Youth Justice in Ireland North and South: Legacies of the Past, Influences on the Present

Abstract

Youth justice systems and practices in Ireland have traditionally been shaped by the sociopolitical context, impacted by religious and moral imperatives and prolonged political conflict. The criminal justice systems and the response to children and young people in conflict with the law in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have common antecedents and many shared historical legacies – including a shared legislative framework (Children Act 1908) and the reformatory and industrial school system (which has been the subject of recent historic inquiry on both sides of the border). Partition under the Government of Ireland Act (1920) ultimately led to the establishment of two separate jurisdictions. In what was to eventually become the Republic of Ireland, there was a significant period of stagnation in criminal justice policy particularly in the sphere of youth justice, with new legislation to replace the 1908 Act only introduced in 2001 (Children Act 2001). The history of ‘coercive confinement’ in the Republic of Ireland, marked by high rates of child and youth incarceration and the longevity of the institutional template, have been documented (O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, 2007, 2012). The emergence of a children’s rights discourse, particularly in the context of the unearthing of wide scale abuse within state institutions, has had a profound effect on official discourse and the policy response to young people in conflict with the law (Kilkelly, 2006). The development of the state response to young people in conflict with the law within Northern Ireland has broader parallels with other UK jurisdictions (particularly England and Wales) up until the 1960s, but is overlaid by the subsequent security/criminal justice response to civil and political conflict from this period onwards. The effects of the conflict in Northern Ireland on the criminal justice system, including the co-option of the agencies within the system to manage and contain it, has been the subject of a wide literature (e.g. Ellison and Smyth, 2000; Gormally et al, 1993; Tomlinson, 2012). Considerations of the