se notions:
[T]hese developments occurred at the same time as changes to the Poor Law system, change in the workplace, relating particularly to women and children, and changes in the policing of society evidenced by the passing of the Factory Acts, the Metropolitan Police Act, and the New Poor Law in the first half of the centuryö (Shore 21).
Other factors included an easing of the number of crimes that were subject to capital punishment, including such crimes as pick-pocketing, punishable by death until 1808. This led ironically to more convictions of juveniles as the courts no longer feared that these juveniles could be put to death.
This paper traces the background and evolution of the notion of juvenile delinquency in late-Victorian England. The paper argues that this notion consisted of a coming together of public and private interests, as well as new approaches in sociology and psychology, and a further distinction between what a child is versus adulthood (especially in the difference in views on child responsibility). It is also the contention of this paper that the industrialization of England during this period and the further concentration of people within urban centers also led to a greater awareness of criminal acts by childrenùand the need to come up with new ways of handling such crime.
For the most part of the Victorian Era, one of the major problems with how to treat juvenile crime had to do with the fact there was no legal definition of what a child was or when childhood ended and adulthood began. In fact, no such definition occurred in law until 1908. According to Smith: ôAdolescence is a rare word in Victorian society à They were not being simply callous when they asserted that adulthood began at twelve or thirteen and that 'adults' should be permitted to protect themselvesö (196).
In law, by the middle to late 19th century, if someone under the age of seven committed what would otherwise be c...