| Summary: | Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Arts, 1989. === This dissertation explores the establishment of reformatories and industrial
schools in South Africa between 1882 and 1939. It focuses on the political and
economic context of their emergence; the social and ideological construction of
delinquency and the child in need of care; the relationship of the class, colour
and gender divisions in the reformatory and industrial school system to the wider
racial and sexual division of labour in a colonial order, and the implications and
significance of the transfer of these institutions from the Department of Prisons to
the Department of Education in 1917 and 1934 respectively
Thematically, the study is divided into three parts. Part One composing
chapters one. two. three, four, five and six situates the reformatory and industrial
school in their political and economic, social and ideological context. Beginning
with the origins of the reformatory in the nineteenth century Cape Colony it then
shifts focus to the Witwatersrand where the industrial revolution re-shaped and
brought into being new social forces and institutions to deal with children defined
as delinquent or in need of care. It also examines the place of the reformatory
and industrial school in relation to the wider system of legal sanctions and
welfare methods established during this period for the white and black working
classes by a segregationist state.
Part Two comprising chapters seven, eight, nine and ten contrasts and
compares social practices in the institutions in terms of class, colour and gender
between 1911 and 1934. Included here is a consideration of the different
methods of discipline and control, conditions, education and training, and
system of apprenticeship provided for black and white, male and female inmates
Responses of inmates to institutionalisation are explored in the final chapter of
this section.
The third section comprises chapters eleven (a) and (b) and chapter twelve
These chapters expand on themes developed in earlier sections for the period
1934-1939. Shifts in criminological thinking and changing strategies towards
juvenile delinquency in the nineteen thirties are considered in chapters eleven a)
and b). The final chapter examines the nature and significance of the changes
brought about particularly by Alan Paton in the African reformatory, Diepkloof,
between 1934 and 1939
The conclusion provides an overview of the main arguments of each section.
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