This paper discusses aspects of a study of children in secure accommodation conducted in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. Secure accommodation is analysed as an ambiguous disposal designed to hold both offenders and other youngsters causing concern. Reflecting a western cultural tendency to assume the existence of a technical solution to every problem, professional responses to the uncertainty accompanying ambiguity include the pursuit of more knowledge to identify the “key” to the problems the youngsters present. Some implications of this approach for the youngsters themselves are discussed, and it is suggested that rather than focussing predominantly on system input, reformist endeavour might concentrate on what children have to do to be discharged.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ArièsP (1962) Centuries of Childhood(trans R Baldick)Jonathan Cape, London.
2.
BarthesR (1973) Mythologies(originally published 1957 and trans A Lavers)Paladin Books, London.
3.
BraithwaiteJ (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
4.
ButlerB (1992) “Aboriginal Child Protection”, inCalvertGFordAParkinsonP(eds)The Practice of Child Protection: Australian Approaches, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney.
5.
CawsonPMartellM (1979) Children Referred to Closed Units, Department of Health and Social Security Statistics and Research Division, Research Report No 5, HMSO, London.
6.
Children's Legal Centre (1982) Locked Up in Care: A Report on the Use of Secure Accommodation for Young People in Care, Children's Legal Centre, London.
7.
CliffordW (1982) “An Approach to Aboriginal Criminology”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, vol 15, pp 3–21.
8.
Department of Health and Social Security (1981a) Offending by Young People: a Survey of Trends, HMSO, London.
9.
Department of Health and Social Security (1981b) Legal and Professional Aspects of the Use of Secure Accommodation for Children in Care, Report of a DHSS Internal Working Party, DHSS, London.
10.
DerridaJ (1976) Of Grammatology(trans G Spivak)Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.
11.
DingwallREekelaarJMurrayT (1983) The Protection of Children: State Intervention and Family Life, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
12.
DingwallREekelaarJ (1984) “Rethinking Child Protection”, inFreemanM(ed)The State, The Law, and the Family: Critical Perspectives, Tavistock Publications in association with Sweet and Maxwell, London.
13.
DonzelotJ (1980) The Policing of Families: Welfare Versus the State, (Trans R Hurley), Hutchinson, London.
14.
DonzelotJ (1984) L'lnvention du Social, Fayard, Paris.
15.
DreyfusH LRabinowP (1982) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
16.
EekelaarJDingwallRMurrayT (1982) “Victims or Threats? Children in Care Proceedings”, Journal of Social Welfare Law, March, pp 68–82.
17.
EgglestonE (1976) Fear, Favour or Affection — Aborigines and the Criminal Law in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, Australian National University Press, Canberra.
18.
EribonD (1990) Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Flammarion, Paris.
19.
FoucaultM (1977) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, (trans A Sheridan), Allen Lane, Harmondsworth.
20.
GaleFBailey-HarrisRWundersitzJ (1991) Aboriginal Youth and the Criminal Justice System: the Injustice of Justice, Cambridge University Press, Oakleigh, Victoria.
21.
GiesFGiesJ (1987) Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, Harper & Rowe, New York.
22.
HarrisR (1982) “Institutionalized Ambivalence: Social Work and the Children and Young Persons Act 1969”, British Journal of Social Work, vol 12, pp 247–263.
23.
HarrisR (1989) Suffer the Children: the Family, the State and the Social Worker, Inaugural Lecture, Hull University Press, Hull.
24.
HarrisR (1990) “A Matter of Balance: Power and Resistance in Child Protection Policy”, Journal of Social Welfare Law, vol 5, pp 332–40.
25.
HarrisR (1992) Crime, Criminal Justice and the Probation Service, Routledge, London.
26.
HarrisRTimmsN (1993) Secure Accommodation in Child Care: Between Hospital and Prison or Thereabouts, Routledge, London.
27.
HarrisRWebbD (1987) Welfare, Power and Juvenile Justice: the Social Control of Delinquent Youth, Tavistock Publications, London.
28.
HopeD (1988) The Relation of Aboriginal Customary Law to the General Law, Report to the Justice and Consumer Affairs Committee of Cabinet, on behalf of the Task Force on Aboriginals and Criminal Justice, Adelaide. Mimeograph.
29.
House of Commons (1975) Eleventh Report from the Expenditure Committee: the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, HMSO, London.
30.
MartinFFoxSMurrayK (1981) Children Out of Court, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh.
31.
MatzaD (1964) Delinquency and Drift, Wiley, New York.
32.
MeyerP (1983) The Child and the State: The Intervention of the State in Family Life(trans J Ennew and J Lloyd), Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Cambridge and Paris.
33.
MillJ S (1861) Utilitarianism(Reprinted 1912), J M Dent, London.
34.
MillhamSBullockRHosieK (1978) Locking Up Children: Secure Provision Within the Child-Care System, Saxon House, Farnborough.
35.
MorrisAGillerHSzwedEGeachH (1980) Justice for Children, Macmillan, London.
PrattJ (1986) “A Comparative Analysis of Two Different Systems of Juvenile Justice: Some Implications for England and Wales”, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, vol 25, pp 33–51.
38.
RobertsD (1960) Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State, Yale University Press, New Haven.
39.
RoshierB (1989) Controlling Crime: the Classical Perspective in Criminology, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
40.
RousseauJ-J (1762) Emile or Treatise on Education, (Edited and translated byPayneW H, Sydney Appleton, London, 1905).
41.
TaylorIWaltonPYoungJ (1973) The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
42.
TheryI (1989) “ The Interest of the Child' and the Regulation of the Post-Divorce Family”. InSmartCSevenhuijsenS(eds)Child Custody and the Politics of Gender, Routledge, London.
43.
WalkerN (1969) Sentencing in a Rational Society, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
44.
WebbDHarrisR (1984) “Social Workers and Supervision Orders: A Case of Occupational Uncertainty”, British Journal of Social Work, vol 14, pp 579–599.
