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The Youth Court: Time for Reform?

  • Chapter
The Management of Change in Criminal Justice

Abstract

The youth court was formed more than 100 years ago, having been established by the Children Act 1908 to hear, for the first time, the cases of children (those aged 10–16 until the Criminal Justice Act 1991 extended the court’s remit to include 17-year-olds) separately from adults. Known then as the juvenile court, it took a holistic approach to the children appearing before it, dealing with welfare as well as criminal matters (Goldson and Muncie, 2006, p. 8). The court, in which specially trained magistrates sat, had the power to hear all offences but murder (Rutherford, 1992, p. 50). For 80 years following its inception, the arena bore witness to a shifting policy emphasis on punitive and welfare responses to crime, culminating in the Children Act of 1989, which saw the jurisdiction of the court being split into the youth court (crime) and the family court (welfare).

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Authors
  1. Alexandra Wigzell
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  2. Chris Stanley
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Keele University, UK

    Martin Wasik (Emeritus Professor of Law) & Sotirios Santatzoglou (Emeritus Professor of Law) (Emeritus Professor of Law) &  (Emeritus Professor of Law)

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© 2015 Alexandra Wigzell and Chris Stanley

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Wigzell, A., Stanley, C. (2015). The Youth Court: Time for Reform?. In: Wasik, M., Santatzoglou, S. (eds) The Management of Change in Criminal Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462497_14

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