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tore, Max Sorensen, Lord Mackenzie Stuart (Second
Chamber).
Advocates-General: Alberto Trabucchi (First Chamber
with Mr. Mayras). Jean-Pierre Warner and Ger-
hard Reischl (Second Chamber).
Registrar : Albert van Houtte.
On 7 and 8 October the Court of Justice was visited
by a sizeable delegation from the Tribunal de Grande
Instance, Paris.
Case 32/75: Fiorini (née Cristini) and Societe Nationale
des Chemins de Fer Francais (preliminary ruling)
20.9.75
A woman of Italian nationality living in France
whose husband, also an Italian, worked in France
where he died following an accident at work, leaving
a widow and four children, was refused by the SNCF
a card entitling large families to obtain reductions in
railway fares.
The applicant's request was refused on the ground of
her nationality, pursuant to the French legal provi-
sions laying down that the card entitling large families
to obtain reductions is in principle reserved for French
nationals alone and is issued only to foreigners whose
State of origin has concluded a reciprocal agreement
with France in that particular field, which is not the
case with Italy.
The plaintiff in the main action took the SNCF to
court and following an appeal against the judgment at
first instance the case came before the Cour d'Appel,
Paris, which requested the Court of Justice to rule on
the question whether the card issued by the SNCF
entitling large families to obtain reductions constitutes
a "social advantage" for workers of the Member States
within the meaning of Article 7 of the Council regula-
tion concerning freedom of movement for workers with-
in the Community. The European Court has ruled that
that Article is to be interpreted as meaning that the
social advantages covered by that provision include
cards granting reductions in fares, issued by a national
railway organisation to large families, even where that
advantage is requested only after the death of the
worker for the benefit of his family which has remained
in the same Member State.
Book Reviews
Osborough (Nial)—Borstal in Ireland.
Custodial Pro-
vision for the Young Adult Offender 1906-1974.
Pub-
lished by the Institute of Public Administration, Dublin,
1975. £3.75.
The word "Borstal", no doubt, conjures up for many
of us a memory of the late Brendan Behan, or rather
Niall Toibin's version of Brendan Behan, slouching
across the stage of the Abbey Theatre with all around
him the panorama of Behan's life in a Borstal institu-
tion. Such a memory will probably be of an amusing
nature, but such, you are assured, is not a correct
impression of what Mr. Nial Osborough's book is all
about.
What is "Borstal"? In the first place, Borstal is a
village in Kent, where in 1901 in a part of the convict
prison located there, the first experiments were carried
out in providing a separate custodial system for young
convicted persons in the 16 to 21 age group. As con-
ceived, the system was designed to provide basic educa-
tion for those who needed it—probably the vast majo-
rity—and vocational training in such trades as tailoring,
shoemaking, carpentry and gardening, such as would
prepare the inmates to return to the outside world
rehabilitated and readily employable. The system
depended on each Borstal boy being committed to the
Borstal institution for a sufficient minimum period as
would enable such education and training to be effec-
tive. As a result of the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908,
and the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914, the
minimum period of committal by the Courts was one
year and the maximum three years, with a right of
release on licence after a minimum of six months.
The Borstal system reached Ireland in May 1906 and
a Borstal institution was located at Clonmel in an old
disused prison. It was only for males and, in fact, there
was never a female Borstal in the South. An attempt at
establishing one in Armagh Prison between 1954 and
1961 was unsuccessful, because of lack of numbers.
The Borstal system is what Mr. Osborough's book is
all about and it must be distinguished from the Refor-
matory and Industrial Schools systems designed for
younger people, whether criminal or non-criminal,
which had been introduced into Ireland as early as
1858 and which have in recent years been the subject
of considerable public debate and controversy since the
publication in 1970 of the Report of the Committee
established under the Chairmanship of District Justice
Eileen Kennedy.
The Borstal system is also to be distinguished from
the sentencing by the Courts of young persons under
21 years to ordinary terms of imprisonment in ordinary
prisons.
Mr. Osborough traces the origins of the Borstal
system and sets out how the Clonmel Borstal was run
as the only institution for all of Ireland, North and
South, between 1906 and 1922. He describes the grading
system of the inmates, the work they did, discipline,
recreation and after-care and in subsequent chapters
deals with the system as it operated separately both
North and South after partition.
Between 1922 and 1927 in Northern Ireland, any
young offender committed to Borstal went to Feltham
Borstal in England until, in 1927, part of Malone Prison
in Belfast, became a Borstal Institution and remained
as such until 1956, when Woburn House at Millisle,
County Down, replaced it. Woburn was acquired by
the Northern Ireland Government in lieu of £18,000
estate duty. This was the first Borstal institution in
Ireland which, at least, had not started out as a prison.
In the South, until 1956, Clonmel remained the sole
Borstal institution, with displacement temporarily to
other locations during the civil war and to Cork during
the Second World War. The Borstal system effectively
died in the South in 1956, when the Clonmel institu-
tion, by then re-named St. Patrick's Institution (because
of the stigma attached to the term "Borstal") moved
to a wing at Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, which continues
. 2 7 2