent de Paul and supporter of the Catholic lay apostolate, viewed juvenile delinquency as ‘intimately bound up with the Christian doctrine of free will, grace in the soul and moral responsibility’ (1959: 116). The central role of the volunteer in the field of probation in Ireland at this time afforded ample opportunity for both organisations to combine the twin aims of rehabilitation and evangelisation. As already noted, Catholic church teaching and the principle of subsidiarity had a significant influence on the development of the probation service in the twentieth century. However, although the modern probation system has adopted a more ‘social-­work-­type’ practice, the process of enlisting the support of families and other significant figures in the life of the offender in order to influence the young person’s behaviour is still employed. Roche noted that the probation officer’s first task: is to win the confidence of the person needing help, and often that of his family, since only with their co-­operation can the full picture emerge … It is the appreciation of, and concentration upon, the probationer’s ability to benefit from developing a personal relationship with the Probation Officer that principally distinguishes probation supervision today from that of a quarter of a century ago. (1970: 182)

Key to the operation of this technology is the pastoral relationship developed between the probation officer and the offender. The officer mediates,

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­ egotiates and advocates on behalf of the offender and also assesses his or her n behaviour by updating the court on their progress or otherwise. This process, aimed at adjusting the behaviour of the offender is dependent on the ability of the probation officer to engage the offender in the process of reformation by advising, assisting and befriending them. In order to achieve this, the probation officer can enlist the support of families, other individuals, groups and organisations. An example of this is the Le Cheile Mentoring Project, which was established in 2005 to meet the needs of the Mentor (Family Support) Order under the Children Act 2001 and is funded by the Probation Service. It is aimed at young people between twelve and eighteen years who have come into contact with the Probation Service. It actively recruits and trains teams of volunteers to act in the role of a supportive adult, role model, advisor or friend. The Project aims to provide a mentoring service that promotes positive change and focuses on the decision making and overall well-­being of participants while also complementing the role of Young Person’s Probation in addressing offending behaviour in accordance with legislative requirements under the Mentor (Family Support) Order.14 It targets young people at risk of offending by engaging them in a range of activities, including sport, social activities and educational courses through their team of mentors. Through these activities it is hoped that the young person will increase their self-­esteem, be motivated to engage in education or employment and change his or her behaviour and become less of a risk to society. A similar project is the ‘Big Brothers Big Sisters Programme’ run by the youth development organisation Foróige.15 The probation officer cultivates links with other individuals who maintain a pastoral relationship with the offender, including teachers, volunteers and friends. These enable the probation officer to employ a full range of strategies designed for the reformation of the individual. Such strategies usually focus on some problem or other that has been identified by the probation officer in the young person’s environment. Before deciding on the appropriate strategy for the young person an assessment is carried out by the probation officer. It is then decided which sanction is appropriate. The Young Persons’ Probation Service manages a number of community-­based projects aimed at addressing the behaviour of the individual and reducing the chances of re-­offending (IYJS, 2010). Within this context, the Children Act 2001 provides for a range of community-­based sanctions including: Probation Supervision Order (section 2 of the 1907 Act); Probation Training or Activities Programme Order (section 124 of the Children Act 2001); Probation (Residential Supervision) Order (section 126 of the Children Act 2001); Mentor (Family Support) Order (section 131 of the Children Act 2001); Suitable Person (Care and Supervision) Order (section 129 of the Children Act 2001); Day Centre Order (section 118 of the Children Act 2001); Dual Order (section 137 of the



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Children Act 2001); Probation (Intensive Supervision) Order (section 125 of the Children Act 2001); and Community Service Order (section 3 of the Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act 1983). Probation initiatives aim to effect a change in the behaviour of young people by engaging them in a wide range of activities designed to make them more ‘responsible’ for their actions. A feature of many of these technologies that seek to ‘responsibilise’ young people is the employment of the language of empowerment. This is closely allied to the pastoral nature of these technologies. Young people are encouraged to explore their potential to become more responsible, to become better citizens, to increase their social skills, to become more employable, to be healthier, through a process of self-­examination and of exploration of their life choices. According to Nikolas Rose, these technologies of the self utilise the language of empowerment in a way that, ‘appears to reject the logics of patronising dependency that infused earlier welfare models of expertise. Subjects are to do work on themselves, not in the name of conformity, but to make them free’ (2000: 201). These probation initiatives can be viewed as technologies of citizenship that attempt to implant in their subjects certain self-­steering mechanisms. The probation officer is the key figure in this process in that he assists, advises and befriends the young person on his or her journey to self-­fulfilment, linking him or her to other key players in this process. The individual becomes engaged in a process to create a new identity for themselves and this is usually characterised by overcoming some mitigating factor such as alcohol or drug dependency, educational failure, unemployment and/or low self-­esteem. Crime prevention/early intervention initiatives Apart from Garda Youth Diversion Projects and Probation Projects there are a range of initiatives that are aimed at the prevention of juvenile crime. Such initiatives tend to look at offending behaviour as arising due to certain risk factors present in the young person’s life. They seek to address one or more of these factors through various programmes aimed at reducing the overall level of risk. A feature of many of these initiatives is the employment of risk assessment techniques in an effort to prevent future criminal activity. The child or young person is viewed as a potential offender or re-­offender and this potentiality is measured by using a specific set of risk factors. The risk of offending or re-­offending is usually incorporated into a broader definition of risk covering issues of protection and welfare. Most crime prevention initiatives target the ‘at risk’ child or young person despite the fact that, in some cases, there is no clear definition of what ‘at risk’ actually means. The term ‘at risk’ functions as a linguistic device that is utilised in order to facilitate the management of these offenders. In Ireland there are a wide range of initiatives that aim to prevent crime by addressing one or more risk factors. In 2003 the National

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Crime Council proposed the establishment of a national model for crime prevention. It stressed the need to develop and support initiatives aimed at early intervention as a method of governing the ‘at risk’ child population. More recently, in July 2009 the government published a White Paper on Crime, Crime Prevention and Community Safety (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2009). It recommended a range of initiatives designed to address recognised risk factors in the child’s environment such as: poverty; educational disadvantage; poor parenting, psychology, substance misuse and community environment. These interventions fall into three broad headings: family; education; and community. There are a large number of initiatives aimed at early intervention in the lives of children who may or have become involved in crime. Although these projects are not directly funded as part of the criminal justice system the work they engage in is recognised as contributing to crime prevention. The National Youth Justice Strategy 2008–2010 states that although it is focused primarily on those who have come into contact with the law: Early intervention and timely action by all key stakeholders is essential if children are to be diverted from crime at an early stage. By meeting the welfare and educational needs of children adequately, this can help to protect children from involvement in crime and anti-­social behaviour … It is generally agreed that issues such as poverty, unemployment, early-­school leaving, addiction and inadequate parenting all contribute in a major way to crime by young people. (IYJS, 2008b: 12)

Initiatives such as family support aim to address multiple risk factors in the child’s environment. Thus, the aim of crime prevention is often viewed as part of a wider strategy designed to address these multiple risk factors. An example of this is the Springboard family support initiative that was launched by the government in 1998. Initial funding was for fifteen family support projects. This grew to one hundred family and community centres the following year and there has continued to be significant government investment in this area to the present (Department of Health and Children, 2001). Family support targets both children and families ‘at risk’ with many of these projects working intensively with children, mainly between the ages of seven and twelve, who are ‘at risk’ of going into care or offending. Such projects utilise the technology of family support to empower families to overcome potentially adverse social conditions. In employing this technology certain communities are given a high risk rating due to identifiable social conditions such as unemployment, poor housing, high percentage of single parents and low-­income levels. Once the target population has been selected the process of identifying risky individuals or families begins. These individuals or families are then supported, encouraged and empowered to adjust their behaviour in



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line with specific norms that are usually defined in terms of protection and welfare. Project activities include: individual work to assess needs and provide advice, counselling and support; group work and activities such as parenting skills and personal development; breakfast clubs; homework and after-­school activities; building inter-­agency networks both statutory and voluntary. The HSE currently fund a range of family support initiatives including: therapeutic work; parent education programmes; home-­based parent and family support programmes; child development and education interventions; youth work; and community development.16 These employ a range of welfare technologies to govern children and their families in areas such as early childhood development; parental education; work with ‘at risk’ young people; promoting partnership with families; and residential and after care. Young people who are identified as being in danger of dropping out of school are enlisted in extra-­curricular activities that link them to other support systems. In a similar way the Home–School Liaison Scheme (HSCL) seeks to address risk factors in the family, school and community. Established in 1990 the HSCL’s main aim is to support marginalised pupils to stay in education. In this regard, the scheme promotes co-­operation between home, school and the community. This and other such initiatives enlist the support of teachers, families, the community and others in encouraging young people to make more responsible lifestyle choices. While some initiatives target specific risk factors such as educational failure, youth work initiatives tend to cover a wide range of risk factors. As mentioned earlier the Department of Children and Youth Affairs funds a large network of projects and initiatives targeting ‘at risk’ children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Until the enactment of the Youth Work Act 2001 there was no coherent definition of what the term youth work actually meant. The 2001 Act defined youth work as: A planned programme of education designed for the purpose of aiding and enhancing the personal and social development of young persons through their voluntary participation, and which is a) complementary to their formal, academic or vocational education and training; and b) provided primarily by voluntary youth work organisations.

The National Youth Council of Ireland is the representative body for national voluntary youth work in Ireland. It has over fifty voluntary youth work organisations affiliated to it, including: the Catholic Girl Guides of Ireland; the Irish Girl Guides; Catholic Youth Care; Foróige; Macra na Feirme; Pavee Point; Scouting Ireland; YMCA Ireland; Ógra Chorcaí; and Youth Work Ireland. Some of these organisations, such as Catholic Youth Care and Foróige, are also involved in the management of Garda Youth Diversion Projects. Many of these ‘youth work’ projects employ professional youth workers to engage

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young people ‘at risk’ through a wide range of activities which include one-­to-­ one programmes, group work activities, sporting activities, counselling, crime prevention initiatives and drug and alcohol programmes. Such initiatives often have multiple aims that can be viewed as directly or indirectly contributing to a reduction in offending behaviour. These include programmes aimed at personal development, employability, challenging behaviour, increasing self-­esteem, building social skills, drug or alcohol use, counselling, parenting skills, education, offender reintegration, mentoring, mediation and advocacy. Initiatives such as Garda Youth Diversion Projects, Probation Projects, Youth Projects and early intervention initiatives encompass many of these goals in trying to address multiple risk factors in the lives of those deemed ‘at risk’. Conclusion Within the juvenile justice system there exist an array of technologies aimed at governing the young offender and potential offender. Each technology is grounded upon a specific underlying philosophy such as: incarceration; diversion; restorative justice; probation; crime prevention; reformation; community development; high support and special care. The history of juvenile justice in Ireland has been dominated by disciplinary technologies such as reformatory and industrial schools. Detention schools, high support and special care units have also emerged as new disciplinary technologies. These newer technologies tend to employ ‘quasi-­scientific’ language that justifies interventions on the grounds of protection and welfare. They claim to protect society from the ‘troublesome’ and protect the ‘troubled’ from themselves. Within these sites the individual’s risk is assessed and various tools are utilised to govern them. These include care plans and psychological and other expert reports. Together, all these elements constitute a new technology of ‘care’. Staff trained to cater for the protection and welfare of the young person manage children’s behaviour within these facilities. This process of ‘caring’ is seamlessly woven into the process of reformation and the thread that binds both together is the language of risk. The identity of the young person is reconstituted in terms of the degree of risk that is ascribed to them and their risk status is monitored using techniques of observation and inscription. The psychologist, therapist, social worker and key worker are the authors of this new identity and their reports determine at what level the young person is retained within the system or whether he or she is returned to the community to be governed in more open sites. These disciplinary technologies are supplemented by a range of less visible ones that measure the relative risk of the young person, with the detention centre at one end of the scale and the early intervention initiative at the other.



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In terms of numbers processed the most prominent technology in the juvenile justice system is now diversion. The Diversion Programme is the largest single initiative within the Irish juvenile justice system. In 2010, 17,986 children were referred to the Programme resulting in 12,899 children being cautioned (An Garda Síochána, 2010). In today’s juvenile justice system the majority of young people are catered for within community settings utilising pastoral technologies, while disciplinary technologies are reserved for the few who are judged most at risk. Notes  1 Nikolas Rose notes that technologies of government are not just the purely technical means of governing such as forms, schedules, buildings, statistics or administrative procedures, rather they are, ‘hybrid assemblages of knowledge, instruments, persons, systems of judgement, buildings and spaces, underpinned at a programmatic level by certain presuppositions and objectives about human beings’ (Rose, 1996b: 26).  2 Although there were regular inspections, it is clear that the inspection process was not adequate and that there was widespread abuse of the children detained in these institutions (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 1999; Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009).  3 See Maguire and O’Cinneide (2005).  4 See Fahy (1942).  5 These developments are outlined in the reports of the St Patrick’s Institution Visiting Committee (2007 and 2008).  6 Case records are maintained by the child’s social worker while care records are maintained by the residential unit staff.  7 In this regard, Shannon (2010) argues that the provision of special care orders in the Children Act 2001 undermined this distinction.  8 The criteria for inclusion in the Juvenile Diversion Programme are that the offender: (a) is over the age of criminal responsibility and under eighteen years; (b) accepts responsibility for his or her criminal behaviour; (c) has not been cautioned previously or having been cautioned, the circumstances are such that it would be deemed appropriate to administer a further caution; and (d) consents to be cautioned and where appropriate to be supervised by a JLO.  9 The victim may be present for the administering of the formal caution and the JLO may require the offender to apologise either orally or in writing or make some financial or other recompense (Children Act 2001, s. 26). 10 See Garda Research Unit (An Garda Síochána, 2003a and 2004a). 11 Section 42 of the Children Act 2001 allows gardaí to decide on the level of supervision required with regard to each offender. 12 A similar type of conference is available after the offender has appeared before the court. Section 78 of the Children Act 2001 provides for a family conference. This type of conference is run by the Probation Service along the same lines as the

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Garda conference. The court may direct that a family conference be held if the offender accepts responsibility for the offence, the court sees it as desirable and it sees the family or relatives as being capable of making a positive contribution to the welfare of the offender. Like the restorative conference, an action plan is drawn up with the agreement of all parties. This action plan is returned before the court, which can approve it or suggest it be amended. 13 See Redmond (2009) and IYJS (2009a). 14 See www.lecheile.ie. 15 See www.bbbs.ie. 16 See www.hse.ie.

Childhood identity employed to govern

6

The forms of childhood identity employed to govern

We may not share an essence, a soul, an identity or any other fixed attributes with others. But there is one status that we do share, and that is our status as subjects of government. That is to say, like so many others, we are inhabitants of regimes that act upon our own conduct in the proclaimed interest of our individual and collective well-­being. (Rose, 1999: 284)

Introduction For the purpose of this study ‘childhood identity’ is not regarded as a stable category with some kind of trans-­historical quality, rather, it is regarded as changing in accordance with the space it occupies and the forces acting upon it. In terms of the history of Irish juvenile justice some argue that the 1960s and 1970s were a time when the ‘needs’ of the child were beginning to be discovered. This suggests an existing and stable category, ‘childhood’, waiting to be revealed. However, from a governmentality perspective this apparent stability belies a more contingent quality. It is with this in mind that we seek to unsettle the ‘regimes of subjectification’ to which the concept of identity is linked (Rose, 1996a). The concept of identity is here approached from the perspective of its function as a ‘regulatory ideal’, analysing the various practices and technologies that are employed to govern individuals at particular times and places, rather than attempting to produce a historical narrative of the subject.1 Hence, it is intended to unsettle the forms of identity employed in governing children within the Irish juvenile justice system. The delinquent For Foucault (1991a), what distinguishes the delinquent from the offender, is the circumstances of the individual’s life rather than any act he or she committed. Such biographical information is important not only for the construction of the identity of the delinquent individual but also for the mode of reformative treatment he or she is to undergo. The construction of the ­delinquent

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identity is, for Foucault, an important development in penal history as it opens up a ‘criminological labyrinth’ within which we can speculate about the motivation of offenders: Behind the offender, to whom the investigation of facts may attribute responsibility for an offence, stands the delinquent whose slow formation is shown in a biographical investigation. The introduction of the ‘biographical’ is important in the history of penality because it establishes the criminal as existing before the crime and even outside it. (1991a: 252)

Such biographical information facilitated the construction of the identity of the juvenile delinquent and speculation on the most effective means for their management. The Second Report of the Select Committee on the Criminal Law (House of Commons, 1847) considers the possibility of dealing with juvenile offenders in a different manner to adult offenders within the court system and also within ‘reformatory asylums’. The Committee was ‘disposed to recommend the adoption, by way of Trial, of the reformatory Asylums … ­combined with a moderate use of Corporal Punishment’. Throughout the course of the discussion of alternative modes of governing one can see the identity of the ‘delinquent’ emerging. The Committee heard biographical evidence of the background and familial circumstances of certain classes of juvenile offender within the context of recidivism and the possible causes thereof. In his evidence to the Committee, C. Pearson argues against the imprisonment of certain classes of delinquent children: ‘I know from my own experience, that in nine cases out of ten a delinquent child is the victim of circumstances that it could not control, I am of the opinion, that the summary conviction as a criminal of a child under years of discretion, under such circumstances, is neither just to the child nor useful to society’ (1847: 303). A significant discourse on ‘juvenile delinquency’ had emerged by the mid-­ nineteenth century. Magarey notes that by ‘1851 “juvenile delinquency” was established among journal reading, servant-­employing Britons as a major problem in the condition of England’ (2002: 115). This was also true for Ireland. The delinquent was the subject of much debate in the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland and the Irish Quarterly Review. Rev. John Edgar, in a paper delivered to the Belfast Social Inquiry Society in 1852, characterises the juvenile delinquent as a danger existing within the body of society. His portrayal of the delinquent suggests that they possess some ‘other’ quality that distinguishes them from the general population: We live in the midst of a juvenile population, destitute of counsel, care, teaching, except what is pernicious – many of them without any honest means of procuring a livelihood. When we think of them, in their holes and corners, and filthy hovels, in their desperate state of self-­abandonment, and exposed to a thousand influences for ill, a distressing hopelessness comes over us – an impression that



Childhood identity employed to govern157 they are beyond the reach of human aid, and that, unless God works for them some miracle of grace, in thick darkness they must continue to live, in thick darkness at length they must die. (Edgar, 1852: 4)

His proposals, based for the most part on principles of Christian education, seek to restore the delinquent to a more virtuous state by addressing certain factors common to the delinquent population. The construction of the identity of the ‘juvenile delinquent’ and of a delinquent population was crucial in terms of the development of the reformatory and industrial schools movement. It facilitated a debate on how the delinquent class of young person should be governed. In Ireland, from the mid-­ nineteenth century a significant discourse begins to emerge most notably in the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland and the Irish Quarterly Review.2 The Irish Quarterly Review, between 1853 and 1860, featured a series of articles on the issue of juvenile delinquency. One anonymous article entitled ‘The Garret, the Cabin, and the Gaol’ (1854) examined the social conditions that contribute to juvenile delinquency, including housing and sanitary conditions, parenting, education and religion. What emerges is a picture of a delinquent class that is both deprived and depraved. These ‘morally depraved’ individuals, it argues, are the product of a number of factors such as poor living conditions, lack of adequate parental supervision, poor education and lack of religious instruction. The author views juvenile delinquency as an evil that can be ‘cured in great part by education, but it must be an education based on religion and on truth’ (Irish Quarterly Review, 1854b: 375). In this and other articles we see the emergence of the identity of the ‘juvenile delinquent’ as someone whose delinquency is the product of his or her environment. This identity is constructed by reference to biographical and other information on individuals and ‘classes’ of individuals. Writing in the nineteenth century, Mary Carpenter (1853: 16) describes the juvenile delinquent as: not only perishing from lack of knowledge, from lack of parental care, of all that should surround childhood, but they are positively become dangerous; dangerous to society, which rises in formidable array to defend itself against them … Such a condition is one of grievous moral disease; it needs a moral hospital and requires a treatment guided by the highest wisdom of those who have learnt the art of healing from the Physician of souls.

She distinguishes six classes of juvenile delinquent: hardened offenders; those trained in dishonest ways; those who have acquired ‘bad habits’ as a result of parental neglect; those driven to crime as a result of poverty; those forced to work on the streets to support their families; and those ‘born to a sort of hereditary calling’ (1853: 32).

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The identity of the delinquent and the delinquent class facilitated the construction of the ‘problem’ of delinquency itself. In relation to Ireland, the Report of the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles (1853) represented one of the first examinations of the extent of the problem of juvenile delinquency in Ireland through the evidence of a number of expert witnesses. Through this process of taking evidence from expert witnesses one can see the delinquent identity inscribed within the official discourse on juvenile crime. As already noted, the evidence itself takes the form of official statistics and biographical information on the background of these individuals. The juvenile delinquent is viewed as someone existing outside ‘normal’ society, inhabiting the prison, workhouse, street and ghetto. The juvenile delinquent identity is defined as ‘problematic’ and a target for supervision. Barnes (1989) notes that the evidence of these witnesses as to the causes of delinquency in Ireland differed in emphasis from their British counterparts by maintaining that delinquency stemmed from poverty rather than any inherent criminal tendencies. The juvenile delinquent is thus definitively identified with the poorer classes. The figure of the delinquent has remained part of the discourse on juvenile crime and social reform from the mid-­nineteenth century to the early twenty-­ first century. Carpenter’s typography of the delinquent classes emerged as a powerful image within the reformatory and industrial school movement. At various times the delinquent has been portrayed as someone in need of effective management of one kind or another. Early social reformers highlighted the need to identify, segregate and educate the juvenile delinquent class within discrete disciplinary enclosures. Within these ‘moral hospitals’ the delinquent identity could be reformed and rendered more governable. The identity of the delinquent and in particular the manner in which this identity was formed provided a target for a range of reformist agendas. A series of articles by E.D. Daly in the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland speculate on the origins of juvenile delinquency and some possible remedies. These articles depict the delinquent as an inhabitant of the poorer class areas of big towns and cities, whose delinquency is mainly caused by poverty and neglect. Daly argues for reform, particularly in the area of alcohol policy, to combat the neglect of children and reduce the likelihood of their becoming delinquent: ‘The drink-­reared children of the slums, undoubtedly more than any other cause, swell our permanent criminal class; and as long as we suffer the existing impunity for drunkards to continue, the drunken areas of large cities must neutralise, to a large extent, the effect of reformatory institutions’ (1897b: 285). In this and other articles Daly (1891, 1897a and 1898) locates the problems of juvenile delinquency as existing in and emanating from the poorer classes and their living conditions. He calls for greater attention to be paid to the welfare of the children of the poorer



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classes and argues that their welfare is closely linked to juvenile delinquency: ‘By slow degrees the public is beginning to recognise that they are the true source of our permanent criminal class, and the necessity of our day is not to expend immense revenue on improving prisons for adults, but rather a complete remodelling of our attitudes towards the neglected children of our great cities’ (1897b: 338). The idea of a delinquent class of juveniles existing in the larger population centres, the subject of poverty and parental neglect and in constant moral danger remained a common theme in the articles of the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland. Within this context, O’Connell highlights the problem of juvenile street trading and its deleterious effect on the young person: the juvenile street trader is only too often the victim of idle, drunken, and vicious parents, who extort all his earnings until a time arrives when the growing boy or girl, demoralised and discontented, breaks with the parents, and throwing over all home ties, takes to a life of unrestrained independence and license. (1912: 505)

The juvenile delinquent was here viewed as someone in need not only of reformation but also of protection from the surrounding social conditions. These social conditions are seen as a source of danger to the welfare of the child and a constitutive element of the neglectful class from which the delinquent emerges. In this regard, the Children Act 1908 is viewed as a mechanism for the protection of the neglected child and the prevention of delinquency. Dawson, commenting on the Act, notes that the ‘discontent engendered by our social anomalies has created a class who, bereft of family ties or affections, send out onto our streets their neglected children for whose rescue and safety the new Act, which codifies others, has been passed’ (1912: 388). The existence of this delinquent class within society was further recognised in law by the Criminal Justice Administration Act 1914. Like the Prevention of Crimes Act 1908, it allowed for certain classes of offender to be detained in borstal institutions and for the courts to carry out enquiries into their circumstances. Section 10 of the Act provided that where a person is convicted summarily and ‘it appears to the court that by reason of the offender’s criminal habits or tendencies, or association with persons of bad character’, he may be subjected, ‘to detention for such term and under such instruction and discipline as appears most conducive to his reformation and the repression of crime’. The Act provided for an inquiry into the circumstances of each case prior to making a judgement. Section 7 also empowered certain societies, recognised by the Secretary of State, to supervise individuals who were dealt with under the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 or released on licence from reformatory or industrial schools. These acts along with the Children Act 1908

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and the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 recognised in law a class of delinquent child and offender that needed to be supervised and treated separately for their own protection and the protection of society in general. After independence, apart from the contributions of a few individuals, there was little or no public discussion of the issue of juvenile delinquency. However, during the 1940s one can see some signs of the re-­emergence of such a discourse.3 Christus Rex, the quarterly sociological journal published by the Christus Rex Society, which was based in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, was first published in 1947 and provided the main forum for the discussion of juvenile delinquency in Ireland from the mid-­1940s to the early 1970s. The journal was founded in order to promote social reform in Irish society based on Catholic principles and as such provided a platform for the discussion of issues relating to juvenile delinquency. Daly, writing of the Christus Rex Society in 1947, stated that one of their first objects for investigation was the ‘youth problem’: ‘Their findings were discussed and impressions exchanged at meetings held each month. The results of these investigations were incorporated into a brochure on Youth Organisation prepared and circulated to members by the Committee’ (Daly, 1947: 28). The contributors, mainly Catholic academics, not surprisingly, were inclined to emphasise the spiritual dimensions of the problem of delinquency. These articles represent a separate Catholic discourse dealing with issues relevant to juvenile delinquency.4 The brand of sociology that appeared in Christus Rex excluded any ideas or theories that challenged the dominant Catholic orthodoxy. The journal achieved this by ‘keeping dangerous ideas at bay, partly through the control of sociology itself ’ (Fanning, 2008: 114). During the twentieth century the figure of the juvenile delinquent continued to emerge intermittently as the subject of speculation and study in various articles and official reports. Each one offers a distinct construction of the delinquent identity. The Commission on Youth Unemployment (Dáil Éireann, 1951) identified unemployment as one of the critical factors in its definition of delinquency. For the Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency (Dublin Corporation, 1958), the juvenile delinquent was characterised by a tendency to be unruly in public. The Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness (Dáil Éireann, 1966) viewed the juvenile delinquent as someone whose actions were primarily the result of some emotional disturbance or psychiatric disorder. This tendency to characterise the juvenile delinquent in psychological terms was also a feature of the First and Second Interim Reports of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons (Dáil Éireann, 1975 and 1975a). Existing in parallel with these psychological characterisations is the identification of the juvenile delinquent as deprived. Apart from those mentioned above, a number of articles published from the early 1960s onwards high-



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lighted early childhood deprivation as the significant causative factor in the history of the juvenile delinquent.5 Other sociological studies attempted to identify specific characteristics in the personality of the juvenile delinquent by examining their background.6 In addition to these, a number of official reports identify the juvenile delinquent as one who is the product of a deprived environment.7 From its origins in the nineteenth century the figure of the juvenile delinquent emerged as a target for reformative strategies. These included separate treatment in prison, the courts, detention in reformatory and industrial schools and borstal institutions. The tendency to interpret delinquency in broad terms to include the behaviour of young people, often not amounting to criminal misconduct, has persisted. As such, the figure of the juvenile delinquent remains a target for a range of diversionary, preventative, reformative and penal technologies. The subject of reformation Early reformists attributed to childhood a state of innocence and dependency that distinguished it from adulthood. According to May (2002: 107), this view of childhood, ‘derived from the contemporary proliferation of child-­guidance manuals. Overlaid with New Testament and Romantic sentiments of childish innocence, it was most clearly and sensitively expressed by Mary Carpenter’. Carpenter’s (1853: 292) characterisation of the juvenile delinquent is bound up with this loss of innocence resulting from parental neglect: We have seen these young delinquents exhibiting, in almost every respect, qualities the very reverse of those which we should desire to see in childhood; we have beheld them independent, self reliant, advanced in the knowledge of evil … We have perceived that this, their dangerous condition, was the almost inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which they had grown up from their earliest childhood, and most frequently of the culpable neglect or direct criminality of their parents.

The reformatory regime which Carpenter championed sought to restore juvenile delinquents to a less dangerous state by providing those positive influences that were missing from their deprived environment. This was to be achieved in a setting separate from the adult, where the danger of possible contamination from negative influences would be avoided. Institutions such as Red Hill in England and Mettray in France were regarded as exemplars in this field. They sought to replicate the ‘natural family’ environment within an institutional setting. With the passing of legislation enabling the establishment of reformatory and industrial schools in Ireland the juvenile delinquent became a legitimate target for reformation.

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The original reformatory schools were viewed as means of civilising its inmates by the application of a strict disciplinary regime. They operated on the premise that these individuals were lacking in basic education, social skills, industry and religion. The reformatory school child required close supervision and subjection to a strict disciplinary regime in order to retrain his or her mind. The ultimate aim of the system was to change the character of the inmate from one who posed a danger to society to one who was industrious and could productively contribute to society. The early reports of the Inspector of Reformatory Schools inscribe the identity of the reformatory school child within an official discourse on reformation. As we have seen, the language used by the inspector in his reports helps to construct the identity of the reformatory school child. Inmates were classified using terms such as ‘illegitimate’, ‘ignorant of religion’, ‘well instructed’, ‘entirely ignorant’. The first inspector of reformatory schools, Patrick Joseph Murray, took great pains to explain the tool he used – his ‘examination book’ – to measure progress in terms of time spent in the school, reading, spelling, dictation, ciphering, writing and religious knowledge in relation to each child that is subjected to the reformatory school regime. By the plan of examination pursued, as to secular instruction, and by carefully comparing the marks in my note-­book with the marks made at previous inspections, I am enabled to trace with accuracy the educational progress of the children in each School. (Second Report of the Inspector Appointed to Visit the Reformatory Schools of Ireland, 1863: 12)

The various processes of supervision, examination and reporting coalesce to construct the identity of the reformatory school child. This identity is then exhibited in the appendices of the inspector’s reports where the effectiveness of the reformatory process is represented in tabular form as a return of admissions and discharge for each year. Thus the process of governing served to construct the identity of those governed. The reformatory school child is also distinguished from the adult as having a character as yet unformed and still susceptible to corrective influence. Rev. Louis Foley observes that, ‘the moral responsibility of the child differs from that of the adult. The child falls into evil ways more from neglect than from malice. The juvenile criminal is a subject more for reformation than punishment (1923: 27)’. In a similar vein, Thomas O’Hagan QC, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and a founder member of the Dublin Statistical Society, addressing the first meeting in aid of St Kevin’s Reformatory for Catholic Boys, remarked that ‘the mind of a child being ductile, malleable, manageable, although the child be a criminal, virtue in the child may be superimposed on crime and put in substitution for it’ (Irish Quarterly Review, 1859: 13). If the reformatory school child was viewed on admission as ‘dangerous’, then the industrial school child was viewed by those in authority as ‘in danger’.



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Indeed, Carpenter’s dual construction of the ‘dangerous and perishing classes’ seems to have permeated into the Irish system. This particular construction was evident in the numerous debates on the reformatory model at this time and is vividly illustrated in the numerous articles appearing in the Irish Quarterly Review which utilised the statistics published within the inspector’s reports to promote this specific conceptualisation of childhood identity. Like the ‘delinquent identity’ the construction of the identity of the ‘subject of reformation’ is inextricably linked to the collation of biographical information. Details of parentage, criminal history, committal, age, sex, education and health were tabulated within the reports of the inspector of reformatory and industrial schools. The reformative process itself was plotted in terms of the outcome for each individual. As already noted, recorded outcomes included such things as employment status, current living conditions, and whether they had emigrated, died, etc. Also, the character of those detained and subsequently discharged from reformatory and industrial schools was also tabulated under the heading ‘Subsequent Character’. Thus, the overall progress of the reformatory and industrial school population could be measured and represented as an exercise in political economy with each institution calculating the cost of reformation per head and compared with the subsequent outcomes achieved. In this way the identity of the ‘subject of reformation’ was manifest as a transient identity that existed between the delinquent and the adult identity and was tied up with the overall reformative project. The success or failure of the project could be measured by reference to the progress of this malleable subject whose changing identity could be charted statistically in the reports of the inspectors. While the reformatory and industrial schools catered for that section of the population of juvenile offenders and potential offenders aged up to sixteen years, the borstal system was aimed at those over sixteen and under twenty-­ one years. With this system a new category of prisoner known as the ‘juvenile adult’ was invented. The Report from the Departmental Committee on Prisons 1895 targeted a section of the population that was most at risk of becoming ‘habitual criminals’. According to Fahy (1941: 70), the borstal initiative represented a new development in the management of juvenile offenders and resulted in the construction of a new form of identity: For the special location and treatment on reformatory lines of young prisoners, 16–21, selected from the ordinary prisons, where the length of sentence afforded a reasonable time for the application of the System. The title ‘Juvenile Adult’ was invented to describe the class – too old for commitment to Reformatory Schools and too young to be classed with the ordinary grown-­up criminal.

The Prevention of Crime Act 1908 legislated for the ‘reformation’ of this specific class of young offender within borstal institutions. According to the

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Act, these were between sixteen and twenty-­one years of age who, by reason of their criminal habits or tendencies, or association with persons of bad character, it was thought expedient that they should be subject to detention for such a term and under such instruction and discipline as appeared most conducive for their reformation and the repression of crime. The regime was designed to reform the character of the individual detained with the intention of returning him to the community as an industrious citizen. In the words of Evelyn Ruggles-­Brise, Commissioner of Prisons for England and Wales, who was credited with introducing the borstal system in Britain, the borstal system represents ‘not only a school of reform, but a sort of moral hospital, giving, through the kindness of its agencies, a chance for the weak and feeble and unfortunate to make a fresh start and take their place in the great industrial army’ (General Prisons Board, 1908: x). The Prevention of Crime Act 1908, later amended by the Criminal Justice Administration Act 1914, empowered the courts to sentence young offenders to detention in borstal institutions. Although the subject of the borstal regime was deemed to have a flawed character, he was still capable of reformation and this was to be achieved by working on his body and mind. The regime was aimed at various facets of the inmates’ character. Their physical health was targeted by instruction in drill and by the provision of a strict diet of ‘wholesome’ food. They also received instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, religion and vocational training. On committal to the Institution, most inmates are found to be totally unfit candidates for employment anywhere. They usually have no knowledge whatsoever of any trade or skilled occupation. To offset this handicap, every effort is made during their period of detention to prepare them for employment on discharge. (Department of Justice, 1948: 11)

Through exposure to certain ‘positive’ influences the inmates could internalise ‘good habits’ to replace their ‘criminal habits’. Interaction with staff of the institution was crucial to this reformative process. These ‘good habits’ were to be encapsulated in the activities carried on in the borstal institution, including hard work, secular education, sporting activity, regular meals and religious observance. The activities reflected the reformative ideals of the proponents of the borstal system, the ultimate aim of which was to produce a young Christian adult, strong in both mind and body, who would be ready to fulfil the role of an industrious citizen and most importantly would not pose a threat to society. As already noted, the Report from the Departmental Committee on Prisons (1895) (House of Commons, 1898) heralded greater classification and segregation of young offenders within the prison system. The passing of the reformatory and industrial schools and the borstal legislation provided the means by which the ‘subject of reformation’ could be effectively governed



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within the Irish juvenile justice system. The identity of the ‘subject of reformation’ has remained prominent within the Irish juvenile justice system. Although the words ‘reformatory’, ‘industrial’ and ‘borstal’ have been replaced and the regimes modernised, the forms of identity employed to govern the young person under the guise of reformation have persisted. The identity of the ‘subject of reformation’ is inextricably linked to the modern business of governing young people, regardless of whether this takes place in an open or closed setting, under the guise of diversion, restoration or rehabilitation. The psychological child The identity of the ‘psychological child’ within the context of juvenile justice in Ireland was slow to emerge. In 1927 Thomas Molony, who chaired the Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders in Britain, argued that greater facilities should be provided for the examination and observation of the young offender in Ireland. Molony, sought to promote a debate about the suitability of such facilities in the Irish Free State. Quoting from the Report of the Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders, Molony emphasised the duty of the court in facilitating the proper treatment of the young offender: Once the principle is admitted that the duty of the court is not so much to punish for the offence as to readjust the offender to the community the need for accurate diagnosis of the circumstances and motives which influenced the offence becomes apparent … There is always the possibility of mental deficiency, the discovery of which would lead to special treatment. (1927b: 443)

Molony’s article was influenced by developments that were taking place in Britain, where delinquent acts on the part of children were beginning to be viewed as symptoms of underlying psychological disturbance. One can see at this time the emergence of what became known as the ‘maladjusted child’ in Britain after the First World War, with the delinquent child becoming the object of psycho-­social investigations which linked childhood experiences with subsequent offending behaviour.8 However, Molony’s article did not have the desired effect and in Ireland no subsequent discussion took place around the subject of the treatment of the young offender. In contrast, in Britain during the mid-­1920s we see the development of the Child Guidance Movement that aimed to detect psychological abnormalities that occurred in early childhood and treat them before they progressed to delinquency. This was accompanied by a movement away from institutional approaches to delinquency in favour of intervention within the community. This stemmed from a belief that the best way to curb juvenile delinquency lay in supervision within the home environment rather than separation and isolation within an

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institution. Writers such as Hall (1917 and 1926) and Burt (1925) had a significant influence on the development of juvenile justice policy in Britain. In particular, the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 regarded the placement of children in institutions as a last resort and favoured supervision within the community. For Rose, this legislation recognised that the distinction between the neglected child and the delinquent child was an artificial one and the fact that ‘it was merely a matter of chance whether a child came before the court as a wanderer or a thief, and hence the distinction in the ways in which they could be dealt with, between Reformatory and Industrial Schools, made no sense’ (1985: 171). In Ireland, no such recognition was apparent. The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System 1934–1936 (Dáil Éireann, 1936) favoured the institutionalisation of young people in industrial and reformatory schools. It did, however, recommend separate treatment for those deemed ‘mentally defective’ and bemoaned the absence of any legislation dealing with the general problem of ‘mental defectives’. It recommended that ‘Where a child on examination has been certified as a low-­grade mental defective unlikely to be trained to the stage of becoming self-­supporting, the Justice should have the power to order detention in a mental colony or other centre such as St Vincent’s Institute (for Mentally Deficient Children), Cabra, and St Augustine’s Colony for Mental Defectives’ (1936: 53). This report did not result in legislative change and the institutional model remained dominant and almost unchallenged. An exception to this was the TD James Dillon, who raised the issue of the provision of a facility for the psychological assessment of young offenders on a number of occasions in the Dáil in the 1930s and 1940s. In a Dáil debate on the Children Bill in 1941 Dillon proposed the establishment of a clinic in Dublin, similar to those already in existence elsewhere in Europe, ‘the specific purpose is to separate the sick children from the truly delinquent children who come before the Juvenile Court’ (Dáil Debates, vol. 81, 19 February 1941). Four years later McCluskey (1945) reported on the development of the Child Guidance Movement in Britain and highlighted the work of British child guidance clinics in the early diagnosis of psychological disorders in children. However, it was not until 1962 that the Mater Child Guidance Clinic, the first of its kind in Ireland, was established. There continued to be little consideration of the psychological needs of juvenile offenders at a government level during the 1940s. The following exchange between James Dillon TD and the Minister for Education, Tomas Derrig, in the Dáil in 1947 is indicative of the level of debate that was taking place at this time. Dillon raised the issue of the provision of psychiatric treatment for juveniles detained at Marlborough House remand Home. What followed was revealing:



Childhood identity employed to govern167 minister for education (mr derrig): I do not propose to provide psychiatric treatment at the institution mentioned. Boys are detained there only for very short periods, the average being from a week to ten days, and a maximum of one month, and I am advised that effective psychiatric treatment would require much longer. mr dillon: The Minister does not know what I’m talking about. mr l.j. walsh: Who does? (Dáil Debates, vol. 108, 13 November 1947)

While the Commission on Youth Unemployment (Dáil Éireann, 1951) did question the suitability of the reformatory and industrial school model for dealing with young people there was little subsequent debate at this time. Kenny (1956), drawing on the work of the psychologist Bowlby, highlighted the possible effects of maternal and other forms of deprivation on the child. In her article, ‘The Deprived Child’, she was critical of the use of institutional care for its tendency to deprive children of the emotional stimulation required to develop their personalities adequately. She recommended the employment of caseworkers in these institutions to help encourage and maintain the relationship between children and their parents. In addition, she called for the recruitment of psychiatrists on to the staff of these institutions whose function would be to diagnose and counsel children. Her article represents a curious blend of the spiritual and psychological. She states that in Catholic institutions, ‘the psychiatrist and the chaplain should work in unison, since misbehaviour and sin are so closely entwined in the mind of the Catholic child’ (1956: 113). Two years later in 1958, the Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency reported its findings. The Committee had consulted widely with experts in the field of psychology. Its report distinguished between vandalism and juvenile delinquency, stating that the latter implied ‘some malformation of outlook or deficiency of character that might lead to a criminal tendency’ (Dublin Corporation, 1958: 3). The influence of a number of psychological and social theorists, including Cyril Burt and John Bowlby, is evident in the report. It considers the formation of the child’s ‘outlook and character’ in the context of family breakdown and their need for an ‘unconscious sense of security’ in their early years (1958: 5). Elsewhere, it asserts the fact that certain ‘psychological disturbances’ can result in delinquency. The ‘family’ is here viewed as the single biggest factor in the development of the child’s personality and within this context the issue of ‘family support’ is considered. The report calls for greater intervention from ‘family welfare workers’ in an effort to mitigate the stresses on children that can lead to delinquency. In this regard, the Committee conducted an experiment with 141 families in the Dublin area and considered the notion of the ‘problem family’. The report links delinquency and the ‘backward child’, a view influenced by the work of psychologist Cyril Burt who had pioneered the intelligence testing of children

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and the link between the ‘sub-­normal’ child and subsequent delinquency. The report notes that, ‘It is vitally important to shock the national conscience into action in relation to the vast numbers of sub-­normal children for whom special educational measures are an urgent need’ (1958: 25). However, there remained little in the way of research in this area. In the early 1960s O’Connor (1962 and 1963) considered the psychological aspects of the young offender. His view of delinquency was drawn from theories of behavioural psychology and psychoanalysis that were current at the time. Under the heading ‘physical maturity and mental sub-­normality’ he notes that psychologists ‘have found that behaviour in such cases as these are dependent on a poor control from the higher centres of the brain, causing instability or impulsive or violent actions’ (1962: 8). With regard to ‘mental or intellectual re-­tardation’ he notes that this condition, also known as ‘backwardness’, can be innate or acquired. A further class of psychological disorder mentioned is ‘neurosis’ which ‘is a condition caused by a conflict between an inordinate desire for power coupled with an inability to achieve that power’ (1962: 9). O’Connor’s articles are unusual for this period as there is little other evidence of research into the psychology of the juvenile offender. However, there is some evidence to suggest that the concept of the ‘psychological child’ was beginning to permeate into government policy. The Commission of Inquiry on Mental Handicap (Dáil Éireann, 1965) recommended the expansion of psychological services in Ireland and linked the issue of delinquency with ‘mental handicap’. The following year the Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness (Dáil Éireann, 1966) went further, viewing some delinquent behaviour as a symptom of an ‘emotional disturbance or other psychological disorder’. It recommended that the courts utilise the psychiatric services ‘in respect of all children charged with offences who, in their opinion, display any signs of being subject to such disability’ (1966: 73). The Commission viewed adolescence as a ‘time of turbulence’ between childhood and adulthood where normal development could be impeded as a result of some negative factor in the child’s environment (1966: 74). It recommended the establishment of regional child psychiatric clinics that would be staffed by a psychologist, psychiatrist, psychiatric social worker and other ancillary staff such as paediatricians and speech therapists noting that the existing child guidance clinics operating at Rathgar (run by the Hospitaller of St John of God) and the Mater Hospital (run by the Sisters of Mercy) provided most of the facilities that would be required. In the same year the London-­based study group Tuairim published an influential paper on residential care and the deprived child in Ireland. It emphasised the psychological aspects of the deprived and delinquent child and recommended the development of services in the area of prevention and diagnosis. A paper that was read to the group two years earlier was included



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as an appendix to the main report (Hunt, 1964). It drew on the theories of John Bowlby, emphasising the effects of maternal deprivation on the child and located the ‘normal’ child within an ideal ‘natural family’. It regarded the institutional facilities that existed at the time as incapable of catering for the psychological needs of deprived children. Despite the emergence of this psychological discourse on juvenile delinquency, there was still little in the way of psychological research on the subject in Ireland. Flynn et al. (1967) constructed a psychological profile of the delinquent by surveying a sample of boys who were detained in St Patrick’s Institution. They investigated the relationship between delinquency and a number of factors such as general intelligence, educational intelligence, socio-­economic factors, delinquency prediction and category of crime, family structure and intra-­familial relationships, and some personality factors. Using a series of psychological tests and interviews, they constructed one of the first socio-­psychological profiles of the teenage ‘delinquent’ in Ireland: He would seem to come from a large family living in the poorer sectors of a town or city. His father’s occupation is either an unskilled or semi-­skilled job and his mother may work part-­time or may not work at all. His intelligence is below average, and hence his educational attainments are poor. He probably finds it difficult to keep up with an ordinary class and so he is a habitual truant from school. He rarely sits for his Primary Certificate and does not go to technical school afterwards. He commits his crime as a member of a group rather than alone. He seems to be a generally handicapped individual all round. (Flynn et al., 1967: 230)

In constructing this profile the authors utilised standardised psychological tests such as the IQ test and classified individuals as: mentally defective, borderline mentally defective, dull normal and average. In this way delinquency was clearly linked to psychological abnormality. Hart (1968) also attempted to construct a psychological profile of the delinquent by exploring social histories and IQ levels. He also uses the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and employs psychoanalytic (Freudian) theory to explain delinquent behaviour. In attempting to classify the social and psychological characteristics of institutionalised young offenders he notes that: the juvenile offenders of the type sent to institutions cannot in general be conceived of as falling into criminal ways by mere chance or by exercise of pure choice alone. Their delinquencies represent in many cases a habitual anti-­social disposition developed from the bitter experiences of a hard childhood and conflict-­ridden homes. (1968: 175)

Hart here introduces the notion of an ‘anti-­social disposition’ into the discourse on delinquency and thus constructs a target for a range of psychological interventions, including psychotherapy, child guidance and family

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support. In a later article he attempts to define the social and psychological characteristics of institutionalised delinquent boys (Hart, 1970). A socio-­psychological discourse on the delinquent child was becoming more evident from the mid-­1960s and coalesced around the figure of the ‘deprived child’ whose delinquent behaviour was viewed as emanating from some psychological disturbance. The delinquent child was variously described as being ‘maladjusted’, ‘backward’, ‘mentally defective’, ‘mentally handicapped’, ‘borderline’, ‘below average’, etc. The child’s delinquent behaviour was viewed as being the result of a number of factors, the most significant of which was some form of psychological disturbance resulting from the breakdown of family relationships. Thus, the psychological health of the child was linked with the properly functioning family unit. The Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems (1970) highlighted the over-­representation of the ‘deprived child’ in the reformatory and industrial school system. It located the delinquent child within the psychological milieu of the family unit and held that any disturbance caused to the family unit could result in psychological deprivation. ‘The conditions which may give rise to inadequate personal relationships are many – socially or culturally inadequate parents, families where there is some emotional stress, various mental or physical illness or where for any reason there is only one remaining parent, families where permanent or periodic financial crisis obtains’ (1970: 12). The existence of a ‘natural family unit’ is central to the Kennedy Report and its criticism of the reformatory and industrial school system. As noted previously, it argued that the existing institutional system was incapable of providing an adequate environment to care for the psychological needs of the child. The report drew on psychological research undertaken by the Department of Psychology, University College Dublin. The research team surveyed the reformatory and industrial school population utilising the Stanford-­Binet and WISC tests that were in use in Ireland at the time. The use of these tests combined with the social histories of the subjects facilitated the construction of a profile of a ‘psychologically deprived’ population. The report recommended that the institutional system be replaced by ‘group homes that would approximate as closely as possible to the normal family unit’ (1970: 6). In Britain in the 1940’s, the Report of the Care of Children Committee (Curtis Report, 1946) had made similar recommendations in relation to residential care. Around this time the identities of the ‘deprived child’ and the ‘psychological child’ were being closely linked in a number of publications that were critical of the existing reformatory and industrial school system.9 These publications viewed juvenile delinquency as resulting from a number of adverse social factors in the child’s environment, the most significant of which was ‘pathological family conditions’. This patho-



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logical approach to delinquency emerged in Ireland during the mid-­1960s and is located in the space opened up by criticism of the institutional system of caring for children. Within this space we see the exploration of the social history of the child and his or her family and the subsequent pathological diagnosis of family failure. Social history and psychological pathology are here closely linked in an effort to diagnose delinquency and create a typology of the delinquent child. However, despite the apparent emergence of this discourse there still remained little in the way of services for juvenile offenders. The provision of treatment for the juvenile offender and potential juvenile offender was considered by the Second Interim Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons (Dáil Éireann, 1975a). It also highlighted the following categories of ‘patient’: illiterates; cultural delinquents; character-­ disordered delinquents; aggressive sociopaths; and neurotic or psychotic ­incidental offenders. It noted: Traditionally, the courts have graded the degree of seriousness of the offence and have developed their own systems of fitting the punishment to the crime. The same crime can, however, be committed by many different types of individual and for different reasons. In the case of juvenile offenders, a particular crime may be committed by an illiterate youngster in a moment of bravado, an aggressive sociopath or a paranoid schizophrenic patient at a time of delusional crisis. Psychiatrists’ assessments take account of the individual’s psyche and are not based on the behaviour he displayed. (1975a: 3)

The report contains one of the first ‘official’ psychological typologies of the delinquent child and marks the emergence of the ‘psychological child’ into the official discourse on juvenile justice in Ireland. It recommends the establishment of residential and non-­residential facilities to treat these offenders and significantly, it highlights the role of the ‘welfare services’ in the assessment, supervision and treatment of the young offender. The emergence of the psychological sciences during the 1960s and 1970s facilitated the construction of the identity of the juvenile offender as a complex social phenomenon having a developing social and psychological identity that impacted on their behaviour. This identity could be assessed, treated and managed utilising a range of psychological strategies. Despite this, only a small number of academic articles were published at this time that considered the socio-­psychological aspects of young people within the juvenile justice system.10 When the Task Force on Child Care Services reported in September 1980 it adopted a specifically psychological definition of the child. It noted that children ‘are special in two respects. Firstly, they are persons in the process of formation: secondly, they are not independent’ (Department of Health, 1980:

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34; italics in original). Like the Kennedy Report, the Task Force emphasised the importance of the family unit for the psychological development of the child stating that a, ‘child needs love and security as a vital determinant of his health and development’ (1980: 35; italics in original). This particular developmental definition of the child signalled all children out as targets for a range of preventative governmental strategies that included youth work, family support, social work, pre-­school, community and residential care. Within the context of the juvenile justice system the figure of the ‘psychological child’ was to underpin the thinking of subsequent reports and policy developments and remains a key aspect of the contemporary definition of the young offender.11 This has been reflected in the recognition of the psychological needs of the child in the Children Act 2001, the provision of Special Care for those deemed ‘at risk’, family support and early intervention initiatives and the philosophy of detention as a last resort. However, despite this, psychological services for young offenders in Ireland have developed on an ad hoc basis with little evidence of any real commitment from successive governments throughout the twentieth century. The ‘at risk child’ Throughout the history of the Irish juvenile justice system the young person has been dramatised as a threat to society and as threatened by society. From the mid-­nineteenth century, the notion of risk became an inherent aspect of the debate around child welfare and juvenile justice. In Ireland this took on a unique turn with the issue of risk being linked to the spiritual well-­being of the child and was reflected in the activities of the Catholic Church and other Catholic organisations that viewed the child as a target for their reformative campaigns, often based on the perceived dangers from proselytism. Apart from the institutional response, organisations such as the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland and those who viewed themselves as part of the Catholic Lay Apostolate adopted their own notions of risk based on Catholic religious principles. One can discern a continuous discourse on the ‘at risk’ child from the mid-­nineteenth century to the present. However, the development of the psychological sciences enabled the concept of risk to gain greater prominence in relation to the government of children. The Commission of Inquiry on Mental Handicap (Dáil Éireann, 1965) represented an interesting watershed in relation to the development of a specific identity for the ‘at risk’ child. The report noted the lack of a universal definition to describe ‘the class (or substantially the class) which is the subject of the Commission’s terms of reference’ (1965: 16). This is interesting from our point of view in that there is a conscious effort to apply a psychological classification to a class of children where none existed



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before. The Commission states that it favoured the term ‘mental handicap’ to describe ‘those who by reason of arrested or incomplete development of mind, have a marked lack of intelligence and, either temporarily or permanently, inadequate adaptation to their environment’ (1965: 18). The identities of the ‘psychological child’ and the ‘at risk child’ here converge. The report classifies various grades of ‘mental handicap’ and notes the importance of the standard IQ test in its diagnosis. It states: Mental handicap is not a specific disease entity. It is a condition characterised by varying degrees of impairment in maturation, learning and social adjustment. Not infrequently it is combined with physical defect, or with emotional or psychological disturbance … The mentally handicapped do not, therefore fall into clearly definable categories but, for administrative purposes, it is customary to divide them into two, three or four grades. (1965: 19)

The problem of ‘mental handicap’, as defined by the report, is something requiring more effective governance. It is within the context of preventing this problem that the ‘at risk child’ is constructed. The identity of the ‘at risk child’ is constructed using the existing psychological knowledge available to the Commission. The issue of prevention is stressed in relation to the care of these children ‘at risk’. The report highlights the importance of early identification through the development of various systems of surveillance. In the context of prevention it points to the existence of particular ‘cultural or environmental defects’ in the character of certain individuals that ‘function intellectually and socially at levels of mild or borderline mental handicap’ (1965: 122). It states that a great number of these children ‘are products of unfavourable environmental conditions and have lacked in childhood the stimulation and learning opportunities which good homes and families properly provide’ (1965: 122). It goes further in recommending the development of formal and informal networks to facilitate the early identification of these ‘culturally deprived children’, routine psychological testing, health education and investment in pre-­school facilities. As already noted, the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness locates the ‘normal’ healthy child within a stable family environment, stating that ‘good family relationships are the basis of sound mental health’ (Dáil Éireann, 1966: 101). Thus, any malfunction in the family unit may result in abnormal or deviant behaviour. The Commission highlights a particular class of children and adolescents that are ‘vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’ as a result of their family circumstances: Emotional disturbance in children and adolescents can arise in any family but some groups are particularly vulnerable e.g.: i. Illegitimate children who are deprived of a normal family life. ii. Children in homes where the normal family environment is absent …

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iii. Children in homes where one or both parents or some other relative is mentally unstable. iv. Children in institutions, including hospitals for long-­term care. v. Children in families where one or both parents are drinking or gambling to excess. (1966: 102)

The Commission recognises the link between some forms of emotional disturbance or psychiatric disorder and childhood deprivation. The deprived child was thus viewed as more ‘vulnerable’ than the ‘normal’ child. This psychological vulnerability could be calculated by making reference to a psychological subject who was defined by the degree of his or her emotional stability. This emotional stability could, however, become unbalanced by adverse effects within the child’s environment and the potential risk of becoming emotionally unstable could be calculated by looking at factors within that environment. Tuairim (1966) invoked the image of the ‘deprived child’ in its criticism of the Irish childcare system. Its pamphlet entitled Some of Our Children links the concept of ‘deprivation’ with the concept of ‘risk’ in portraying the young offender as the product of a ‘risky’ environment. Delinquents are here defined in terms of their failure to achieve a certain level of social or psychological maturity and this failure is viewed as being attributable to any of a number of risk factors such as family breakdown, educational failure or unemployment. The identity of the ‘at risk’ child is defined in terms of the number of adverse factors present in the child’s environment: These are usually children whose families are inadequate for a variety of reasons: death, illness or desertion of one or both parents, overcrowded living conditions or chronic poverty. Particularly ‘at risk’ are those who are mentally deficient or who have a parent or guardian who is him or herself socially or mentally inadequate or whose parents have so many young children they cannot adequately supervise them all. An unreasonably strict or repressive upbringing can cause a violent reaction in the adolescent and make him anti-­social. (Tuairim, 1966: 25)

The report draws from the study group’s research in the form of a number of interviews with ‘deprived’ young males who were processed through the residential childcare system. What is interesting here is that the identity of the ‘deprived child’ is constructed in a tabulated format utilising a wide range of personal information from the young person’s life. Parentage, age of admission, education, employment, social circumstances, interests and subsequent criminal history combine to illustrate the development of the individual from being ‘deprived’ to being ‘delinquent’. The image portrayed from the interviews is of an individual who is ‘deprived and lonely’, ‘insecure’, ‘lacking in early social learning or controls’, of ‘low grade intelligence’, or ‘limited intelligence and comprehension’, and ‘given little affection and therefore little to give’ (1966: 45).



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In a similar fashion, the research commissioned by the Kennedy Committee and conducted by the Department of Psychology at University College Dublin surveyed the population of all industrial and reformatory schools. The Committee draws on the findings to comment on the level of deprivation within this population. In particular it highlights the existence of the ‘culturally deprived person’ within the schools as, ‘one who is not viable within his culture; he cannot meet and deal adequately with the demands which his culture makes on him’ (Dáil Éireann, 1970). This person is described as lacking in ‘emotional, social and intellectual stability and development’. As already noted, the report attributes the causes of such a condition to problems with the functioning of the family unit. The report also highlights the importance of education as a means of counteracting the existence of adverse conditions in the child’s environment. In arguing for preventative strategies to combat deprivation, the report envisages the targeting of certain ‘at risk’ children and families: ‘We feel certain that every effort made to improve and provide extra services for our children in “at risk” areas will yield dividends in happier and more contented families and better adjusted, better educated children and would be an important preventative measure for keeping children out of care’ (1970: 49). The identity of the child who is ‘at risk’ as a result of being deprived of certain basic needs began to attain greater prominence after the Kennedy Report and resulted in calls for preventative strategies to tackle childhood deprivation. The term ‘at risk’ began to be adopted by professionals, mainly in the welfare sector, to describe a condition of certain individuals who lived in deprived circumstances. The CARE Memorandum on Deprived Children and Children’s Services in Ireland (CARE, 1972) labelled those children who were deprived of certain basic needs as being ‘children at risk’ and identified them as potential delinquents. The CARE Memorandum links childhood deprivation with juvenile delinquency and views the young delinquent as being ‘emotionally disturbed’, highlighting the causative effects of ‘pathological family conditions’ (CARE, 1972: 77). Central to CARE’s campaign against the opening of a ‘children’s prison’ in Loughan House in County Cavan was the figure of the ‘at risk child’ whose early childhood was marked by the presence of multiple risk factors, including poor family relationships, educational underachievement, poverty and poor social skills (CARE, 1978). In describing the ‘at risk’ child they note: the boys are aged between 14 to 16; the largest group is from the North Central city area in Dublin; they are from multi-­problem families, very often families with a long criminal history; they could be identified from an early age as being at high risk of damage of every kind; they drop out of school or are told to stay away; all of them have been through the Finglas Assessment Centre; some have been through special schools but have been rejected. (1978: 21)

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The identity of the ‘at risk’ child whose social and psychological development is arrested as a result of the existence of certain risk factors in their environment gained more prominence throughout the 1970s. This was reflected in certain policy developments in relation to youth services in Ireland. The image of the ‘at risk’ young person who could be supported and encouraged to achieve his or her ‘potential’ was central to the government’s A Policy for Youth and Sport (Dáil Éireann, 1977). In this policy document the socially deprived young person was encouraged to develop personally, and to have a greater appreciation of society through the medium of youth work and sport. The ‘at risk’ child was thus viewed as a legitimate target for a range of preventative strategies based on sport and youth work. The figure of the ‘at risk’ child was also prominent in subsequent government reports on youth work including: the O’Sullivan Report (1980); Final Report of the National Youth Policy Committee (Dáil Éireann, 1984b); In Partnership with Youth (Dáil Éireann, 1985b); Policy Framework for the Delivery of Youth Services (National Youth Federation, 2003); National Youth Council of Ireland (2004); National Youth Justice Strategy (IYJS, 2008b). As noted earlier, the Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (Department of Health, 1980) adopted a developmental definition of the child, borrowing from both behaviourist and psychoanalytic notions of childhood. It highlighted the emotional, social and intellectual needs of the child and noted that ‘when these needs are not being met, for whatever reason, children can be regarded as being deprived or at risk’ (1980: 39). The report utilises its definition of the ‘at risk’ child to justify a broad range of preventative measures designed to identify, assess, support and supervise those deemed to be ‘at risk’. These included neighbourhood youth projects, family support, assessment facilities, social work services, day care centres and youth diversion projects. More than any previous government report it cemented the identity of the ‘at risk’ child within the discourse on the young offender. Henceforth, the ‘at risk’ child was viewed as not merely a ‘justice’ problem but more importantly a ‘welfare’ problem. Five years later the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System (Dáil Éireann, 1985c) noted that within the criminal justice system priority must be given to the welfare of the child and detention should be seen as a last resort. The report took the view that the ‘at risk’ child could be placed in greater risk by being inappropriately detained and thus called for the greater use of alternatives to custodial sentencing, including supervision within the community and community service. It also viewed young people as being ‘particularly vulnerable to the risk of abuse of alcohol and other drugs’ (Dáil Éireann, 1985c: 81). The First Report of the Dáil Select Committee on Crime (1992) similarly viewed the young person as ‘at risk’ from a number of factors within his or her environment, including drug abuse, homelessness, family problems,



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truancy, educational failure, unemployment and child abuse. It recommended measures aimed at preventing delinquency by attempting to address these factors. In the same year the Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder (1992) also recommended measures aimed at dealing with certain risk factors existing in the child’s environment. In highlighting the problems encountered in the Dublin suburb of Ronanstown, it drew attention to the potential that the ‘at risk’ child has of becoming an ‘anti-­social’ young person. The identity of the ‘at risk’ child was also recognised within the government discussion paper Tackling Crime (Department of Justice, 1997). Yet, it was not until the passing of the Children Act 2001 that this now dominant form of identity of the child as a person ‘at risk’ of offending became enshrined in legislation. In particular, Part 3 of the Act amends the Child Care Act 1991 to ascribe certain duties to the HSE where it appears that a child requires special care or protection. Children deemed to be sufficiently ‘at risk’ may become the subject of a special care order. Under the Act a child whose behaviour poses a ‘real and substantial risk’ to his or her health, safety, development or welfare may become the subject of such an order. In a similar manner the court may direct the health board to hold a family welfare conference in order to investigate the particular circumstances of the child within the family environment. In this way, the court and other professionals are given licence to examine the risk in terms of both the child and the family. In an another development, the Criminal Justice Act 2006 amended the 2001 Act and extended the scope of the Diversion Programme to include any child who accepts responsibility for his or her anti-­social behaviour. Such children can thus be viewed as ‘at risk’ and be admitted to the programme as a result of behaviour that does not necessarily fall within the scope of the criminal law. In addition to the Diversion Programme, there are a range of community ­sanctions provided for under the 2001 Act by means of which the ‘at risk’ offender may be dealt with. These are: community service order; day centre order; probation order; training or activities order; residential supervision order; suitable person order; mentor (family support) order; restriction of movement order; dual order; and an intensive supervision order. Current juvenile justice policy reflects the increasing importance of the child as someone who is ‘at risk’. The Report on the Youth Justice Review notes: There is a wide recognition internationally that there are related or common factors which expose young people to risk. These factors can result in them being in need of care or protection, and/or developing patterns of anti-­social/ offending behaviour … There is recognition too that young people can be distinguished according to their risk of continued offending. Early interventions, it is considered, should be based in part on addressing this specific risk. (Department of Justice, 2006: 24)

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The Irish Youth Justice Service, in Designing Effective Local Responses to Youth Crime, introduces a new form of ‘baseline analysis’, which is designed to ‘provide a qualitative profile of youth crime in each locality’ (IYJS, 2009a: 3). This development aims to profile the individual circumstances of the young person in terms of four types of risks: individual risks, risks associated with family, risks associated with school and risks associated with neighbourhood. On a more general level the Irish Youth Justice Service has recommended that support be given to the standardisation of risk assessment practice across the criminal justice system (IYJS, 2009b). The utilisation of risk factors as a crime prevention strategy has also been highlighted in the government’s White Paper on Crime, Crime Prevention and Community Safety (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2009). Also, in the area of special care the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2011 states that the HSE must be satisfied of certain of certain criteria when determining that a child requires special care. They must believe that the behaviour of the child poses a real and substantial risk of harm to his or her life, health, safety, development or welfare and that provision outside of a special care setting would not adequately address this behaviour and risk of harm. The act of designating a young person or indeed a section of the youth population as ‘at risk’ characterises the young person as someone in need of supervision and authorises a range of interventions that are justified on the basis of the protection of society and of the individuals themselves. Bessant (2001) perceptively makes the point that the ‘at risk’ category and indeed the programmes that are associated with it have assumed a ‘common sense’ status in the minds of many social scientists despite the normative assumptions that underpin them. In this regard, such a risk-­based rationality contains a range of normative assumptions, although more modern risk-­based discourses claim to emanate from stronger, more empirical foundations. In this regard, Bessant notes: The discovery of the youth at risk category has largely supplanted older categories such as ‘delinquency’ and ‘maladjustment’ that were foundational to the sociology of deviance. Yet the methodologies, epistemological assumptions and politics of governance inherent in the older projects remain the same.(2001: 32)

The child as a bearer of rights Finola Kennedy, in her book Cottage to Crèche (2004), which charts the factors that have influenced family life in Ireland in the twentieth century, makes the point, that in contrast to the spirit of the Democratic Programme adopted by the first Dáil in 1919 which saw the first duty of the new republic as the care of its children, the 1937 Constitution of Ireland does not give any



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explicit rights to the child. The Irish Constitution viewed the child as a constituent part of the family unit rather than a separate legal entity. The ‘child’, as conceptualised within the Constitution, was someone whose rights were not explicitly defined but bound up with, and secondary to, the rights of the family. The Constitution thus constructed children as existing in a state of dependency, with their identity inextricably linked to their family. In general, the specifically Catholic conceptualisation of the family that was enshrined in the Constitution dominated policy developments in this area for most of the twentieth century. This view of children as indivisible in terms of rights from their families was eventually challenged. However, public debate in Ireland in relation to the rights of the child has been relatively slow to develop. One of the first debates emerged during the 1950s as a result of government proposals for free medical care for children. The crisis in relation to the ‘Mother and Child Scheme’ precipitated a collision between two conceptualisations of the ‘child’ (Whyte, 1984). The proposals for the original scheme were framed in 1950 under the direction of the Minister for Health, Dr Noel Browne, and sought to provide for the free medical care for all children without a means test. The Catholic Church’s view was that children were the responsibility of their parents and that any attempt to provide free medical care for children by the state represented a deprivation of the rights of parents. It exerted considerable pressure on the government in opposing such proposals. However, an amended scheme was eventually passed into law in 1953. In the following years there was little public debate in relation to children’s rights and children were largely viewed as dependent on their parents for their welfare and protection. Although the Constitution remained the dominant influence in this area developments in international law have influenced how the child has come to be viewed in Ireland. In 1953 the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) came into force in Ireland. Despite the fact that the Convention does not contain any explicit provision for children’s rights a range of case law has evolved touching on areas such as adoption, child abduction, alternative care, custody and access, guardianship and issues of identity.12 Although not specifically linked to the issue of children’s rights, the campaign for the abolition of corporal punishment in primary schools was important in terms of the development of child welfare policy in twentieth-­ century Ireland. The campaign, which was spearheaded by parents, gained significant momentum in the print media during the mid-­1950s and resulted in the establishment of the School Children’s Protection Organisation whose primary aim was to lobby the Department of Education to abolish corporal punishment in national schools. The Organisation published a large volume of alleged abuses by teachers in national schools throughout the country in its pamphlet, Punishment in Our Schools (1955). However, despite the fact

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that the issue of corporal punishment continued to be debated throughout the 1960s and 1970s, it was to be February 1982 before it was finally abolished. Also, within the context of child welfare specifically, CARE (1972) argued that the child occupied a ‘special position’ within society and as such had a right to protection. It drew on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child in its campaign for the improvement of services for children in Ireland. CARE’s Children Deprived (1972) is one of the first examples of the ‘child’ being represented in Ireland as the bearer of a specific set of rights. In an appeal to both international and constitutional rights, CARE characterised the deprived child as occupying a special position in society because of his or her vulnerability and by virtue of this special position the deprived child is deemed to be entitled to certain basic rights. These include the right to an adequate standard of living, health and well-­being, protection and development. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including international human rights law, the Constitution and papal encyclicals, CARE identified the ‘deprived child’ as someone who has a right to be protected within a ‘caring Christian community’ (1972: 10). In a more radical move the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) published a report in 1977 recommending that the Constitution be amended to include a declaration of children’s rights and contended that the existing Constitution as interpreted by the Courts, had not achieved a satisfactory balance between parental rights and children’s interests commenting that ‘[T]he scales have been tipped too far in the direction of parental rights, to such an extent that we feel the balance can only be restored by amendment of the Constitution’ (ICCL, 1977: 4). The ICCL’s proposal, which was aimed at promoting the protection and welfare of children in their own right, separate from their parent’s rights, was unsuccessful and the constitutional rights of the child remained inextricably linked to their parents. Three years later the Task Force on Child Care Services delivered its final report. It defined the child in terms of certain fundamental developmental needs but stopped short of attempting to define a set of fundamental rights. While it did acknowledge the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, a copy of which appears as an appendix to the report, it considered the issue of children’s rights within the context of the Irish Constitution. Like the CARE Report, it viewed children as occupying a ‘special position’ in society because of their needs and saw society as having a responsibility to care for them. As such, it constructed the ‘child’ as dependent upon his or her parents and other members of society and that any rights the child had emanated from this protective relationship. The report stopped short of prescribing a set of positive rights and noted:



Childhood identity employed to govern181 Children like other members of our society have rights, the protection of which is ultimately the responsibility of our whole society. In our society, certain human rights are specified and guaranteed in the Constitution of the State. The State is obliged by our Constitution to respect the rights of all citizens and this means adverting to the rights of significant minorities, such as children are. (Department of Health, 1980: 38)

However, the supplementary report to the main report was stronger in asserting the need to recognise the rights of the child (Department of Health, 1980). In the absence of an explicit set of children’s rights it was left to the higher courts to interpret those rights implied within the Constitution. Martin notes that since ‘the 1980’s, the Irish High Court and Supreme Court have had to become interpretively creative in order to “discover” unenumerated children’s rights within the penumbra of text of the Irish Constitution’ (2000: 19). This process of ‘discovery’, which has been enacted within the higher courts, served to constitute an emerging identity of the child as a bearer of rights with the judiciary taking on the role of champion of children’s rights. Kilkelly (2008) notes that Ireland has come late in relation to the development of a legal framework for children with relatively little provision of this kind until the 1990s. The Child Care Act 1991 was aimed at providing such a legal framework. It was designed to replace the Children Act 1908, which had been judged to be outdated and inadequate in terms of providing for the care and protection of children. The Act was a watershed piece of legislation that moved the state into a more central role in the provision of care and protection for children with policy focusing less on a paternalistic and reactive approach and greater emphasis on the development of proactive and preventative policies for children. Public opinion had also begun to shift in relation to the state’s ability to provide for the care and protection of children. The Kilkenny Incest Investigation Report highlighted the need for the state to be more proactive in the protection and welfare of children (McGuinness, 1993). It recommended that the government consider amending Articles 41 and 42 to include a statement of the constitutional rights of the child. The report was instrumental in hastening the full implementation of the Child Care Act 1991. In the same year, the Children’s Rights Alliance was established in Ireland. The Alliance was formed as an umbrella body for eleven non-­governmental organisations, including youth representative groups, child welfare agencies, unions, professional groups, parent organisations and others interested in children’s rights. Its purpose ‘was to raise awareness of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and to seek its implementation in Ireland’ (Children’s Rights Alliance, 1997: vii). The Convention, which was signed in 1990, came into force in Ireland in 1992. Ireland made its first report on compliance with the Convention in 1996 in accordance with Article 44 of the Convention. The

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United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: First National Report of Ireland (1996) covers such areas as discrimination, best interests of the child, level of consultation with children, specific rights guaranteed, family, health and welfare, education and protection. Also, in 1996 the Constitution Review Group again recommended a review of Articles 41 and 42 of the Constitution in order to achieve a greater balance between the rights of the child and the rights of the family. It noted that the Constitution, ‘in giving to the family unit rights which are described as “inalienable or imprescriptible”, even if they are being interpreted as not being absolute rights, potentially places too much emphasis on the rights of the family as a unit as compared with the rights of individuals within the unit’ (1996: 323). Despite the fact that these recommendations were never implemented there have been considerable developments in policy and legislation in the area of children’s rights in recent years. A major influence on these legal and policy developments has been the recognition of European law in Ireland and the numerous constitutional challenges that have taken place in the higher courts.13 Two of the most significant legislative developments – the Child Care Act 1991 and the Children Act 2001 – have been in the areas of child protection and welfare and youth justice. Other significant developments include the establishment of an Ombudsman for Children in 2004, the Office of the Minister for Children in 2005 and the Children’s Acts Advisory Board (formerly the Special Residential Services Board) in 2007. These legislative and policy developments served to cement the identity of the ‘child’ as someone who had certain rights and entitlements that had to be upheld both in practice and in law. In terms of legislative development, the Child Care Act 1991, as already noted, sought to address some of the inadequacies of the Children Act 1908 giving health boards responsibility for protection of the ‘at risk’ child and for actively promoting the welfare of children who were not receiving adequate care and protection. The Act meant that children had a statutory right to this protection and in the event of parental failure it legislated for the intervention of public agents into the private space of the family. Also, section 26(1) of the Act provided for the appointment by a court of a guardian ad litem, if it is satisfied that it is necessary in the interests of the child and the interests of justice to do so. The function of the guardian is to represent the interests of the child, consulting with the child, their family and any other organisations or persons appropriate. In Ireland the guardian ad litem service is provided mainly by independent practitioners and non-­statutory organisations such as Barnardos and the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In May 2009 the CAAB published Giving a Voice to Children’s Wishes, Feelings and Interests (Children Acts Advisory Board, 2009), which provides guidance



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on the role, criteria for appointment, qualifications and training of guardians ad litem appointed under the Child Care Act 1991. One of the main aims of the publication was the standardisation of service provision in this area nationally. The Children Act 2001, as amended by the Criminal Justice Act 2006, represents a further recognition of concerns for the protection and welfare of children in the criminal law. In particular, the Children Act 2001 reflects a growing recognition of international rules and guidelines in relation to children who are in contact with the law such as the Beijing Rules (1985), the UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles deprived of their Liberty (1990) and the Riyadh Guidelines (1990) which taken together emphasise prevention and early intervention initiatives and recognise that any intervention in the child’s life must take proper account of their protection, personal development and their best interests. The 2001 Act recognises the potential detrimental effect of contact with the criminal justice system on the young person and provides a legal framework within which children can be governed while also respecting certain welfare concerns. Detention is to be regarded a last resort to be utilised only when all other means have been exhausted. The child is to be cautioned, consulted with, mentored, encouraged and counselled in an effort to prevent him or her engaging in crime. The Act seeks the support of the child’s family and other external agents in negotiating alternative pathways to the criminal justice system. It views children as having certain statutory rights guaranteeing their identity as separate from adults. Section 55 of the Act requires An Garda Síochána when carrying out an investigation to ‘act with due respect for the personal rights of children and their dignity as human persons’. In addition, the age of criminal responsibility has been raised to twelve years and those children between twelve and eighteen years are legally entitled to be cautioned under the Garda Juvenile Diversion Scheme. Special provision is also made for their detention in custody. In terms of advocacy, the Children Act 2001 provided for the establishment of the Special Residential Services Board to provide expert independent advice on the placement of children in custody in certain circumstances. As noted above, the Act also provides for a guardian ad litem service to represent children in court. In 2007 the name and functions of the Special Residential Services Board were changed and it was replaced by the Children Acts Advisory Board under the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2007. In October 2008 the functions of the Children Acts Advisory Board were subsumed into the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. Section 96 of the Children Act 2001 sets out certain principles relating to the exercise of criminal jurisdiction over children. It states that any court dealing with children charged with offences shall have regard to ‘the principle

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that children have rights and freedom before the law equal to those enjoyed by adults and, in particular, a right to be heard and to participate in any proceedings of the court that can affect them’. It also states that a period of detention should only be imposed as a measure of last resort. In terms of policy, the National Children’s Strategy 2000–10 aimed to give children a greater voice into matters that affect them, to undertake research into their rights and needs and to promote and support their development (Department of Health and Children, 2000a). The strategy, which was influenced by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, views the child as someone who has a right to be consulted, protected and supported in his or her progression towards adulthood. As part of its aim to ensure that the voice of the ‘child’ is heard, the strategy provided for the establishment of a national children’s parliament, Dáil na nÓg, to operate under the auspices of the Minister for Children. The adoption of this strategy is one of the most significant policy developments in relation to children. It provided for the establishment of an Office of Ombudsman for Children. This office’s remit includes: the promotion of the welfare and rights of children generally; the investigation of complaints from children on issues affecting them; consultation with children on issues of importance to them; advice to government on issues of importance to children; and the promotion of an awareness of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In December 2007 the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs published a policy handbook entitled The Agenda for Children’s Services, which challenges all government departments to review the manner in which they deliver their services emphasising a more child-­focused approach and drawing inspiration from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Department of Children and Youth Affairs, 2007). In terms of oversight, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) was mandated by government under the Health Act 2007 to inspect children detention schools, children’s residential centres and special care units in accordance with national standards developed by the Department of Health and Children. HIQA, under the aegis of the Social Services Inspectorate, carries out regular inspections of these facilities and publishes regular reports. On 22 March 2012 it published its Draft National Standards for the Protection and Welfare of Children. In this document it states its aim to ensure that all rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are ‘upheld, respected, valued and promoted’ (2012: 17). The Ombudsman for Children was established in 2004 under the Ombudsman for Children Act, 2002. The Ombudsman was given a statutory remit to protect and promote the rights of children and to act as an advisor to the government in relation to policy and procedures. The office is statutorily charged with promoting and safeguarding the rights and welfare



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of children and young people up to eighteen years of age and is independent of government and accountable to the Oireachtas. Since its establishment the Ombudsman has campaigned for a constitutional referendum to include children’s rights and has also acted as a powerful advocate for the rights of children within the context of the juvenile justice system. A further development contributing to the greater visibility of the child in terms of social policy in Ireland was the establishment of the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs in 2005. It was designed to act as a ‘super-­ministry’ spanning a number of departments dealing with children, including the Departments of Justice, Equality and Law Reform; Health and Children; and Education and Science. The Minister has responsibility for implementing the National Children’s Strategy and has specific statutory delegated functions in each of the above departments. In terms of detention in St Patrick’s Institution, the inspector of prisons, Judge Michael O’Reilly, published a ‘Juvenile Supplement’ to the Inspector of Prisons Standards for the Inspection of Prisons in Ireland in September 2009. These standards were drafted in line with international best practice and the obligations imposed on the state by domestic law and international guidelines and standards. The standards cover the following areas: physical environment; sentence management; safety; health and mental health; regime; contact with family; complaints and discipline; reintegration; and staff selection. This development comes in the wake of sustained criticism from the Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) in relation to conditions in the Institution. With regard to the development of the proposed new National Children Detention Centre at Lusk, Co Dublin, a working group was established in May 2008 to look at the proposed draft design specification. The working group recognised certain minimum standards and children’s rights which were absolute and which were to be reflected in the design of the new facility. In considering this, the Group noted that, ‘the principle of proportionality was accepted as a means of striking a fair balance between the rights of the child (e.g. to privacy, protection) and that of other concerns, including public safety’ (Irish Youth Justice Service, 2009: 4). A paper presented to the working group on children’s rights relevant to the detention of children by Dr Ursula Kilkelly was accepted by the group as a basis for informing discussions with the designers of the new facility. Also, in 2009, the Irish Penal Reform Trust published its Detention of Children in Ireland: International Standards and Best Practice. The document sought to consider the future development of the detention of young people in Ireland in the light of international human rights standards, best practice and standards in other jurisdictions and make recommendations regarding the future development of the future development of children in Ireland. One of its overarching recommendations was that

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children are included in the process of the design of the proposed National Children Detention Centre in accordance with the provisions of Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. On 2 April 2012 the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, announced the government’s intention to end the detention of sixteen and 17-­year-­olds in St Patrick’s Institution. Making the announcement she noted that detaining children in adult prison facilities was ‘contrary to international standards in children’s rights’.14 In her statement, she made reference to the sustained criticism levelled at detention of children in the institution by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the European Committee on Social Rights. The image of the child as someone whose fundamental rights and identity are somehow hidden and in need of discovery has become a prominent discourse in recent years. Those who championed children’s rights described the child as largely ‘invisible’ in terms of law and policy and argued for the development of a rights-­based legal framework that would recognise certain fundamental rights (Kilkelly, 2007 and 2008). However, within the context of the Irish juvenile justice system, in the absence of such a rights-­based framework the ‘child’ has become more and more recognisable as someone who is the bearer of certain rights. The process of constructing the child as a bearer of these rights has been brought about by a number of forces acting both independently and in unison. The judiciary, in interpreting the constitutional rights of the child, has been identified as a champion of their rights. Another important influence has been the state’s recognition of European law in relation to children. This was influenced, and has been used to great effect, by interest groups seeking to promote a rights agenda for children especially in terms of the reform of domestic policy and legislation. Kilkelly (2006b) notes that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 1953, although not explicitly mentioning children’s rights, has assumed greater importance in terms of the juvenile justice system by the enactment of the ECHR Act 2003, which requires the courts and public bodies to take account of the ECHR and its case law. In addition, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by Ireland in 1992, imposes certain obligations on the state in relation to the treatment of children in the justice system. In November 2006 the Fianna Fáil government stated its intention to hold a constitutional referendum on children’s rights. This was followed by a consultation process in order to establish a consensus on the appropriate wording for an amendment. The following year the Twenty-­Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2007 was published. Subsequently, in November 2007 a Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children was established.



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On coming into office, the current Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, stated that it was the new Fine Gael and Labour government’s intention to hold a referendum on children’s rights before the end of 2012. The referendum on children’s rights was passed on 10 November 2012. This resulted in the removal of Article 42.5 of the Constitution and its replacement with Article 42A which saw the state for the first time recognising and affirming explicitly the ‘natural and imprescriptible rights’ of all children and undertaking, as far as practicable, by its laws to protect and vindicate those rights. Although constitutional reform in this area has been slow to emerge, certain policy and legislative developments have resulted in the ‘child’ becoming recognised as the bearer of certain rights, especially in the areas of protection, welfare, justice, education, personal development and advocacy. For example, the National Youth Justice Strategy 2008–2010 views the child as someone who has a right to be consulted, who’s ‘best interests’ are paramount and who has certain identified needs and rights. The Irish Youth Justice Service has highlighted the fact that the implementation of its National Youth Justice Strategy ‘is with reference to the rights of the child, addressing their needs and holding them accountable for their actions, while developing their futures in society’ (IYJS, 2008b: 6). In a similar vein, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009) recommended, among other things, a more child-­centred approach for the protection of children in institutions recognising that the needs of the child should be paramount. In relation to criminal proceedings and special care the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2011 has made one of the most explicit legislative statements in relation to the rights of the child. Part 1 (Section 10) of the Act states that, in relation to special care proceedings where a child is charged with a criminal offence: The High Court shall have regard, at all times, to the rights of the child who is the subject of that application including his or her rights in the proceedings in which that charge is heard and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, the high court shall not make, or vary, such order or extend such period or give a direction in respect of such order, extension or variation which would prejudice, or otherwise interfere with, the rights of the child in the proceedings in which that charge is heard and the conduct of those proceedings.

Within the juvenile justice system a distinct identity has emerged where the ‘child’ is viewed as a ‘bearer of rights’. This identity has been constructed as a result of the action of a range of forces that have sought to govern the child in accordance with a more liberal set of political principles. This does not necessarily mean that the child has become more liberated but merely that an

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a­ dditional form of identity has emerged that facilitates the regulation of children in accordance with a more liberal rationality of government. Conclusion In the context of the history of the juvenile justice system in Ireland from the mid-­1850s to early 2012 a number of forms of childhood identity emerge. One of the first to emerge, around the mid-­1850s, was the delinquent. The delinquent identity emerged within the context of a moral topography constructed by Carpenter and other reformist campaigners around this time and provided justification for the establishment of the reformatory and industrial school system. In the context of the history of the reformatory and industrial schools in Ireland, the identity of the pre-­delinquent or ‘at risk child’ who was morally at risk was the dominant form of identity employed. The mid-­1960s saw the emergence of the ‘psychological child’ and also a re-­conceptualisation of the ‘at risk child’ in terms of the psychological sciences. This form of identity has come to dominate the youth justice space. It is framed within a shared expert vocabulary, utilised by professionals working within the justice system, such as social workers, probation officers, youth workers, community workers and psychologists. Another prominent form of identity to emerge within this space is the ‘child as a bearer of rights’. This has found expression in legislative and policy developments such as the Children Act 2001, the establishment of the Office of the Minister for Children and the Ombudsman for children and the Youth Justice Service. In addition, the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (2009) (O’Sullivan, 2009) has recommended that childcare policy be more child-­centred and that needs of the child should be paramount. Also the referendum on children’s rights in November 2012 explicitly confirmed in law the identity of the child as the bearer of rights. The emergence of these new forms of identity does not mean that other forms of identity have been replaced, rather, they still remain active but to a lesser degree and in conjunction with those other forms. Notes  1 Similarly, Hendrick (2002 and 1997) has highlighted how definitions of childhood are linked to the society from which they emerge. He examines the way that ‘childhood’ has been constructed in Britain from the eighteenth century onwards and views these various constructions as emerging from a range of discourses such as welfare, science, psychology and pedagogy; all intimately linked to the ‘project’ of regulating the child.  2 A number of articles appeared in the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland advocating new methods of governing this delinquent class,



Childhood identity employed to govern189

including: Pim (1854), Haughton (1856), Lentaigne (1885), Daly (1891 and 1897b) and Cherry (1912).  3 MacCarthy (1945) examines the problem of child welfare and explores various aspects of it: education and child guidance, McCluskey (1945); poor housing, Dalton (1945); social deprivation, Hickey (1945); recreational amenities, Coote (1945); and poverty and parental neglect, Anon (1945). The discussion of the delinquent identity is here linked to issues of child welfare.  4 Articles in the journal often dealt with child welfare and related topics, including: the Children Court, McCarthy (1948); the delinquent child, Morrah (1950); the juvenile offender, Macauley (1955), O’Connor (1963) and Power (1971); the deprived child, Kenny ( ) and Hegarty (1959); child welfare, Gallagher (1961) and Ryan (1967); early school-­leaving, Ryan (1967); youth work, Forde (1967 and 1970); the psychology of the adolescent, O’Suileabhain (1971), O’Doherty (1971), Heneghan (1971) and McKenna (1971).  5 O’Connor (1962 and 1963), Tuairim (1966), CARE (1972 and 1978) and HOPE (1979) identify delinquency with the deprived environment.  6 Flynn et al. (1967), Hart (1968 and 1970), Hart and McQuaid (1974), O’Sullivan (1974, 1977, 1979a and 1979b), O’Gorman and Barnes (1991), O’Mahony et al. (1985), O’Mahony (1997), McPhillips (2005).  7 These include: Final Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (1980); The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System (Whitaker Report) (Dáil Éireann, 1985c); Juvenile Crime: Its Causes and Remedies (Dáil Éireann, 1992); Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder (1992); Tackling Crime (Department of Justice, 1997); Study of Participants in Garda Special Projects (DIT, 2001).  8 See Rose (1985).  9 Tuairim (1966), Kennedy Report (1970), CARE (1972). 10 O’Sullivan (1974), Hart and McQuaid (1974), O’Sullivan (1977, 1979a and 1979b). 11 A Policy for Youth and Sport (Dáil Éireann, 1977); O’Sullivan Report (1980); Final Report of the National Youth Policy Committee (Dáil Éireann, 1984b); Whitaker Report (1985); In Partnership with Youth (Dáil Éireann, 1985b); First Report of the Dáil Select Committee on Crime (Dáil Éireann, 1992); Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder (1992); Tackling Crime (Department of Justice, 1997); Children Act 2001. 12 See Kilkelly (1999 and 2008). 13 See Martin (2000), Hayes (2002), Kilkelly (2008). 14 www.dcya.gov.ie.

7

Conclusion

Most mainstream critiques of the Irish juvenile justice system take a reformist or rights-­based approach, limiting their analysis to the level of reform or compliance with human rights or international standards. While these are important matters, they are nevertheless limited in the degree of critical purchase they can achieve. These accounts tell us little about how the language of government, rationalities, technologies and forms of identity are deployed. In essence, they tell us little about the ‘problematics’ of government, the nuts and bolts of governing the child or young person within the context of the juvenile justice system. In this sense, traditional forms of critique tend to simplify explanations in terms of policies and reforms and tend to place too much emphasis on the ‘state’ as an explanatory device. With regard to the Irish juvenile justice system, the state was almost absent in terms of legislative and policy development for most of the twentieth century. By adjusting the lens to focus on the process of ‘governing’ itself one can look beyond and unsettle the taken-­for-­granted nature of juvenile justice, beyond traditional ‘whiggish’ accounts that concentrate on explaining the degree to which the system has or has not become more enlightened, to attend to the ‘problematics’ of governing children and young people.1 One can ask such questions as: How have we come to speak about ‘youth justice’? How do the technologies used to govern operate? What forms of childhood identity are employed to govern? This book has not been concerned with the reasons why certain decisions that shaped the ‘youth justice’ system were made. Its aims are more modest than this. Firstly, by examining key documents and pieces of legislation that have emerged since the mid-­nineteenth century this book has charted the ‘mentalities’ or lines of government that have led to the present ‘youth justice’ system. Utilising a governmentality approach it was possible capture the visible forms of government that emerged starting with the manner in which juvenile offenders and the system for governing them emerged through various processes of inscription. In this regard, the utilisation of statistics in the mid-­nineteenth century was a critical factor. The system itself became visible



Conclusion191

in the form of initiatives such as reformatory and industrial schools, borstal, open prisons, the Children Court, and later places of detention, secure units and community projects. In addition to these initiatives, one can also see a less visible regulatory grid emerge which was controlled by predominantly Catholic religious organisations and served to socialise young people in accordance with a broadly Catholic religious agenda. Secondly, the book made visible the underlying rationalities that emerged at different times throughout the history of the system. These rationalities were examined as ‘things in themselves’ rather than signs of an overall policy. In this sense, it was possible to unpick the specific rationalities that underpin the Irish juvenile justice system. These included reformation, probation, psy expertise, social work, community and the often neglected area of youth work. These rationalities emanated from a variety of sources including lobby groups, non-­governmental organisations and others who campaigned for reform of the justice and welfare systems. One eventually sees evidence of these rationalities emerging through a series of government reports recommending the reform of both systems. In the case of the Irish juvenile justice system one can see a slow but perceptible change in the ‘mentality’ of government with ideas concerning the psychological development of the offender and concepts of risk slowly permeating the official discourse on the juvenile offender. This can be seen most clearly in documents such as the Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems (Dáil Éireann, 1970), the Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services (1980) and The First Report of the Dáil Select Committee on Crime (1992). The third line of enquiry comprised an examination of the technologies that are employed to govern. By adopting a governmentality approach it was possible to examine these technologies, like rationalities before them, as ‘things in themselves’, uncovering the specific practices of government as they exist in a range of locations such as industrial and reformatory schools, children detention schools, secure units and diversion projects. These technologies are categorised as either disciplinary or pastoral and represent the practical dimensions of government. Disciplinary technologies in the form of reformatory and industrial schools dominated the Irish juvenile justice system until the late twentieth century. Around this time one can see the emergence of alternative technologies influenced by the social and psychological sciences and developments abroad. Within the present ‘youth justice’ system the majority of juvenile offenders and potential offenders are now subject to a range of pastoral technologies encompassing risk assessment tools, counselling, mentoring, cautioning or other diversionary strategies designed to adjust their behaviour in open sites. The fourth and final line of enquiry involved an examination of how the child and young person has been constituted within the context of the history

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of the Irish juvenile justice system. Again, specific ‘forms of identity’ were examined as ‘things in themselves’ with the aim of unsettling the ‘regimes of subjectification’ to which these forms of childhood identity are linked. One can see how since the 1990s two specific forms of identity, the ‘at risk child’ and the ‘child as a bearer of rights’ have emerged to dominate the ‘youth justice’ space. The child who was subject to the reformatory and industrial school regime was viewed as a passive recipient of certain reformative strategies. However, since the 1990s in particular one can see the child emerging as someone who is to be consulted with, listened to and respected, as a bearer of certain rights and entitlements. In terms of the overall development of the system itself, the first initiative to cater for juveniles separately from adults within the prison system was established in 1801 at Smithfield in Dublin. Its penitentiary regime was aimed at juvenile offenders under fifteen years of age and awaiting transportation. However, it would be the mid-­nineteenth century before a separate system for juvenile offenders began to emerge. By the early 1850s the identity of the juvenile offender was becoming more visible through the medium of official reports such as the reports of the inspector of prisons. The Report of the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles (House of Commons, 1853) was the first time that a large body of statistical evidence was collated concerning the ‘problem’ of juvenile delinquency in Ireland. In the following years a strong lobby emerged in favour of the introduction of reformatory legislation in Ireland. This resulted in a rich vein of research on the subject of juvenile crime in journals such as the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland and the Irish Quarterly Review. This research was crucial to the campaign for the introduction of reformatory school legislation. However, although data relevant to juvenile offenders had been collected from the mid-­nineteenth century onwards and a large body of research had been accumulated in the above journals, unlike Britain and America, in Ireland no ‘governmental’ criminological project emerged. It was only in the 1990s that the state began to engage in criminal justice research at a programmatic level. Within the context of Irish juvenile justice, two organisations in particular provide examples of this process: the Irish Association for the Study of Delinquency (now known as the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development) and the National Crime Council.2 Both were funded by the state and engaged experts in an independent capacity to research crime. What is most noticeable in the Irish situation is the absence of any centralised state apparatus for the study of juvenile crime, and the fact that there is no one source of data on young offenders in Ireland. In the absence of rigorous criminological research, speculation around the underlying causes of crime and appropriate solutions has been an enduring feature of the juvenile justice system in Ireland.



Conclusion193

With regard to the history of juvenile justice in Ireland, one can see a system dominated, from the mid-­nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, by the reformatory and industrial schools and operated for the most part by Catholic religious organisations. Although a system of inspection did exist, there was almost no government interference in the running of the schools. The ethos and regime in each school was shaped by the organisation managing that particular school. After Irish independence little changed, and the original rules and regulations governing the schools were adopted by the new administration. The systemic failures on the part of the Irish state to protect children detained in these institutions have been highlighted in the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (2009). The majority of children committed to the schools were committed because of their life circumstances rather than the commission of a criminal offence. As a result the industrial schools differed significantly from those in Britain in that the Irish schools catered essentially for the children of the poor. After independence the total population in reformatory and industrial schools remained steady throughout the 1920s and 1930s, rising to a peak in the mid-­1940s, then declining gradually from the 1950s onwards. Although there was no overt criticism of the schools at this time, some disapproval began to emerge from official and unofficial sources. This criticism gathered momentum throughout the 1950s and 1960s, coming to a head with the publication of the Kennedy Report in 1970. There was some evidence of change within the system with the introduction by the Garda Síochána of an initiative for warning first-­time juvenile offenders in 1953 and the establishment of a formal system for cautioning juvenile offenders by the Garda Síochána in 1963. Osborough (1979) highlights the establishment of the Garda Juvenile Liaison Scheme as a significant development in the growth of formalism with regard to the Irish criminal justice system and argues that nowhere was the ‘growth of system and growth of formalism’ more obvious than in the procedures for dealing with juvenile offenders. An increasing governmentalisation of the state was reflected in calls for greater training and professionalism for those working with children and for greater provision of services by the state. The Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems (1970), the First and Second Interim Reports of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons (1975 and 1975a) and the Report of Task Force on Child Care Services (1980) are key publications in that they recommended that the state take more responsibility for delivering services to children. There were signs that the state was beginning to take more responsibility with regard to the delivery of services within the juvenile justice system. The Probation and Welfare Service was established in 1971 and the use of p ­ robation

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orders within the courts increased. In 1973 Finglas Assessment Centre was opened, although it was managed by the De La Salle Brothers. In addition, a small number of probation hostels were established in different parts of the country with the assistance of state funds. In 1978 Loughan House opened and was the first secure unit for juvenile offenders to be managed directly by the state. It was replaced in 1983 by the first purpose-­built secure unit for young offenders outside the prison system, at Trinity House School in Lusk. In 1985 Fort Mitchell (Spike Island) opened for the detention juvenile offenders. A further development in this regard was the opening in the early 1990s of Oberstown Boys’ Detention Centre and Oberstown Girls’ Detention Centre, both reformatory schools for children aged between twelve and sixteen years. However, change was slow and while there were some developments with regard to policy and procedure in terms of how children were treated within the juvenile justice system, it was to be the early 1990s before an ever-­growing consensus on child welfare and protection found legislative expression. The enactment of the Child Care Act 1991 reflected the growing prominence of social work as a key rationality underpinning the government of children. This eventually led to the establishment of a number of high support and special care units to cater for certain categories of vulnerable children whose behaviour posed a threat to themselves and/or others. Although there were no further significant legislative developments specifically with regard to juvenile justice until 2001, one can see the state in various ways becoming enmeshed in the business of governing the ‘troubled and troublesome’ child through the sponsorship and funding of crime prevention initiatives by various government departments, the National Lottery, local drug task forces, city and county development boards, the Dormant Accounts Fund and through the promotion of volunteerism. Also, in the areas of probation and crime prevention there was a greater emphasis on dealing with juvenile offenders within community settings. The most significant development was the rapid expansion of Garda Youth Diversion Projects, family support and the Diversion Programme. Underpinning this process is the increasing prominence of the psychological sciences, social work, probation, youth work and community-­based initiatives. A visible effect of this ongoing process of governmentalisation was the enactment of the Children Act 2001. This process was taken further with the establishment of a Youth Justice Task Force in 2004 to examine the youth justice system in the light of the passing into law of the Children Act 2001 and the establishment of the Irish Youth Justice Service in 2006. The Report on the Youth Justice Review (2006) made certain recommendations in relation to the ‘rationalisation and restructuring’ of the juvenile justice system. This report, like the Children Act 2001, is a visible effect of the process of governmentalisation itself.



Conclusion195

In terms of inspection and oversight the Health Act 2007 was passed into law establishing the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). The Authority, through the Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) has responsibility for the inspection of children’s residential centres, special care units and children detention schools. Also in July 2007, the Children’s Acts Advisory Board (CAAB) was established under the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2007, thus changing the name and function of the Special Residential Services Board which was established in November 2003 pursuant to the Children Act 2001. In 2008 the National Youth Justice Strategy (IYJS, 2008b) outlined the degree to which the state would become further enmeshed in the process of governing through increased levels of inter-­agency co-­operation. On the future development of ‘youth justice’ in Ireland, it notes: it will be essential to establish linkages through various policies such as the National Drugs Strategy and its successor, and also at operational levels through such bodies as the Health Service Executive (HSE), the National Drugs Strategy Team and the Interdepartmental Group on Drugs. Such interaction will help to target, focus and provide continuity when it comes to interventions and outcomes for young people involved in anti-­social behaviour and crime, and provide the necessary support to divert them from offending and re-­offending. (IYJS, 2008b: 7)

The success of this strategy clearly depends upon cultivation of effective linkages between the justice and welfare systems and therefore the Irish Youth Justice Service states that: ‘to improve the effective delivery of services to young people in trouble with the law, the IYJS will work with the Minister for Children; the Children Acts Advisory Board; An Garda Síochána; the Courts Service; the Probation Service; the Health Service Executive; FÁS; and the Departments of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs; Education and Science; and Health and Children’ (2008b: 11). The establishment of such networks between statutory agencies reflects the increasing pace at which the state is becoming governmentalised. This represents a major sea change in juvenile justice policy with the state taking centre stage, a space formerly occupied by religious and voluntary organisations for most of the twentieth century. The publication of the National Youth Justice Strategy, like the establishment of the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, is further evidence of this process. In the 1990s and 2000s many of the initiatives that were once managed by voluntary and religious organisations were mainstreamed and responsibility transferred to state agencies. This is reflected in the development of Garda Youth Diversion Projects, Probation Projects, high support and special care units and the planned development of a national children’s detention facility. With these developments and the establishment of the Department of

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Children and Youth Affairs, which aims to pull together all agencies providing services to children and young people, one can see the state now taking a central co-­ordinating role with regard to the juvenile justice system. The introduction of the term ‘youth justice’ into the juvenile justice lexicon appears to have heralded a new approach within the juvenile justice field, reflected in the rhetoric of the new Irish Youth Justice Service. The ‘justice/welfare’ approach espoused in the Report on the Youth Justice Review (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2006) and the National Youth Justice Strategy (IYJS, 2008b) emerges as a multi-­layered system of government, encapsulating a complex array of rationalities and technologies straddling the so called justice/welfare divide. However, it is somewhat misleading to describe this as a divide and more helpful to refer to a justice– welfare continuum or the risk continuum. For what we find are numerous strategies aimed at managing a population of offenders and potential offenders in accordance with calculations of risk. These calculations are based on an array of risk factors with the identity of ‘at risk child’ employed to govern those inhabiting the margins of society. As a result of these calculations certain experts are licensed to intervene in the lives of young people. It is no longer a question of merely classifying individuals as delinquent. A sophisticated sliding scale of risk has emerged where degrees of risk can be detected in an endless number of sites along a continuum from the cradle to the grave. Along this continuum technologies are designed to detect, define, classify and eliminate risk where it becomes visible. The ‘system’ is thus visible in the form of initiatives designed to improve parenting skills, tackle early school-­leaving, counsel teenagers abusing alcohol and drugs, manage aggressive behaviour, increase employability, improve self-­esteem, support families and caution and divert offenders and potential offenders. This does not mean that the closed institution has been replaced; rather, it has been supplemented by a multiplicity of initiatives for the government of children that employ a range of techniques, including risk assessment tools, care plans, suitability reports, psychological reports, key worker reports and behaviour modification programmes. In contrast with the situation that pertained from the mid-­nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-­first century in Ireland, the state has assumed a central role in the government of children and young people. In terms of inspection, advocacy, diversion, detention, care and protection, the umbrella of the state is widening at an increasingly fast pace. This process of the governmentalisation of the state is presently shrouded in the rhetoric of justice and rights and the promise of a more just and equitable system of juvenile justice. In this regard, the identities of the ‘at risk child’ and the ‘child as a bearer of rights’ are employed interchangeably within the modern youth justice system. The child is simultaneously viewed as someone who is to be



Conclusion197

both cared for and controlled. Legislative developments, especially relating to special care, have seen the state become more enmeshed in the process of governing the child. The reasons why these developments have occurred are not the subject of this book; neither are we interested here in whether these developments are positive or negative in terms of rights or outcomes. Rather, we are concerned with tracing how we arrived at this point and how children and young people are governed within the current system. In doing this it is hoped that this book has brought the reader some way towards understanding how the government of the child and young person is achieved and opened up the space that has become known as the ‘youth justice’ system. Notes 1 For a more in-­depth treatment of this subject see Rose and Miller (1992). 2 The Irish Association for the Study of Delinquency published a wide range of material on topics relating to juvenile justice, including: preventing offending (1998); tagging of offenders (1999); juvenile justice (2000); drugs and alcohol (2001); human rights (2002); family conferencing (2003); sanctions for offenders (2004); system review (2005a); Dublin Children Court (2005b); reintegration of offenders (2005c). The National Crime Council also released a number of publications, including: National Crime Forum Report (1998); public order offences (2003b); crime prevention (2003); tackling the underlying causes of crime (2002); crime in Ireland (2001).

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Index

Page numbers in bold refer to figures. after-care 24, 101 Agenda for Children’s Services, (Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs) 184 An Garda Síochána 10n1, 22, 34–5, 84, 111, 141–2, 142 Annual Report of the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána (1967) 24 Annual Report of the Directors of Convict Prisons, First (1855) 59 anti-social behaviour 38, 38–40, 169–70 anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) 39–40 Arnold, B., The Irish Gulag 42–3 Assessment, Consultations and Therapy Service (ACTS) 116 Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development 192 Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors 111 at risk children 35–6, 49n26, 52, 60–1, 71, 85, 95, 104, 116, 119, 122, 145, 149–52, 172–8, 187, 192, 196, 196–7 Aylward, Margaret 93 Barnes, J. 15–16, 42, 158 Barrett, Boyd 107–8 Beijing Rules, the 115, 183 Belfast, Malone Training School 27 Belfast Social Inquiry Society 156–7 Belvedere Newsboys’ Club 107–8 Berwick, Walter 56–7 Bessant, J. 114, 178 Big Brothers Big Sisters Programme 148 biographical narratives 52 bio-political knowledge 8–9, 11n3 boarding-out system 19, 93

Boland, Gerald 22 Borstal Association of Ireland 75 borstal system 6, 8, 9, 17, 42, 74–6, 90n19, 97, 122, 131 disciplinary technologies 131–2 and identity construction 163–4 numbers committed 27, 28 regime 131, 164 Bosco, John 65 Bowlby, John 167, 169 Boy Scouts 65–6 Breaking Through 113 Browne, Dr Noel 179 Bugsy Malones 33 Burke, H., et al. 31 Burke, Helen 111 Burt, Cyril 166, 167–8 Byrne, Edward, Archbishop 66 Cabra 166 CARE (Campaign for the Care of Deprived Children) 28–9, 110, 180 CARE Memorandum on Deprived Children and Children’s Services in Ireland, The 28–9, 175 care plans 135–6, 137, 138 Carpenter, Mary 2, 14, 51–2, 98, 157, 158, 161, 163, 187 Carrigan, William 19 Carroll-Burke, P. 45, 52–3 case records 138, 153n6 Catholic Action movement 66, 89n7 Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland 65–6, 68 Catholic Church 3, 43–5, 88, 93, 193 and children’s rights 179 and probation 99–101, 147 regulatory initiatives 62–8

220

Index

Catholic Church (cont.) and the at risk child 172 youth work 44, 65–6, 104, 105–9 Catholic Girl Guides of Ireland 66, 68 Catholic Protection and Rescue Society 65, 94, 172 Catholic Social Service Conference 67, 106 Catholic Social Welfare Bureau 20 Catholic Women’s Federation of Secondary School Unions 66 Catholic Young Men’s Society of Ireland 63 Catholic Youth Care 69, 102, 107 Catholic Youth Council 107 cautioning 24–5, 24, 84, 139, 153n9, 193 censuses 53–4 child abuse 1, 40–1, 153n2 Child Care Act 1991 34–6, 38, 82, 117, 177, 181, 182–3, 194 Child Care (Amendment) Act 2007 90n15, 183, 195 Child Care (Amendment) Act 2011 36, 90n15, 178, 187 Child Care Regulations (Placement of Children in Residential Care) 1995 137 Child Care (Special Care) Regulations 2004 137 child care system 28–9, 93 child development 119, 146–7, 151 child development and education intervention initiatives 86–7 child guidance clinics 168 Child Guidance Movement 165–6 child welfare 17–18, 180 Child Welfare and Protection Agency 86 childhood 155, 176, 187n1 childhood identity, forms of 10, 155–88, 191–2 the child as a bearer of rights 178–88, 187, 192, 196–7 the delinquent 155–61, 187 the psychological child 165–72, 173 the at risk child 172–8, 187, 192, 196–7 subject of reformation 161–5 see also identity children, status 171–2, 180–1 Children Act 1908 1, 2, 3, 17–18, 30, 31, 37, 41, 46–7n7, 69, 72, 73, 77, 92, 95, 98, 117–18, 125–6, 128, 159–60, 181 Children Act 1929 18 Children Act 1941 71 Children Act 2001 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 24, 32, 36, 38, 40, 41, 46–7n7, 62, 73–4, 80, 83, 86,

90n22, 99, 114, 114–15, 117, 122, 134, 142, 143, 146–7, 148, 177, 182, 183–4, 187, 194 Children and Young Persons Act 1933 3, 20, 21, 166 Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Acts 1932 and 1937 3 Children and Youth Affairs, Department of 86, 102, 151, 195–6 Children and Youth Affairs, Minister for 80 Children Bill 1941 166 Children Bill 1996 37–8 Children Bill 1999 114 Children Court, the 6, 38, 46–7n7, 69–74, 89n11 Children Deprived (CARE) 180 children detention schools (CDS) 32, 80–2, 134–6, 152, 184 Children’s Acts Advisory Board 182, 182–3, 195 Children’s Hearing System, Scotland 3 children’s rights 5, 7, 29, 40, 41–2, 187, 192, 196–7 constitutional 178–9, 180, 181, 182, 186–7 development of 178–86 legislative development 181–4 statutory 183 Children’s Rights Alliance 181 Christian Brothers 3, 15, 59, 64, 89n9, 93, 101, 108, 127, 128, 130–1 Christus Rex Society 160 citizenship 7, 9, 114, 149 City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee 104–5 City of Dublin Youth Services Board 104–5 Civics Institute 20, 22 Clonmel borstal 42, 74–5, 76 Coldrey, B. 43 Comhairle le Leas Óige 104–5, 106 Commission of Enquiry into the Irish Penal System, 1980 32 Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory School and Industrial School System 21, 88n3 Commission of Inquiry on Mental Handicap 122, 168, 172–4 Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness 121–2, 160, 168 Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor 18–19 Commission on Youth Unemployment 22, 105, 160, 167



Index221

Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse 1, 1–2, 40–1, 43 Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Amendment) Act 2005 1 Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Report (2009) 64, 82, 88n3, 95, 116, 187 Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, Department of 86 community initiatives 6, 9, 109–16, 177, 191 community service orders (CSO) 111 community space 143 Comprehensive Guidelines for Garda Youth Diversion Projects (Dublin Institute of Technology) 144–5 Connellan, James 55–9 Constitution of Ireland 178–9, 180, 181, 182, 186–7 Constitution Review Group 182 Cooney, J. 67, 123n10 Copping On 113 Cork City 66, 107, 108, 110 corporal punishment 128–9, 156, 179–80 Costello, Declan 103 Costello Report 103, 104, 123n7 Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) 133 County of Dublin Vocational Education Committee 81 Courts of Justice Act 1924 46–7n7, 73 Courts of Justice (District Court) Act 1946 46–7n7 Cowan, Peadar 23 crime prevention 10, 20, 44, 149–50, 194 criminal child, the 56–7 criminal class, the 52, 58–9 Criminal Justice Act 1960 23, 27, 33, 76, 78, 90n19 Criminal Justice Act 2006 38, 39–40, 90n22, 177, 183–4 Criminal Justice Administration Act 1914 97, 101, 159–60, 164 Criminal Justice Bill 2004 38–9 Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act 1983 73, 111 criminal justice research 192 Criminal Law Amendment Act 1880 19 Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 19 criminal responsibility, age of 31, 38, 49n26, 183 criminal statistics 51, 52 criminals, definition 98 Crofton, Sir Walter 14, 59, 97

Crowe, Sean 39 Crowley, U. 43 Cullen, James 68 Cullen, M.J. 51 Cullen, Paul, Archbishop 45, 93 Curragh of Kildare, the 12–13 Curtis, M. 64, 89n7 Curtis Report 170 Cussen, G.P. 21 Cussen Report 21, 88n3 Dáil Select Committee on Crime, First Report 191 Dáil na nÓg 115, 184 Daly, E.D. 94, 158–9, 160 Daughters of Charity 15, 89n9 De La Salle Brothers 78, 89n9, 194 Dean, Mitchell 5, 6, 7, 11n3 Deflem, M. 51 delinquent identity 155–61, 187 Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) 4, 10, 10n1 Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 4, 10n1 Departmental Committee on Prisons 16 Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders in Britain 20 deprivation and the deprived child 7, 121, 160–1, 167, 168–9, 170, 173–5 Derrig, Thomas 21, 166–7 Designing Effective Local Responses to Youth Crime (IYJS) 178 detention 7, 19, 42, 57–8, 95, 115, 122, 183, 185–6 Detention of Children in Ireland: International Standards and Best Practice, (Irish Penal Reform Trust) 185–6 detention schools 80–2, 90n22 D.G. v Eastern Health Board 35 Dillon, James 21–2, 69, 77, 166 disciplinary technologies 9, 10, 125, 125–39, 152, 191 children detention schools (CDS) 134–6, 152 disciplinary technologies (cont.) high support and special care 136–9, 152 penal technologies 131–4 reformatory and industrial schools 125–31 Discipline and Punishment in Certified Schools (Department of Education) 128

222 Discussion Paper Containing Proposals for a Scheme of Community Policing (Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors) 111 District Court 36, 46–7n7, 69 diversion 5, 7, 84–7 Diversion Programme 38, 39–40, 84, 85, 139–42, 142, 153, 153n8, 177, 194 Donzelot, J. 71 Draft National Standards for the Protection and Welfare of Children 184 Dublin 20, 22–3, 33–4, 93, 104–5 Artane Industrial School 130 Children Court 69–70, 73 CuanMhuire Assessment Unit 47n9 House of Industry 12 Ronanstown 36–7 St James’s Street penitentiary 12 Smithfield penitentiary 12, 51, 192 Streets Committee 22–3, 47n11 Summerhill Police Barracks 76–7 Youth Encounter Projects 110 Dublin City Youth Board 23, 104, 109 Dublin Corporation Probation Service 100 Dublin Statistical Society 52 Dublin University Magazine 52 Duff, Frank 71 early intervention initiatives 150–2 Early Start Programme 87 Eastern Regional Health Authority 83 Edgar, Rev. John 156–7 education 134–6, 146, 151, 157 Education, Department of 23–4, 31, 32, 33, 77, 105, 128 Education, Minister of 18, 128, 129 Education and Science, Department of 82, 134, 135–6 Education and Science, Minister for 80 Education and Skills, Department of 87 Effectiveness of Youth Clubs in the Local Community (Oireachtas Joint Committee) 102 Employment of Children Act 1903 17–18 empowerment 9, 86–7, 150–1 England 3, 21 Ericson, R. 142 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 179, 186 European Court of Human Rights 35 European law 182, 186 executive inertia 34–6

Index Expert Group on Children Detention Schools 134–5 Fahy, E. 27, 75, 101, 163 family, the 57, 118, 119, 136, 161, 167–8, 170–1, 172, 175 family conferences 153–4n12 family support 86, 150–1 Family Support Act 2001 91n26 Family Support Agency 4, 86, 91n26 Final Report of the Commission on the Family to the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs: Strengthening Families 86 Final Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services 76, 112 Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre 80, 116, 194 Finnane, M. 19 First and Second Interim Reports of the Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons 119–20, 193 Fitzgerald, Frances 80, 86, 116, 186, 187 FitzGerald, Garret 103 Fitzpatrick, Jeremiah 11n3 Flanagan, Edward 75–6 Flynn, A., et al. 169 Foley, Louis 126, 162 Forde, Walter 104 Foróige 102, 148 Fort Mitchell, Spike Island 34, 59, 79–80, 99 Foucault, M. 155–6 Freeman’s Journal 52 Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) 67–8 Galwey, James 55 Garda Juvenile Diversion Scheme 41, 90n23, 183 Garda Juvenile Liaison Officer Scheme 24–5, 24, 84, 90n23, 139–42, 193 Garda Juvenile Liaison Section 49n26 Garda National Juvenile Office 90n23 Garda Special Projects 37 Garda Youth Diversion Projects 37, 44, 84–5, 87, 102, 103, 107, 112–13, 117, 144–6, 152, 194, 195 Garland, David 53, 96, 97, 98 Garvin, T. 26, 106 Germany, Meldwesen system 51 Gilligan, R. 43–4 Girl Guides 65–6 girls 13, 14, 15, 47n9, 65, 94, 123n10, 130

Girls Protection Society 65 Giving a Voice to Children’s Wishes, Feelings and Interests (CAAB) 182–3 Gladstone Committee and Report (1895) 16–17, 18, 96–7 good behaviour contracts 39 Grace, Richard 59 Great Britain, Child Guidance Movement 165–6 guardian ad litem service 182–3, 183 Guild of St Philip 64, 101 Hacking, I. 51 Haggerty, K. 142 Hall, Sir William Clarke 17, 166 Handbook of Catholic Social and Charitable Works in Ireland (Irish Messenger) 62–3 Hart, I. 169–70 Haughey, Charles 23, 24–5, 25 Hayes, Rev. J.M. 67 Health, Department of 31–2, 33 Health Act 2007 184, 195 Health and Children, Department of 82–3 health boards 34–5 Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) 134, 184, 195 Health Service Executive 4, 65, 82, 86, 116, 177, 178 Healy, A. 89n9 Hegarty, D.A. 47n11 Henchy Committee, the 29 Hendrick, H. 187n1 Herald, the 33–4 high support units 36, 48n25, 82–4, 136, 138, 152, 195 Hill, Peter 95 Holtzendorff, Franz von 88n2 homelessness 35, 48n19, 110 Home–School Liaison Scheme (HSCL) 151 Horsman, Edward 93 Hough, J. 116 Howard, John 11n3 Hurley, L. 65 Hyland, Liam 33–4 identity 7, 8, 10, 143–4, 163 see also childhood identity, forms of identity construction 140, 145, 152, 155–6, 162–5 industrial schools see reformatory and industrial schools Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act 1868 3, 14

Index223 Inglis, T. 44, 68 inspection 1–2, 195 Inspector General of Prisons, reports 2, 8, 54–6, 185 intelligence testing 167–8 inter-agency co-operation 195 Interdepartmental Committee on Mentally Ill and Maladjusted Persons 23, 29, 30, 160, 171 Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder 36–7 Interim Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services 110, 123–4n13 International Catholic Association for Protecting Girls 65 Investment in Education (DoE) 23–4 Irish Association for the Study of Delinquency 192, 197n2 Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) 180 Irish Free State 18, 20–1 Irish Penal Reform Trust 114, 185–6 Irish Prison Service 10n1, 133 Irish Prisons Board 74 Irish Quarterly Review 13, 14, 46n4, 52, 53, 98, 156, 157, 192 Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) 70, 90n12 Irish Times 24, 26–7, 35, 77–8, 89n9 Irish Youth Justice Alliance 39, 49n27 Irish Youth Justice Service (IYJS) 4, 10, 10n1, 40, 85, 86, 116, 178, 194, 195, 196 Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency 160, 167 Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Women’s Rights 39 Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland 13, 14, 20, 46n4, 52, 53, 98, 156, 157, 158, 159, 192 Justice, Department of 23, 77, 79, 99, 113 Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Minister for 80 Justice, Minister of 33 justice system, children distinguished from adults 18 justice–welfare continuum 76–87, 196 children detention schools 80–2 diversionary sites 84–7 high support/special care units 82–4 places of detention 76–80 juvenile adults 96–9, 163–4 juvenile crime 8, 55–6

224

Index

juvenile delinquency 21, 50–3, 158, 192 causative factors 20, 157, 158–61, 169 Dublin 22–3 media coverage 33–4 psychological perspective 119–21, 165–75 and youth unemployment 105 juvenile delinquent 8 identity 155–61 reformation policy 94–6 juvenile liaison officers (JLO) 84, 139–41, 142, 144 juvenile offender, the 8, 16–17, 55–6, 58, 132–3 Kennedy, Finola 178 Kennedy Report, the 28–9, 31, 62, 77, 82, 120–1, 170, 175, 191, 193 Kenny, A. 167 Kilbrandon Report, 1964 3 Kilkelly, Dr Ursula 40, 42, 74, 181, 185, 186 Kilkenny Incest Investigation Report 181 Kingsmill-Moore, Justice 77–8 Kitchin, R. 43 Laffoy, Mary, Ms Justice 1 Lalor, K., et al. 103, 105–6 Le Cheile Mentoring Project 148 Legion of Mary 20, 44, 66, 68, 71, 100, 101, 106, 108, 147 Legion of Mary Probation Group 99 Lemass, Seán 22 Lenihan, Brian 39 Lentaigne, John 14, 46n6, 126, 128 Letterfrack Industrial School 26, 30 lifestyle choices 86, 113–14 Limerick 110 literature 41–5 litigation strategy 35–6 Local Drugs Task Forces 116 Lockhart, B. 144 Loughan House, County Cavan 30, 32, 47–8n15, 79, 99, 111, 175, 194 McBride, Sean 32 McCarthy, H.A. 69–74, 72, 100–1 McCluskey, M. 166 McDowell, Michael 40 McNally, G. 99, 100 McQuaid, John Charles, Archbishop 20, 22, 44, 49n30, 65–6, 66–7, 71, 105–7, 123n10 Magarey, S. 156

Magdalen institutions 65, 129 Maguire, M.J. 44 maladjusted child, the 165 Markus, T.A. 59 Marlborough House 77–8 Martin, F. 41–2, 181 Mater Child Guidance Clinic 166–7 May, M. 51, 161 media coverage 26–7, 33–4 mental handicap 166, 172–3 mental health 116–22 Mentor (Family Support) Order 148 Miller, P. 54 Molony, Thomas 20, 100, 165 moral code 43, 44, 126, 147 moral hospitals 158 moral risk 93–4, 95 moral statisticians 51–3 moral training 126 Morgan, D.G. 27 Mother and Child Scheme 178–9 Mountjoy prison 13, 25, 76, 88n2, 132, 133 Muintir na Tíre 67 Murphy, C.K. 147 Murray, Patrick Joseph 2, 93, 162 National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (NAPSS) 52–3 National Children Detention Facility 116, 185–6 National Children’s Strategy 2000–10 184 National Crime Council 113, 149–50, 192 national detention facility 80, 82, 195 National Development Plan 2000-2006 (Government of Ireland) 86 National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) 117 National Educational Welfare Board 4 National Federation of Youth Clubs 68 National Reformatory Union 2 National Standards for Special Care Units, The 84 National Youth Council of Ireland 151–2 National Youth Justice Strategy 2008–2010 4, 40, 150, 187, 195, 196 National Youth Policy Committee 103 National Youth Policy Committee: Final Report 103, 104, 112, 123n7 National Youth Work Development Plan 2003–2007 102–3 Neighbourhood Watch 32 Northern Ireland 99 NSPCC 71, 89–90n12



Index225

Oberstown Campus 80, 81, 82, 90n21, 116 Oberstown detention schools 10n1, 47n9, 80, 81, 194 Oblate Fathers 15, 30, 89n9 O’Brien, Dean 63 O’Connell, J.R. 159 O’Connor, Charles 18–19 O’Connor, J. 70, 78, 168 O’Donnell, I. 44–5 O’Donoghue, John 1, 38, 114 offender mapping 58 offenders 53–9, 156 Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs 4, 183, 184, 185, 187, 195 O’Hagan, Thomas 162 Oireachtas Joint Committee 102 Ombudsman for Children 133, 182, 184–5, 187 Ombudsman for Children Act 2002 184–5 open institutions 6, 79 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 23–4 orphan societies 45 Osborough, N. 29, 30, 41, 42, 79, 193 O’Sullivan, D. 21, 44–5, 45, 89n11, 93 O’Sullivan, E. 15, 43, 94 Ozanam, Frederick 63 parental neglect 159, 161, 166 parents 18, 34 Parton, M. 118 pastoral technologies 9–10, 125, 152–3, 191 crime prevention/early intervention initiatives 149–52 the diversion programme 139–42 Garda youth diversion projects 144–6 probation 146–9 restorative justice initiatives 142–4, 153n9, 153n12 Pearson, C. 156 penal strategy, failure of 96–8 penal technologies 15, 131–4 Philipstown Prison 13, 59 Pioneer and Total Abstinence Association 68 Pious X, Pope 89n7 places of detention 6, 76–80 Pobal 115 Policy for Youth and Sport 110, 176 political economy 59–60 poor-houses 56 population statistics, compilation of 53–4

poverty 159 Presentation Brothers 15, 89n9 Presentation Sisters 15, 89n9 Prevention of Crime Act 1908 18, 74, 75, 96, 163–4 Prevention of Cruelty to Children Acts 17 Principles and Policies Underpinning the Development of Special Care and High Support Provision in Ireland 82–3 prison model, challenges to 97–8 prison system 12–13, 16–18, 33, 59 prisoners 16–17, 55–9, 101, 132 probation 7, 9, 44, 99–102, 146–9, 191, 194 Probation and Welfare Service 10n1, 34, 72–3, 85–6, 99–100, 193–4 Probation of Offenders Act 1907 18, 72, 73, 96, 97, 100, 146, 159–60 probation officers 72–3, 100, 118, 147–9 Probation Projects 10, 113, 195 probationary schools 60 prostitution, juvenile 19 psychological child, the 165–72, 173 psychological disturbances 167–8 psychological pathology 170–1 psychological profiles 169 psychological services 7, 25–6, 29–30, 119–22, 191 development of 116–19 and identity construction 165–72 Quill, Marian 37 RAPID (revitalising communities by planning, investment and development) 116 reformation 7, 9, 92–9, 148, 161–5, 191 reformatory asylums 156 Reformatory School Movement 2 reformatory and industrial schools 3, 6, 13–15, 22, 28–9, 69, 157, 175 accommodation 127 after-care 24 Catholic influence 64, 93, 94–6 child abuse 41 and class 43 classes of juvenile 60–1 closures 31–2, 89n5 committal process 18, 71, 93–4 committal reasons 94 discharged statuses 61 disciplinary technologies 125–31 dominance 10, 96, 122, 193

226

Index

reformatory and industrial schools (cont.) establishment 3, 92–3, 187 expansion 15–16, 94 government attitude to 20–1 and identity construction 162–3 industrial education 129–30 legislation 2, 46n5 literature 42–3 management 2, 3, 15,18, 23, 33, 44, 59, 89n9, 130 numbers 15, 16, 60 numbers committed 61–2, 62, 76 numbers detained 15, 16, 60, 94, 98 political economy 59–60 reformation policy 94–6 regime 126–7, 162 religious instruction 129 renamed 31, 80 system 59–62 teachers 126 Reformatory Schools (Ireland) Act 1858 3, 13 regimes of subjectification 155 regulatory sites 88 Catholic Church 62–8 community 68–9 rehabilitation 7, 133 Reidy, C. 42, 75 reintegration 134–6 religious congregations 2, 15, 43, 93, 129 re-moralising 115 Report from the Departmental Committee on Prisons 1895 163, 164–5 Report of Commission of Inquiry on Mental Handicap 109 Report of Commission on Youth Unemployment 109 Report of Task Force on Child Care Services 193 Report of the Care of Children Committee 170 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System 1934–1936 77, 166 Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness 25, 173–4 Report of the Commission on Industrial and Reformatory Schools 15–16, 60, 61 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor 19 Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse 43, 187, 193 Report of the Committee Appointed by the

Minister of State at the Department of Education: Development of Youth Work Services in Ireland 103, 110 Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System 33, 79, 112, 133, 176 Report of the Committee on the Criminal Law Amendments Acts 19 Report of the Dáil Select Committee on Crime, First 37, 176–7 Report of the Departmental Committee on Prisons 16–7, 18, 96–7 Report of the Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders 165 Report of the General Prisons Board, Ireland, Thirtieth 17 Report of the Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools in Ireland, Ninth 15, 46n6 Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Urban Crime and Disorder 36–7, 103, 177 Report of the Joint Committee on Vandalism and Juvenile Delinquency 22–3, 104, 109 Report of the Probation and Welfare Service 112 Report of the Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism, Thirteenth 34 Report of the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles 98, 158, 192 Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services 117–19, 176, 191 Report of the Working Group on the Future of Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre 80 Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems 28–9, 31, 62, 77, 82, 109–10, 120–1, 127–8, 170, 175, 191, 193 Report on the Probation and Welfare Service 99 Report on the Requirements and the Necessity, for Special Care and High Support Residential Child Care Provision in Ireland 82–3 Report on the Youth Justice Review 4, 40, 115, 177, 194, 196 Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department of the Departmental Committee on Reformatory and Industrial Schools 16 Report of the Select Committee of 1853 57–9



Index227

residential care 25–6, 31–2, 134–5 restitution 34 restorative justice 7, 10, 111, 114–15, 142–4, 153n9, 153n12 restriction on movement orders 37 revolving door, the 33, 34 Rice, Edmund Ignatius 64, 93 Ring, M.E. 37 risk 5, 7, 120, 149–50, 172, 178 and deprivation 173–5 moral 93–4, 95 risk assessment 7, 85, 134–5, 137–8, 178, 196 risk factors, environmental 176–7 risk-based technology 144–6 Riyadh Guidelines, the 115, 183 Robins, J. 42 Roche, M. 147 Rose, N., et al. 5, 7 Rose, Nikolas 9, 11n2, 51, 54, 57, 72, 90n18, 146, 149, 153n1, 165–6 Rosminian Order, the 81–2, 89n9 Ruggles-Brise, Evelyn 164 Rules for the Government of Prisons, SI No. 320 1947 132–3 Ryan, Sean, Mr Justice 1 St John Bosco Society 66, 101 St John Bosco youth centres 65 St Joseph’s Catholic Boys’ Brigade 64 St Joseph’s Clonmel 80, 81–2 St Michael’s Assessment Unit, Finglas 29–30, 47n9 St Patrick’s Institution 23, 27, 32, 76, 78, 80, 90n22, 98–9, 101, 116–17, 132–4, 169, 185, 186 Salesian order, the 65 School Attendance Act 1926 18 School Children’s Protection Organisation 179–80 School Government (Christian Brothers) 59 Schools Completion Programme 87 Scoil Ard Mhuire 30 Scotland 3 secure units 6, 36, 49n26 Select Committee on Crime, Lawlessness and Vandalism 32, 79, 123n6 Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, 1853 13, 55–9 Select Committee on the Criminal Law, Second Report of the 156 Servants Homes of Mercy 65 sexual immorality 43, 47n8, 123n10 shame 142–3

Shanganagh Castle 79, 99 Sheehy Skeffington, Owen 26 single agency approach 40 Sisters of Charity 15, 89n9 Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Refuge 15, 89n9, 23n10 Sisters of Mercy 3, 15, 89n9, 93 Sisters of St Clare 15, 89n9 Sisters of St Louis 15, 89n9 Skehill, C. 99 Smith, J.M. 43, 47n8 Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) 136–9, 184, 195 social work 7, 118, 191 Social Workers’ Handbook (Society of St Vincent de Paul) 64, 66 Society of St Vincent de Paul 44, 63–4, 66, 68, 69, 100–1, 101, 108, 147 Some of Our Children. A Report on the Residential Care of the Deprived Child in Ireland (Tuairim) 25–6, 121–2, 174 South Tipperary Vocational Education Committee 81 Spark’s Lake Industrial School 60 special care orders 36, 37, 177 special care units 36, 38, 48n25, 82–4, 136–9, 152, 184, 195 Special Projects grants 102 Special Residential Services Board (SRSB) 83, 137, 182, 183, 195 Spike Island see Fort Mitchell, Spike Island Springboard family support initiative 150–1 Standards and Criteria for Children Detention Schools 81, 134, 134–5, 135–6 state, the 1, 6, 7, 10, 20–1, 42–3, 190, 193–4, 196–7 statistics, and visibility 51–9 Strategic Management Initiative, 1997 38 subsidiary 43–4, 99 Sweetman, John 95 Tackling Crime (Department of Justice) 38, 113, 177 Task Force on Child Care Services 31, 48n16, 110, 112, 171–2, 180–1 Task Force on the Child and Family Support Agency 86 T.D. and Others v Minister for Education 35 temporary release 23, 33 Titley, E.B. 129 Toward a Model Penal System (Irish Penal Reform Trust) 114 Towards a Just Society (Fine Gael) 26

228

Index

Traynor, Oscar 78 Trinity College Dublin 25 Trinity House School, Lusk 30, 32, 80, 81, 194 Tuairim 25–6, 47n12, 121–2, 168–9, 174 Tunney, Jim 33 Tyrell, Peter 26 unemployment, youth 22, 105, 160 United Nations, Rome seminar 23 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 181–2, 184, 186 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: First National Report of Ireland 182 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights 180 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child 180 United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles deprived of their Liberty 183 United States of America 51 University College Cork 25 University College Dublin 25, 170, 175 unmarried mothers 19, 43 victim/offender mediation service 124n14 Viney, Michael 26–7 visibility of system 6–7, 8–9, 50–88, 190–1, 196 borstal 74–6 the Children Court 69–74 development of 53–9 government 70–1 invisibility 62–9 justice–welfare continuum 76–87 problem of juvenile delinquency 50–3 reformatory and industrial schools 59–62, 61 and statistics 53–9

Vocational Education Act 1930 106 Vocational Education Committees 102, 110–11 Vocational Guidance Service 109 vocational training 131 Walsh, D. 41, 78, 111 Watchel, T. 143 Whitaker, Dr T.K. 33 Whitaker Report 33, 79 White Paper on Crime, Crime Prevention and Community Safety 85, 150, 178 Whyte, G. 35–6, 48n19 wild Arabs, origin of term 2 women 43 Women’s National Health Association 20 Woods, Michael 32 workhouses 55, 57–8 Young Christian Workers 68 young people 4, 7, 9, 67 Young People at Risk (YPAR) 113 Young People in St Patrick’s Institution (Ombudsman for Children) 133 Young People’s Facilities and Services Fund (YPFSF) 102 Young Persons’ Probation Projects 102, 148 Young Person’s Probation (YPP) 86, 99 youth clubs 66, 107–8 Youth Encounter Projects 110 youth justice 5, 6, 196 Youth Justice Service 4, 187 youth justice system 4, 6–7, 40–1, 190–1 Youth Justice Task Force 194 youth unemployment 22, 105, 160 youth work 7, 9, 102–9, 145, 176 Youth Work Act 2001 102, 123n7, 151 Youth Work Ireland 102 youth-at-risk projects 113–14 Youthreach Programme 87, 113