Report of the Committee on Children and Young Persons.

  • Great Britain. Committee on Children and Young Persons
Date:
1960
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee on Children and Young Persons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/192 page 3
    PART ONE | CHAPTER 1 GENERAL APPROACH 4. At the time of our appointment the overall picture of the problems covered by our terms of reference was not altogether discouraging. This was true both of juvenile delinquency and of the general problem of children in trouble, including those in need of care or protection and those suffering through neglect in their own homes. The stability of the family, badly shaken by the disruptions of war and of the post-war period, seemed to be improving. The number of maintenance orders made by magistrates’ courts under the Summary Jurisdiction (Separation and Maintenance) Acts, which rose to over 20,000 in 1947, had fallen to 13,107 in 1956 as compared with 11,177 in 1938 ; the number of affiliation orders, in spite of two small peaks in 1950 and 1952, had dropped from 4,517 in 1947, to 3,458 in 1956 as - compared with 4,313 in 1938. After the war the education and welfare services had been greatly expanded and were still developing. During the | nineteen forties Parliament had passed the new Education Act, the Family . Allowances Act, the National Insurance Acts, the National Health Service Act, the National Assistance Act, the Criminal Justice Act and the Children Act. In 1956, when we were appointed, the Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency was nearing the end of its work, and legislation was expected and has since been passed. As regards delinquency the sudden steep rise in the official figures in the mid thirties was thought to have been due largely to a greater willingness on the part of all concerned to prosecute under the Children and Young Persons Act of 1933, and not necessarily to indicate a real increase in juvenile crime. The further big rise in the figures during and since the war had been more alarming, particularly as, in spite of fluctuations, they had remained well above the 1938 figure. In fact the last of the four peaks, that of 1951, had been the highest ever reached. After 1951, however, juvenile delinquency as measured by the number of boys between eight and seventeen found guilty of indictable offences per 100,000 of the popula- tion of the age group had decreased for three years in succession. In the younger age group of eight to fourteen years there had been a further decrease in the fourth year, 1955, to the lowest figure since 1938, namely, to 924 per 100,000 in the age group as against 798 in 1938. In the older age group of fourteen to seventeen years there was a small increase in 1955 to 1,603 per 100,000 from 1,548 in 1954, as against 1,131 in 1938: the figures for the age group immediately above had followed much the same general pattern during and after the war and in it too there had been a small rise in 1955. But in spite of these two small increases and the relatively ‘high figure for the fourteen to seventeen age group it was possible to hope that the disturbance caused by the war and its aftermath was subsiding and that the incidence of delinquency would at the worst become stabilised at a figure not greatly in excess of that of 1938.
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