The Limits of Penal Reform: Punishing Children and Young Offenders in South Africa and Nigeria (1930s to 1960)

摘要

In the 1930s and early 1940s, a new set of experts in South Africa and Nigeria favoured the adoption of similar bodies of legislation based on nineteenth-century British penal reform with the idea that rehabilitation rather than punishment was a more effective strategy for dealing with the ‘juvenile delinquent’ and children in ‘need of care’. This transnational penal reform movement was shaped by local social and political attitudes toward youth crime. The reformist movement was an ambivalent project however. Since its inception in the British Empire and after the Nationalists came to power in South Africa, officials relied on localised versions of the social disorganisation thesis, which argued that juvenile delinquency and destitution was the product of the urbanisation process. In both countries this thesis provided the main ideological basis for the development of a punitive welfare state: flogging, repatriation to the countryside, imprisonment, forced work (in South Africa), and fines (in Nigeria) became the major bureaucratic solutions provided by an expanding welfare state.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2011.602891