Opening Schools and Closing Prisons

The book covers the period from 1812, when the Tron Riot in Edinburgh dramatically drew attention to the ‘lamentable extent of juvenile depravity’, up to 1872, when the Education Act (Scotland) inaugurated a system of universal schooling. _x005F_x000D_ _x005F_x000D_ During the 1840s and 1850s in particular there was a move away from a punitive approach to young offenders to one based on reformation and prevention. Scotland played a key role in developing reformatory institutions - notably the Glasgow House of Refuge, the largest of its type in the UK - and industrial schools which provided meals and education for children in danger of falling into crime.