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Youth Crime and Preventive Policing in England and Scotland 1945-1970
| This paper analyses the relationship between a social welfare ethic and a criminal justice framework in policing, viewing them as co-existent although in flux, by focusing on the use of cautioning and ‘Juvenile Liaison’ schemes in Britain. The first officially-titled Juvenile Liaison Scheme was set up in Liverpool in 1949, deploying male and female police officers to carry out preventive work with first time ‘offenders’ by liaising with a wide variety of welfare organisations including youth clubs, schools, and the probation service. The work of the Juvenile Liaison Officer was publicised favourably in the 1958 film Violent Playground but courted opposition from other professional groups including both social workers and juvenile court magistrates who, for differing reasons, saw this police incursion as a challenge to their own professional remit, particularly in England and Wales. In Scotland tensions were far less apparent, largely because the desire to resolve cases and supervise juveniles outside of the court process was not a distinctly new feature of the post-war period. Whilst the notion of a multi-agency response is a very contemporary one, it is clear that this is a meaningful label for the types of local response that involved informal connections and networks in the early part of the twentieth century. An ‘extra-legal police warning system’ had been used in Glasgow since 1907, in Dundee since 1936 and in Kilmarnock since the 1920s. What was ‘new’ in the post-war period was, arguably, an attempt at greater levels of centralisation, bureaucratic structure, statistical monitoring and thus formal written traces. This paper will examine debates about the utility and operation of police cautioning and juvenile liaison schemes, identifying moments of tension and consensus.
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