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A NEW SYSTEM OF JUVENILE COURTS IN SCOTLAND
by Diane Morgan
Robert Pearson is Reporter to one of the Scottish
children's panels and he and his colleagues are the
anchormen of a new system which has transferred
the care of young people in difficulties from the Scottish
courts to the community. The word "client" has taken
on another shade of meaning as well. Pearson's clients
are "juvenile delinquents" and their parents.
The Kilbrandon Committee, examining the way Scots
law treated not only young offenders but children in
need of care and protection and those beyond parental
control, had found the juvenile court unsatisfactory. Its
two functions—court of law, and specialised agency to
help children in need—were irreconcilable.
Its report, published in 1964, expounded a fresh and
informal approach, which was faithfully translated into
law by the 1968 Social Work (Scotland) Act, Part III
of the Act came into force on April 15, 1971, and since
then, no child under 16 has been brought before a court
unless he has committed a serious crime, such as murder.
Instead, information (from any source) on children
who appear to be at risk is investigated by the reporter
serving the appropriate local children's panel. At his
own discretion he will decide if the child is in need of
compulsory measures of care, and arrange for him to
attend a children's hearing with his parents, on a week-
day, an evening, or a Saturday morning.
If they wish, the family can bring along a representa-
tive, friend, neighbour, or teacher to help express their
views. The reporter and a social worker, armed with
background reports, will also be present at the hearing,
but the ultimate decision on the best course for the child
will be made by three members of the local children's
panel. They are members of the public who have volun-
teered their services and undergone a mini-social work
course.
The problem is discussed in a friendly, unhurried
way—hence the need for ten or so comfortable chairs, a
large table and a cheerful room. "We're getting more
adept at putting the right questions to clients these
days," one panel member, a university lecturer, said.
"The children leave the room if they want to discuss
anything that might shock or upset them, but they come
back, and we arrive at a decision with everyone present.
In fact the solution usually emerges during the dis-
cussion."
There is no statutory restriction on the conditions
a hearing may impose. Rein can be given to flexible,
varied decisions, tailored to suit the child's needs—
helping the elderly attending evening classes, taking up
a sport, attending a psychiatric clinic. Decisions have
no time limit, at least until the child reaches 18. The
guide line is simply that measures of care are continued
as long as necessary, in the best interests of the child.
During this period, the hearing, and indeed the
family, have a continuing right of review, to reappraise
progress. The measures of care will be altered if the
circumstances warrant it.
Each social work authority has its own children's
panel, and ideally, its members should represent all
sections of the community, the sole yardstick for
appointment being a genuine interest in children, and
absence of bias.
But the selection procedures, formulated by the
children's panel advisory committees attached to each
local authority, demand lengthy form filling, interviews
and group discussions, and are loaded, however un-
wittingly, towards attracting confident, sympathetic
articulate people. Subsequently, panel members have
been dogged by a "middle-class" tag, and criticised as
"socially distant from the majority of families with
whom they are dealing."
"The fact is," Robert Munro, teacher and press agent
to the Aberdeen City Panel, says, "several of our mem-
bers have lived for many years in conditions of hard-
ship and poverty, and some of us have lived in families
which know only too painfully the problems of delin-
quency."
What arc their young clients like? "Confused, re-
jected kids." Bill Knight, a panel member, says, "invari-
ably with poor home backgrounds."
"Offences tend to outnumber the neglect cases,"
Robert Pearson says. "Our main group are boys in the
12-to-13 age group. Shop-lifting, shop-breaking, and
truancy are fairly common. And next year, when the
school-leaving age is raised, most of us are likely to be
busier. Unsettled boys and girls are quite liable to get
into trouble during their last years at school."
But each panel has its own specific problems.
Glasgow is the busiest, hard-pressed by problems of
violence and gang warfare. The city has 40 per cent of
the national case load, and 90 panel members deal with
about 130 cases each week.
In the far north Shelagh Dicks, chairman of the Shet-
land Panel, rejects the suggestion that young people of
the islands are at the opposite end of the crime scale
doing nothing more vicious than tossing fish boxes into
Lerwick harbour.
"Shetland's economy is booming these days. It's be-
come a sort of Shangri-la. But affluence brings its own
problems—drugs, under-age drinking, more cars around
to drive off and we have the additional problem of
isolation."
But even after a year, it is possible to assess the
hearing's advantages over the juvenile courts. There is
more time, more information, cases are dealt with more
quickly. Even in Glasgow the waiting time of six to
nine months for the juvenile court has now been cut to
five weeks or so. There is no question of a criminal
record for a child under 16, nor does the hearing have
to wait for a minimum age before intervening.
In Glasgow Fred Kennedy, the city's Reporter, finds
parents generally willing to cooperate, ready to discuss
their circumstances with the hearing. "I've had experi-
ence of the juvenile court, and there is a higher inci-
dence of both parents attending hearings."
"An offence," the lecturer says, "is only the symptom
of a deeper problem. We must probe below the surface
and prescribe accordingly. As a result, we often arrive
at different solutions for children who may have joined
forces to commit the same offence."
Everyone concerned with hearings had a major
criticism to make. Although the system is now treat-
ment-orientated, there has been little evidence of an
expansion of rehabilitative facilities, essential if trans-
formation is to take place in fact as well as. theory.
Across Scotland came a plea for more resources—
teenage psychiatric units; residential schools; small
family group units; schools for maladjusted children.
No one is rash enough to predict a long-term success
for the hearings. But it is a bold and adventurous
social reform.
{The Guardian)
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