To what extent should principles and practices of criminal justice for young offenders be different from those for adults?

... To what extent should principles and practices of criminal justice for young offenders be different from those for adults? Over the past two decades there has been a number of different ideologies regarding the approach to young offenders. At the end of the nineteenth century there were many social reforms that demanded that children should be removed from the adult prison system. The Youthful Offenders Act 1854 established separate industrial schools for young offenders that were supposed to be more educational than punitive. It was at this point that society recognised young offenders should be treated differently to adults. The policies of the developing youth justice system can be gathered from the later acts. For example, The Children Act 1908 endorsed "the conception of the child or juvenile as a special category" and the Criminal Justice Act 1948 was based on recommendations that "strongly emphasised the unwisdom of sending young persons

want to read more? →