The Limits of Penal Reform: Punishing Children and Young Offenders in South Africa and Nigeria (1930s to 1960)

Abstract

In the 1930s and early 1940s, a new set of experts in South Africa and Nigeria favoured the adoption of similar bodies of legislation based on nineteenth-century British penal reform with the idea that rehabilitation rather than punishment was a more effective strategy for dealing with the ‘juvenile delinquent’ and children in ‘need of care’. This transnational penal reform movement was shaped by local social and political attitudes toward youth crime. The reformist movement was an ambivalent project however. Since its inception in the British Empire and after the Nationalists came to power in South Africa, officials relied on localised versions of the social disorganisation thesis, which argued that juvenile delinquency and destitution was the product of the urbanisation process. In both countries this thesis provided the main ideological basis for the development of a punitive welfare state: flogging, repatriation to the countryside, imprisonment, forced work (in South Africa), and fines (in Nigeria) became the major bureaucratic solutions provided by an expanding welfare state.

Notes

^*Senior Researcher, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Université de Bordeaux. I would like to thank the Department of historical studies at the University of Cape Town for welcoming me as an academic visitor from September 2008 to September 2009. Thanks also to Christopher Saunders, Jeremy Seekings and Elizabeth Cooper for their advice as well as to Jocelyn Alexander, Gary Kynoch and the two anonymous referees for their useful comments on an earlier version of this article.

¹ According to the 1943 CYPO in Nigeria and to the Children's Act of 1937 in South Africa, someone is classified as a child in Nigeria below 14 years, as a juvenile between 14 and 17 years old, while in South Africa, a child is younger than 19 years old and a juvenile is between 19 and 21 years old.

² The treatment of offenders was then a common expression to refer to rehabilitative measures said to be scientific, in other words based on empirical and sociological observations.

³ The sociological approach dominant in western academic circles at the time attempted to find the causes of youth crime in a range of biological, personality and environmental conditions. J. Muncie, Youth and Crime: A Critical Introduction (London, Sage, 1999), p. 111.

⁴ P. Robert, La Sociologie du crime (Paris, La Découverte, 2005), p. 11.

⁵ For a recent critical account of the origins of the South African welfare state, see J. Seekings, ‘“Not a Single White Person Should Be Allowed to Go Under”: Swartgevaar and the Origins of South Africa's Welfare State, 1924–1929’, Journal of African History (hereafter JAH), 48, 3 (2007), pp. 375–94 and J. Seekings, ‘The Carnegie Commission and the Backlash Against Welfare State-Building in South Africa, 1931–1937’, Journal of Southern African Studies (hereafter JSAS), 34, 3 (September 2008), pp. 515–37.

⁶ J. Lewis, Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952 (Oxford, Nairobi, Athens, James Currey, Ohio University Press, 2000), p. 21.

⁷ J. Lewis, Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952 (Oxford, Nairobi, Athens, James Currey, Ohio University Press, 2000), p. 21

⁸ L. Chisholm, ‘Reformatories and Industrial Schools in South Africa: A Study in Class, Colour and Gender in the Period 1882–1939’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Witwatersrand, 1989). Seekings, ‘Not a Single White’.

⁹ D. Posel, ‘The Case for a Welfare State: Poverty and the Politics of the Urban African Family in the 1930s and 1940s’, in S. Dubow and A. Jeeves (eds), South Africa's 1940s: World of Possibilities (Cape Town, Double Storey Books, 2005), pp. 64–86. J. Seekings, ‘Visions, Hopes and Views of South African Welfare Reform’, in Dubow and Jeeves, South Africa's 1940s, pp. 44–63.

¹⁰ F. Cooper, Decolonisation and African Societies: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 1996).

¹¹ R. Waller, ‘Rebellious Youth in Colonial Africa’, JAH, 47, 1 (2006), p. 86.

¹² Lewis, Empire State-Building. A. Eckert, ‘Regulating the Social: Social Security, Social Welfare and the State in Late Colonial Tanzania’, JAH, 45, 3 (2004), pp. 467–89; M. Jennings, ‘“A Very Real War”: Popular Participation in Development in Tanzania during the 1950s & 1960s’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40, 1 (2007), pp. 71–95.

¹³ P. Horn, Young Offenders: Juvenile Delinquency 1700–2000 (Chalford, Stroud, Amberley Publishing, 2010), p. 180.

¹⁴ L. Chisholm, ‘Reformatories and Industrial Schools’, pp. 6–7. L. Chisholm, ‘Segregation and Welfare: Children in Prisons and on Probation, 1911–1932’ (unpublished manuscript, UCT Library, 1988), p. 15.

¹⁵ E. van der Spuy, W. Schärf, and J. Lever, ‘The Politics of Youth Crime and Justice in South Africa’, in C. Summer (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Criminology (Oxford, Blackwell, 2000), p. 166; C. Glaser, ‘Managing the Sexuality of Urban Youth: Johannesburg, 1920–1960s’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 38, 2 (2005), p. 308.

¹⁶ C. Glaser, BoTsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935–1976 (Oxford, James Currey, 2001), p. 21.

¹⁷ Van der Spuy, Schärf and Lever, ‘The Politics of Youth Crime and Justice in South Africa’, p. 166. E. Hellman, Problems of Urban Bantu Youth: Report of an Enquiry into the Causes of Early School-leaving and Occupational Opportunities Amongst Bantu (Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1940). E. Hellman, Rooiyard: A Sociological Survey of an Urban Native Slum Yard (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1948).

²³ Hansard, J.H. Hofmeyr, 13 March 1937, col. 3,428.

¹⁸ L. Chisholm, ‘Aspects of Child-saving in South Africa: Classifying and Segregating the Delinquent: The Struggle Over the Reformatory, 1917–1934’, unpublished paper, n.d., pp. 16–17. P.F. Alexander, Alan Paton, Selected Letters (Van Riebeeck Society for the Publication of Southern African Historical Documents, Cape Town, 2009), p. 67.

¹⁹ L. van Schalkwijk, De sociale paedagogiek van John Dewey en haar filosofiese grondslag (Amsterdam, M.J. Portielje, 1920).

²⁰ Union of South Africa, ‘Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Destitute, Neglected, Maladjusted and Delinquent Children and Young Persons, 1934–1937’ (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1938).

²¹ Chisholm, ‘Aspects of Child-saving’, p. 28. This is well revealed in the general principles section in the ‘Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Destitute, Neglected, Maladjusted and Delinquent Children’, pp. 7–12.

²² Chisholm, ‘Reformatories and Industrial Schools’, p. 343; N.M. Azeem Badroodien, ‘A History of the Ottery School of Industries in Cape Town. Issues of Race Welfare and Social Order in the Period 1937 to 1968’ (Ph.D., University of Western Cape, 2001), p. 186.

²⁴ Seekings, ‘The Carnegie Commission and the Backlash Against Welfare State-Building’, pp. 532–33.

²⁵ Seekings, ‘Carnegie’, p. 532–33

²⁶ Hansard, 13 March 1937, col. 3,435, ‘Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Destitute, Neglected, Maladjusted and Delinquent Children’, p. 26.

²⁷ Report of the Union Department of Education, 1937. In 1936, 262 (or 76.4 per cent) of juvenile native male offenders sentenced in the Juvenile Court of Johannesburg were given cuts. SAIRR, AP 843, ‘Memorandum on Native Juvenile Delinquency’, Johannesburg (1938).

²⁸ Report of the Penal and Prison Commission (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1947), p. 23.

²⁹ An IQ of 80 and above was considered normal intelligence. Subnormal fell between the normal and the mentally defective with an IQ range of approximately 65 to 80. Chisholm, ‘Aspects of Child-saving’, p. 17; Badroodien, ‘A History of the Ottery School of Industries’, p. 142

³⁰ An IQ of 80 and above was considered normal intelligence. Subnormal fell between the normal and the mentally defective with an IQ range of approximately 65 to 80. Chisholm, ‘Aspects of Child-saving’, p. 17; Badroodien, ‘A History of the Ottery School of Industries’, p. 142 Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Destitute, Neglected, Maladjusted and Delinquent Children’; Report of the Union Department of Education, 1937, 1946–1947.

³¹ L. Fourchard, ‘Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria, 1920–1960’, JAH, 47, 1 (2006), p. 127.

³² M. Ryan, The Acceptable Pressure Group: Inequality in the Penal Lobby. A Case Study of the Howard League and RAP (Saxon House, Westmead, 1978), pp. 30–5. The publications of The Howard Journal: A Review of Modern Methods for the Prevention and Treatment of Crime and Juvenile Delinquency are more concerned with the colonies in the Interwar Period.

³³ PRO, CO, 323 /1161/14, ‘Shields to Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, 18 May 1931’; CO, 323/ 1399/2, ‘Circular Dispatch Draft to all Colonies, Protectorates and Mandate Territories, 13 January 1937’.

³⁴ For the role played by Patterson within the Colonial Office see Lewis, Empire State Building, p. 71–2. The Colonial penal administration committee set in 1937 was renamed the Colonial Social Welfare Advisory Committee, Penal Sub-committee in 1943, Treatment of Offenders Sub-Committee in 1946 and eventually Advisory Committee on the Treatment of Offenders in the Colonies from 1952 to 1961.

³⁵ C. Cicely, ‘Juvenile Delinquency in the Colonies’, The Howard Journal, 4, 2 (1935), pp. 179–85. See, however, how several reports in the early 1930s and juvenile ordinances from the 1934 onward introduced in Kenya partly mirrored the English reform movement. C. Campbell, ‘Juvenile Delinquency in Colonial Kenya, 1900–1939’, The Historical Journal, 45, 1 (2006), pp. 142–3.

³⁶ Fourchard, ‘Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria’, pp. 130–1.

³⁷ A. Patterson, Crime and its Treatment in Nigeria (Ibadan, unpublished report, March 1944).

³⁸ The Act forbade girls under 16 from engaging in street trading so as to make juvenile prostitution more difficult. Horn, Young Offenders, p. 144.

³⁹ National Archives Ibadan (NAI), Comcol 1, 2844, ‘Acting Commissioner of the Colony to the Chief Secretary to the Government, 21 May, 1946’.

⁴² Annual Report, Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Welfare Division 1961–1962 (Lagos, Federal Government Printer, 1963).

⁴³ In 1947, there were sixteen industrial schools, 68 certified institutions and 55 non-certified institutions which accommodated 19,689 European children compared to no industrial schools, 20 certified institutions and 33 non-certified institutions for 7,659 non-European children. See Report of Penal and Prison Reform Commission (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1947), pp. 22–25 and Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Deviate Children (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1945), p. 163.

⁴⁴ Badroodien, ‘A History of the Ottery School of Industries’, p. 148.

⁴⁵ Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Destitute Neglected, Maladjusted and Delinquent Children', p. 53.

⁴⁶ Chisholm, ‘Aspects of Child-saving’, p. 31.

⁴⁷ Glaser, BoTsotsi, p. 22.

⁴⁸ Lewis, Empire State Building, p. 78. See for Tanzania, A. Burton, African Underclass: Urbanization, Crime and Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam (James Currey, Oxford, 2005), pp. 175–9.

⁴⁹ E.W. Burgess, The Urban Community (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1926); C.R. Shaw, Delinquency Areas (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1929). C.R. Shaw and H.D. McKay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1942).

⁵⁰ NAI, Comcol 1, 2,471, Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos, by Donald Faulkner, 1941. Comcol 1, 2,600, Donald Faulkner, Report on the scheme for dealing with juvenile delinquency in Lagos from February 1942 to August 1943, August 1943. Donald Faulkner, ‘Report on Juvenile Welfare in the Colonies, 15 July 1943’. D. Faulkner, ‘Social Welfare and Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos Nigeria’, The Howard Journal, 6, 4 (1944–'45), pp. 192–96.

⁵¹ Provincial Archives Calabar, Calprof, 7/1/618, ‘A Survey of the Activities of the Welfare Officer in Calabar During 1945, 23rd February 1946’. Calprof, 7/1/618, ‘Welfare in Calabar by the Social Welfare Officer, 5 October 1945’. National Archives Enugu, Provincial Office, Onitsha, 12/1/2089, ‘Juvenile Delinquency, Onitsha by the Welfare Officer, 22 October 1949’.

⁵² ‘Annual Report of the Federal Department of Social Welfare’ (Lagos, Federal Government Printer, 1957); ‘Annual Report of the Welfare Division for 1963’ (Ibadan, Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Western Region, 1965).

⁵³ NAI, Comcol 1, 2,844, ‘Child Prostitution in Lagos’, A. Izzett, 15 May 1946.

⁵⁴ P. Marris, Family and Social Change in an African City: A Study of Rehousing in Lagos (Northwestern University Press, 1962), pp. 62–63.

⁵⁵ National Archives Kaduna, MSCW, 1,226, Report by Mr Chinn, Social Welfare Adviser to the Secretary of State, February 1950.

⁵⁶ A. Paton, ‘A South African's Impression of Penal Institutions in Sweden and Great Britain’, The Howard Journal, 7, 2 (1946–1947), pp. 91–6; A. Paton, Freedom as a Reformatory Instrument (Pretoria, Penal Reform League of South Africa, 1948); A. Paton, ‘South Africa's Report of the Penal Reform Commission’, The Howard Journal, 8, 1 (1949–1950), pp. 7–9; W.L. March, The Problem of the Child Delinquent, Johannesburg (Pretoria, Penal Reform League of South Africa, 1946). H.P. Junod, ‘The Prevention of Crime and the Right Treatment of Delinquents’, Penal Reform News, 5 (March 1948). H.P. Junod, ‘Penal Reform in South Africa’, African Affairs, 50, 198 (January 1951), pp. 34–51.

⁵⁷ SAIRR, AP 843, ‘Memorandum on Native Juvenile Delinquency, Johannesburg, 1938’; Glaser, BoTsotsi, p. 24.

⁵⁸ Posel, ‘The Case for a Welfare State’, pp. 64–86.

⁵⁹ E. Hellmann, ‘The Sociological Background to Urban African Juvenile Delinquency’, Penal Reform News, 29 (July 1954), pp. 1–8.

⁶⁰ Van der Spuy, Schärf and Lever, ‘The Politics of Youth Crime and Justice in South Africa’.

⁶¹ Spuy, Schärf, and Lever, ‘The Politics of Youth Crime’

⁶² Glaser, BoTsotsi, p. 25.

⁶³ Glaser, BoTsotsi, p. 25

⁶⁴ See Penal Reform News published from 1948 to 1960.

⁶⁵ This body was created in 1948 to promote activity in the field of crime and the treatment of offenders in the world. See L. van Schalkwijk, ‘The UN Activities in the Field of the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders’, Penal Reform News, 19 (October 1951) and his other article on ‘Corrective Methods’, Penal Reform News, 24 (October 1953).

⁶⁶ Muncie, Youth and Crime, p. 257.

⁶⁷ J. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Scheme to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1998).

⁶⁸ NAK, KNA, 261: S1, ‘Paupers in Kano City, 1950’. NAK, MSWC, 302, ‘Report on a Survey of Destitute Persons and Vagrancy in Greater Kano, July–August 1963’.

⁶⁹ NAK, MSWC, 1249 Volume II, Circular Letter, ‘Native Authority Rules to Restrict the Travel of Juveniles’, 30th of November 1956.

⁷⁰ Provincial Archives Calabar, X 245, ‘Progress Report on Onitsha Council of Social Service, from February 1962 to February 1965’; ‘Council of Social Service Report, Aba Zone, 1965’; ‘Zonal Report of the Council of Social Service Calabar Zone’, 19 February 1965. ‘Annual Report of the Welfare Division for 1963’ (Ibadan, Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Western Region, 1965).

⁷¹ Fourchard, ‘Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria’, p. 133.

⁷² Fourchard, ‘Lagos’, p. 133

⁷³ L. Fourchard, ‘Lagos, Koolhaas and Partisan Politics in Nigeria’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35, 1 (January 2011), pp. 40–56.

⁷⁴ Marris, Family and Social Change, p. 84, 116–21.

⁷⁵ See the early 1960s report written by a United Nations team of experts. C. Abrams, S. Kobe, O. Koenigsberger, M. Shapiro and M. Wheeler, ‘Metropolitan Lagos’, Habitat International, 55 (1980), p. 60.

⁷⁶ Van der Spuy, Schärf and Lever, ‘The Politics of Youth Crime in South Africa’, p. 173.

⁷⁷ I am grateful to Gary Kynoch for mentioning this point.

⁷⁸ G. Kynoch, ‘Friend or Foe? A World View of Community–Police Relations in Gauteng Townships, 1947–1977’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 37, 2/3 (2003), pp. 298–327.

⁷⁹ G. Kynoch, ‘Politics and Violence in the ‘Russian Zone’: Conflict in Newclare South, 1950–7’, JAH, 41, 2 (2000), pp. 267–290. D. Goodhew, ‘The People's Police Force: Communal Policing Initiatives in the Western Areas of Johannesburg, circa 1930–1962’, JSAS, 19, 3 (1993), pp. 447–70. P.H. Junod, ‘Labour Bureaus and “Vigilantes” in African Townships’, Penal Reform News, 20 (January 1952), pp. 8–10.

⁸⁰ C. Glaser, ‘Whistles and Sjamboks: Crime and Policing in Soweto, 1960–1976’ (unpublished paper, 2004) Courtesy of the author.

⁸¹ These were the objectives of the following associations: Ilizo Lomzi Nyanga West (1961), Vigilant League of Decency in Guguletu (1964), Coordinating Committee to Combat Juvenile Delinquency Langa (1966), Guguletu Civic and Welfare Association (1966), Community Services Association of Guguletu (1966).

⁸² G. Kynoch, ‘Urban Violence in Colonial Africa: A Case for South African Exceptionalism’, JSAS, 34, 3 (2008), 629–45.

⁸³ Social science scholars have clearly proved this link but historical accounts are still missing. See J. Steinberg, The Number (Cape Town, Jonathan Ball, 2004); D. Pinnock, The Brotherhood: Street Gangs and State Control in Cape Town (Cape Town, Philip David, 1984); S. Jensen, Gangs, Politics and Dignity in Cape Town (Oxford, James Currey, 2008).

⁸⁴ Whites were excluded and all women, white and black, were also exempted. T.M. Corry, Prison Labour in South Africa (Cape Town, NICRO, 1977), pp. 122, 134.

⁸⁵ J. Seekings and N. Natrass, Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa, (Scottsville, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, 2006), p. 169.

⁸⁶ Seekings and Natrass, Class, Race and Inequality, pp. 58, 168.

⁸⁷ Seekings and Natrass, Class, Race and Inequality, pp. 58, 168

⁸⁸ D. Posel, The Making of Apartheid, 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 187.

⁸⁹ Seekings and Natrass, Class, Race and Inequality, p. 169.

⁹⁰ Seekings and Natrass, Class, Race and Inequality, p. 169

⁹¹ The first camp was created in Elandsdoorn (Eastern Transvaal) in 1954, and the system was extended countrywide (four camps in 1958, seven in 1961, and four more camps for coloured boys in the late 1960s). A. Cook, Akin to Slavery: Prison Labour in South Africa (London, International Defence and Aid Fund, 1982).

⁹² The first camp was created in Elandsdoorn (Eastern Transvaal) in 1954, and the system was extended countrywide (four camps in 1958, seven in 1961, and four more camps for coloured boys in the late 1960s). A. Cook, Akin to Slavery: Prison Labour in South Africa (London, International Defence and Aid Fund, 1982), p. 40–1.

⁹³ J.O. Midgley, ‘Corporal Punishment and Penal Policy: Notes on the Continued Use of Corporal Punishment with Reference to South Africa’, Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 73, 1 (Spring 1982), p. 395.

⁹⁴ Midgley, ‘Corporal Punishment and Penal Policy’, p. 403; J.O. Midgley, Children on Trial (Cape Town, NICRO, 1975), p. 107.

⁹⁵ International Penal and Penitentiary Commission Congress, The Hague, August 1950; First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Geneva, August–September 1955; Second United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, London, August 1960; Conference on the Treatment of Offenders (juvenile delinquents), Second Meeting, 1956, Kampala, Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the Sahara; Centre International de l'Enfance, Child Welfare in Africa South of the Sahara, Centre International de l'Enfance, Paris, 1959.

⁹⁶ International Penal and Penitentiary Commission Congress, The Hague, August 1950; First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Geneva, August–September 1955; Second United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders London, August 1960; Conference on the Treatment of Offenders (juvenile delinquents), Second Meeting, 1956, Kampala, Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the Sahara; Centre International de l'Enfance, Child Welfare in Africa South of the Sahara, Centre International de l'Enfance, Paris, 1959

⁹⁷ PRO, WAF 259/27/1, Annual reports on the treatment of offenders Nigeria, comments on the annual report on the treatment of offenders for the year 1955–56.

⁹⁸ Muncie, Youth and Crime, pp. 115–50.