Chapter 3 — Gateways

Offenders

A detailed statistical analysis of the use of alternatives to committal shows that, between 1948 and 1957, out of 21,000 charges against juvenile offenders, only 701 or 4.5% of those against whom a ‘charge was proved but no order made’ were committed to an industrial school, whilst 916 or 18% of those convicted were sent to a reformatory school.

Non-attendance at school

The conclusion that may be drawn is that, in general, many District Justices did exercise some care and discrimination before they sent an offender to a school. The question of whether the two most viable alternatives, probation and a ‘fit person’ order,14 were under-utilised is discussed below.

For the period under review, the governing statute was the School Attendance Act, 1926. This Act15 made it an offence for a parent to fail to send to school any child below the age of 14 years, it became 15 years after 1972.16 More significantly, if the parent was convicted of a second offence within three months of conviction for the first, the court could ‘if it thinks fit’ either send the child to an industrial school or make a ‘fit person’ order. The thinking seems to have been that this would be a way of ensuring an education for such children.

The annual number of prosecutions of parents ranged between 6,000 and 7,000 for most of the 1930s. This figure peaked in the early 1940s, and reached just below 13,000 in 1944. Subsequently, the numbers fell to the level of the 1930s, before beginning a steep decline in the early 1950s.

Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Dun Laoghaire had dedicated full-time School Attendance Officers (SAO). Outside these centres of population, however, the SAO was a local Garda who took on this duty, as one among his many tasks. This was undoubtedly one of the reasons why so many children committed under this heading came from urban centres, as can be seen from the statistical analysis below.

It seems reasonable to infer from the figures, for both the nation as a whole and Dublin, that the children committed under the 1926 Act were not the victims of a policy of pouncing on a few arbitrarily chosen children. Rather, there was a process with some flexibility and with intermediate stages before the point of committal was reached. Yet, while not arbitrary, the system was severe and far-reaching: from visits to parents to formal warnings, through prosecution of parents, to eventual committal. A striking point of contrast appeared from Table IV of the Tuairim Report, showing that those admitted to approved schools (equivalent of industrial schools or reformatories) in England in 1964 for ‘truancy’ numbered 45, compared with 66 in the same year in Ireland, although England had 16 times the relevant age cohort.

Committal to an industrial school was most extreme in the case of non-attendance at school. Neediness could have complicated causes that were hard to resolve. It could be argued that there needed to be some sanction for juveniles who offended. However, non-attendance at school was not so heinous that it called for sanction of such severity. The enormity of committing a child for several years, simply for failure to attend school, began to be appreciated more as time went on.

A major issue was the fact that it was a court which was selected as the agency through which children and young persons were directed to a reformatory or an industrial school. Historically, the reason for this seems to have been the simple, human rights point that, given the significant deprivation of liberty involved, it would have been inappropriate if this important decision had been vested in, for example, a local health authority. However, the court was known to the residents themselves, and everyone else, principally as a place in which minor criminal offences were tried. The inevitable result was that those committed were unfairly stigmatised as criminals whereas, in fact, their only ‘crime’ was poverty. The fundamental unfairness of this was raised consistently by witnesses before the Commission.

In addition, most of the usual safeguards which are the hallmark of the adult criminal justice system were denied to those whom a court was considering sending to an industrial school. There was next to no legal representation, and the facts relied on by the Garda/ISPCC Inspector/SAO were seldom contested, so that the issue of whether they had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt scarcely arose. Although there was an appeal process, it was seldom used.

Although some ex-staff members stated that they did not like this method of committal, there is considerable evidence, both from documents and oral testimony, that children committed to these schools were seen as being criminals by staff, and that a lot of the mistreatment experienced by the children emanated from this perception. Staff recalled that even very young children remembered appearing in court and talked about it among themselves. The general view was that committal through the courts was logical only if the schools were regarded as places of detention. In England, the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933 had established a radical distinction. It confined the courts’ involvement with children or juveniles to those who were accused of an offence.

The Courts of Justice Act, 1924 made provision for the setting-up of Children’s Courts in separate buildings, in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. However, only one such court came into being, in Dublin:17 the Dublin Metropolitan Children’s Court, which was established in 1923.

The case for committal of a child was presented to the court by an Inspector of the ISPCC, who was also colloquially known as the ‘cruelty man’, or less often by the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society, or by an SAO or a Garda (depending on which ground was being relied upon).

The main factor shaping the procedure was that the child was almost always unrepresented. A parent (or guardian) was required by law to be present, and the mother frequently appeared before the court. The parent was usually uneducated and, in an age of deference, dominated by the circumstances of the proceedings. They were unlikely to be able to make the best of any case against committal. As regards facts, the evidence of the ISPCC Inspector or the SAO was seldom contested.

The schools deplored the reluctance of District Justices to make committals or, alternatively, to do so before an offender had committed so many crimes that a school would have no rehabilitative effect on him. In the 1960s, they complained, too, that committals were for too short a period for any good to be done. There were fundamentally different understandings of the objectives and potentials of the school. Some District Justices seem to have disapproved of the schools as places of ‘containment’, to which children were to be sent only as a last resort. By contrast, the schools themselves, or at least the managers speaking in public, would claim that the schools were primarily educational not penal institutions, which could be successful in educating a child and saving him or her from a life of crime or misery. The Managers18 claimed, too, that the District Justices’ view had the potential to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since it meant that only ‘incorrigibles’ would be sent to the schools.

The number of adjournments which were granted before the committal was actually made suggested a judicial reluctance to commit.