The Education of Borstal Boys: A Study of their Education Experiences Prior to, and During, Borstal Training

240 Pages·2003·12.707 MB·English

by  Erica Stratta

The International Library of Sociology
THE EDUCATION OF
BORSTAL BOYS
Founded by KARL MANNHEIM
The International Library of Sociology
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW
AND CRIMINOLOGY
In 15 Volumes
Comparative Criminology - Part One Mannheim
Comparative Criminology - Part Two Mannheina
Crime: An Analytical Appraisal L6pe.dey
The Criminal Area MO??%
Criminal Justice and Social Reconstruction Mannbeim
The Education of Borstal Boys Stratta
The English Prison and Borstal Systems Fox
The Explanation of Criminality i%skY
Group Problems in Crime and Punishment Mannbeim
The Institutions of Private Law Rennff
Juvenile Delinquency in an
English Middletown Mannheim
Legal Aid Egerton
Pentonville Morris et al
Social Defence Ante/
Young Men in Detention Centres Dunlop et al
THE EDUCATION
OF BORSTAL BOYS
A Study of their Educational Experiences
prior to, and during, Borstal Training
by
EFUCA STRATTA
First published in 1970 by
Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Reprinted in 1998 by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Printed and bound in Great Britain
0 1970 Erica Stratta
AI1 rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders
of the works reprinted in The InternutionaI Library of Sociology.
This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would
welcome correspondence from those individuaIs/companies
we have been unable to trace.
Britib Library Catakping in Pa&cation Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
The Education of Borstal Boys
ISBN O-415-17737-5
The Sociology of Law and Criminology: 15 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-17832-O
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN O-415-17838-X
Contents
Page
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements xi
1 THE AREA OF THE RESEARCH
Education : its conception and development
within penal institutions 1
Educational provision as a part of borstal
training today. 15
The area it is proposed to examine in this study 18
An outline of current research into borstal
training 22
The method of selection of the sample 25
II A DESCRIPTION OF THE SAMPLE
Environment 32
Intelligence 36
Previous educational experience 50
Work record 54
Criminality 55
Present offence and borstal allocation 59
111 PREVIOUS EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Age on, and attitudes towards, leaving school 67
Information on schools attended 70
Examinations 81
Absence from school 84
Subjects which have been useful since leaving
school 89
Subjects which were interesting at school 92
Preparation for leaving school 95
Attitude towards leisure; leisure activities 103
Further education 108
Future plans and ambitions 111
V
Contents
Iv EDUCATION AS A PART OF BORSTAL TRAINING
Institutions visited 114
Institutional differences 116
The training pattern in borstal institutions 119
Organizational structure 123
The function of the Tutor Organizer 132
Educational provision 135
v AN ALTERNATIVE ROLE FOR EDUCATION
Summary of the important factors of a borstal
population which have relevance to education 143
Education-its development and present role
in borstal training 148
Education-an alternative role 155
Structural and organizational changes 171
The need for research 178
181
APPENDICES
BIBLIOGRAPHY 219
224
INDEX
vi
Foreword
br
T. P. MORRIS
The idea that education, or rather the lack of it, is a contri-
butory factor in the crime of the young is far from new.
Throughout the 19th century it was a recurring theme in the
writings of almost anyone concerned with the ‘moral reclama-
tion’ of juvenile delinquents. The elementary skills of the three
‘Rs’, and especially reading, were regarded by many advanced
reformers as of crucial importance; on occasion the enthusiasm
could be excessive, and for a time the emphasis in the regime
of the Berkshire County Gaol led to its being known among its
habitues as the ‘Read-Read-Reading Gaol’.
To a modern observer it seems scarcely surprising that at a
time when the mass ofthe common people had but minimal access
to primary education, the average young offender would be
unable to read and write. The moral aspect of education was
seen by reformers in terms of increasing the exposure of the
lower orders to the benefits of moral education through the
printed word.
Joseph Fletcher wrote in 1848 :
Without a proportionate advancement in the morality of
society each new change in material civilisation will lead to
frequent incentives to disorder among the people at large . . .
amidst those classes whose moral ties to the existing frame-
work of society are feeblest, and least felt or understood, and
to many of whom Socialism, or any other destructive theory
would appear as consistent with their well-being as the most
cherished axioms of Political Science, or even the words of
Christian Truth Itself.
Literacy then, was to be a bulwark against moral decay and
the Bible of Ring James a principal instrument of moral
education.
The sociologist who is given to excursions within the thickets
of such pompous Victorian prose must be forgiven if, when
vii
Foreword
reading some of the letters addressed nowadays to the Editor of
The Times, he experiences a sense of d$a vu. But whereas the
intensity, quality and duration of popular education in the last
century was recognized as limited, the same cannot be said for
developments within the lifetime of those now living. There is
little doubt that the improvements have been massive since the
turn of the century. It has been said that we now spend more
on education and delinquency is of a more complex nature. The
pioneer work of Sir Cyril Burt in the 1920’s demonstrated that
among delinquents, those whose educational standards were
low were not as dull as their attainments would appear to
suggest, but rather that there was a distinct gap between their
potential and their measured abilities.
The reasons for this state of affairs are various. Poor school
attendance may be a direct result of parental irresponsibility-
perpetually allowing children to ‘oversleep’ and miss school
just as father misses work-or frequent changes of school.
Emotional disturbance and consequent truancy may also play
a part. But the problems of teaching children in large classes
under far from satisfactory conditions cannot be excluded. In
the not so recent past some Education Authorities have played
down the idea that the ‘blackboard jungle’ school exists other
than in the imagination of certain disaffected supply teachers.
We now know that there is such a thing as the Educational
Priority Area and that the conditions which have been high-
lighted by the presence of immigrant children have been there
all the time.
It is entirely plausible to suggest that those boys who will
drift through petty delinquency to more serious offences and
finally enter the borstal system are more than likely to be found
among those who have gone to the most socially disprivileged
schools. They are likely to have had problems with authority
and found themselves on the wrong side of the teacher, and
have become bored during their last year when all that has
been in their minds has been the anticipation of freedom from
pedagogic restriction and the assumption of an independent
wage earning role.
Both the Newsom and Plowden Reports have shown that a
quarter of a century after the Butler Education Act, and a
century since the introduction of state education itself, there is
still much to be done. The borstal boy is, in the words of
. . .
vu1
Foreword
Newsom, to be found in that ‘other half of our future’-the
half that has done pretty badly compared with the new elite of
the swollen sixth form and the lavishly expanded university.
But that some 60 per cent of the boys seen by Dr Stratta wanted
to leave earlier than they did suggests that secondary education,
as they perceived it, had no attractions for them, and indeed was
actively disliked by some. In some of her interviews one can
detect a sense of resignation on the part of both teacher and
boy :
They just didn’t care. Whether you knew it or not. If you
knew it you knew it. If you didn’t you didn’t. That was their
attitude. If they thought you were a bit of a tearaway and
didn’t want to know, they didn’t want to know you. I
suppose it was reasonable.
Dr. Stratta’s study has come at an interesting point in time.
For in spite of the extravagant distortions of the recent so
called ‘Black Papers’, it cannot be denied that in many aspects
the whole of our educational system is in need of critical
re-appraisal. What is perhaps more important for this group of
boys is that the success rate of the borstal system-the lowness
of it-gives just as much cause for disquiet of another kind.
According to data recently published by the Home Office in
‘2Xe Sentenceo f the Court, about 38 per cent of first offenders and
71 per cent of previously convicted boys in borstal are again
convicted within five years. The so-called ‘decline in the quality
of borstal receptions’ has been a feature of the last decade. But is
it fair to suggest that these depressing data are the result ofinad-
equacies of the borstal system alone? The quality of delinquency
has in an important sense changed too as have the opportunities
for crime. All the same, Dr Stratta’s account of the organization
of educational facilities within borstal underlines the fact that
there remains as much to be done here as in the schools outside.
There is reason to think that in the period following the
Mountbatten Report much that was good in informal practice
has been sacrificed on the altar of the new God--Security. But
long before the criminologically irrelevant escape of George
Blake put the brake hard upon so many developments within
the prison system, the relationship of the Tutor Organizer to
the prison staff was problematic.
It is not, as Dr Stratta shows, just a matter of deciding where
ix
Foreword
education fits into the borstal regime, but where the education-
alist himself fits into the borstal community. The Tutor
Organizer has status within the institutional hierarchy but
little power to affect long term planning. There are arguments
in favour of the present system whereby the Tutor Organizer is
an outsider to the prison service, but others for the develop-
ment of a genuine career structure for the educationalist within
it. These are examined in useful detail in this book.
But one of the most important matters which she discusses
relates to the way in which education must relate to the total
training experience. At present it does not fit easily, but in any
event it can be argued that the principles upon which borstal
training is based may well be no longer wholly relevant to the
needs of the contemporary borstal boy who bears little relation-
ship to the ill-fed but basically respectful forelock-tugging
working lad who characterized the Golden Age of Borstal.
Every research has its shortcomings, and this is no exception,
but this is a book which will form a significant contribution to
the borstal literature. Like any book about an institution, it will
be read by some and talked about by many more-at least
within the service itself. It raises issues which are not wholly
confined to borstal. Is there reason, for example, to be sanguine
about the state of education in other types of penal institution?
Certainly there is nothing in this country to compare with the
best of American practice (nor, merciiiilly, with the worst).
How many young men who missed out at school have the
opportunity to make up for wasted time and opportunity later?
There is no substance in the theory that education by itself is an
antidote to crime, although improvement in an individual’s
chances in the market may go a long way to breaking the cycle
of unskilled work, unemployment and crime. There is a case for
ensuring that every member of our complex and bureau-
cratically demanding society is at least minimally competent to
meet its demands, and able to use his leisure critically and
constructively. The tragedy of a borstal boy on licence whiling
away his time in an amusement arcade lies not so much in the
fact that he is again in the company of layabouts, but that his
intelligence and ability are in many cases being insulted with-
out his knowledge.
X