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- Title
"A DEPRAVED CLASS": REGULATING JUVENILE DELINQUENCY THROUGH LEGISLATION IN COLONIAL JAMAICA 1881-1904.
- Authors
ROPER, SHANI
- Abstract
During the 1870s and 80s, the Jamaican colonial government encouraged the institutionalization of juvenile delinquents in industrial schools as an alternative to their incarceration in prisons. Much of this effort was driven by concerns about the inability to control the potential labor of children, maintaining the social order, and the "perceived" instability of the black family. Through the Reformatories and Industrial Schools Law (1881), the Poor Relief Law (1886), and later the Young Criminals Punishment Law (1904), the colonial state funded the development of industrial schools and channeled boys and girls into these institutions through the courts and poor relief infrastructure. These laws linked industrial schools to the existing coercive social, legislative, and economic infrastructure that sought to control the labor of black Jamaicans. Gender as well as the type of crime committed determined where children were institutionalized in industrial schools. This paper contributes to the existing historiography on children in the Caribbean as well as reformatories and industrial schools in the colonial world by examining the legislation that shaped the development of industrial schools and the ways in which these institutions were integrated into existing coercive structures in Jamaica between 1881 and 1904.
- Subjects
COERCIVE fields (Electronics); VOCATIONAL schools; JAMAICAN history; CAREER academies; INVOLUNTARY treatment; NINETEENTH century
- Publication
Journal of the History of Childhood & Youth, 2017, Vol 10, Issue 1, p62
- ISSN
1939-6724
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/hcy.2017.0004