Search Results

This final chapter brings the historical account up to date and draws some overall conclusions, highlighting the connections between the period studied in detail and later changes. The chapter opens by examining developments in the inter-war years and then moves on to consider the Kilbrandon Report. This includes discussion of the background to the Report and argues that in important respects William Watson can be seen as foreshadowing Kilbrandon. The following part of the chapter presents key conclusions in the following areas: the impact of diversionary systems; childhood in the nineteenth century; the underlying tensions, conflict and compromise within nineteenth-century juvenile justice reform; and the areas in which the book poses challenges to existing thought. The focus of the penultimate section is on research conclusions in relation to criminalisation and the key factors which operated together to criminalise children. The final section discusses transjurisdictional issues which have emerged in the book, and draws together topics of concern and debate which recurred throughout the period studied and which remain highly relevant to contemporary juvenile justice.

This chapter looks at the legal process for child protection in Scotland since the introduction of the children’s hearing system, starting with an exploration of how the Kilbrandon Report was given effect to in the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. It then analyses the original grounds of referral to the hearing, tracing their origins and explaining the subsequently added grounds. Thereafter the chapter looks at the world-wide retreat from the juvenile court ideals, especially in England which rejected the opportunity of following the Scottish approach, and ends with some speculation on why Scotland has managed to retain these ideals, developed decades ago, and still considered appropriate here today.

In 1945, and for several years afterwards, Welsh nationalism seemed to be as dead as the druids. Self-government in any form aroused little more than derision among most of the public. The dominant figure of the Labour movement in Wales, Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health, was passionate in his hostility to any form of devolution that might look like a surrender to nationalism. However, Welsh life had been reinvigorated through the rise of nationalism and the debate on devolution that followed the Kilbrandon Report. No longer did Welsh and Scottish issues attract the patronizing indifference that they had so often done prior to 1964. Despite the failure of the Welsh Devolution Bill, it had surely helped to defuse and moderate some of the communal tensions thrown up by the nationalist upsurge. It enabled the Welsh to look at themselves and their predicament calmly, and constructively.

The introductory chapter provides an overview of the main themes discussed in the book and its key insights. It highlights the legacy of reform, commenting on some of the connections between the nineteenth-century history explored in the book and later developments in twentieth- century Scotland, including the links between the earlier history and the seminal Kilbrandon Report in 1964.