A Borstal was a type of
youth detention centre
In criminal justice systems, a youth detention center, known as a juvenile detention center (JDC),Stahl, Dean, Karen Kerchelich, and Ralph De Sola. ''Abbreviations Dictionary''. CRC Press, 20011202. Retrieved 23 August 2010. , . juvenile det ...
in the United Kingdom, several member states of the
Commonwealth and the
Republic of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 Counties of Ireland, counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern ...
. In India, such a detention centre is known as a Borstal school.
Borstals were run by
HM Prison Service
His Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) is a part of HM Prison and Probation Service (formerly the National Offender Management Service), which is the part of His Majesty's Government charged with managing most of the prisons within England and Wale ...
and were intended to reform
young offenders. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institutions and reformatories, such as
approved schools and
youth detention centres. The court sentence was officially called "Borstal training". Borstals were originally for offenders under 21, but in the 1930s the maximum age was increased to 23. The Criminal Justice Act 1982 abolished the Borstal system in the UK, replacing Borstals with youth custody centres.
In India, Borstal schools are used for the imprisonment of
minors. As of 31 December 2014, there were twenty functioning Borstal schools in India, with a combined total capacity of 2,108 inmates.
History
United Kingdom
The Gladstone Committee (1895) first proposed the concept of the borstal, wishing to separate youths from older convicts in adult prisons. It was the task of Sir
Evelyn Ruggles-Brise
Sir Evelyn John Ruggles-Brise (6 December 1857 – 18 August 1935) was a British prison administrator and reformer, and founder of the Borstal system.
Biography
Ruggles-Brise was born in Finchingfield in Essex, the second son of Sir Samuel Bri ...
(1857–1935), a prison commissioner, to introduce the system, and the first such institution was established at
Borstal Prison
HM Prison Rochester (formerly known as Borstal Prison) is a male Young Offenders Institution, founded in 1870, and located in the Borstal area of Rochester in Kent, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and is located ...
in a village called
Borstal, near
Rochester, Kent, England, in 1902. The system was developed on a national basis and formalised in the Prevention of Crime Act 1908.
The regimen in these institutions was designed to be "educational rather than punitive", but it was highly regulated, with a focus on routine, discipline and authority during the early years. Borstal institutions were originally designed to offer education, regular work and discipline, though one commentator has claimed that "more often than not they were breeding grounds for bullies and
psychopath
Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. Different conceptions of psychopathy have been ...
s."
The
Criminal Justice Act 1982
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...
officially abolished the borstal system in the UK, introducing youth custody centres instead. As society had changed the system was then already outdated especially since the late 1960s and early 1970s, with many borstals being closed and replaced with institutions called Detention Centres and, from 1972, also with
Community Service Order
Community service is unpaid work performed by a person or group of people for the benefit and betterment of their community without any form of compensation. Community service can be distinct from volunteering, since it is not always performed ...
sentences.
Corporal punishment
Except in
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
, the only
corporal punishment officially available in borstals was the
birch
A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech- oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains ...
for mutiny or assaulting an officer, and this could be imposed only by the visiting magistrates, subject in each case to the personal approval of the
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national s ...
, just as in adult prisons. Only male inmates over 18 might be so punished. This power was very rarely used – there were only seven birching cases in borstals in the 10 years to 1936. This birching power was available only in England and Wales (not in Scottish borstals).
Caning as a more day-to-day punishment was used in the single borstal in Northern Ireland but was not authorised in Scotland or England and Wales. Confusion on this matter arises perhaps because in
approved schools, a quite different kind of youth institution based more on the open "boarding school" model, caning was an official punishment for young people (maximum age 19).
Commonwealth
A similar system under the name "borstal" or "borstal school" has also been introduced in several other
Commonwealth countries
The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of 56 sovereign states. Most of them were British colonies or dependencies of those colonies.
No one government in the Commonwealth exercises power over the others, as is the case in a p ...
.
India
In
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, nine states, namely
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...
,
Jharkhand
Jharkhand (; ; ) is a state in eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north and Odisha to the south. It has an area of . I ...
,
Karnataka
Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
,
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
,
Maharashtra,
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
,
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern s ...
,
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...
, and
Telangana
Telangana (; , ) is a state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the eleventh-largest state and the twelfth-most populated state in India with a geographical area of and 3 ...
, have borstal schools in their respective jurisdictions. Tamil Nadu had the highest capacity, at 678 inmates (as of 2014). Himachal Pradesh and Kerala are the only states that have the capacity to lodge female inmates in two of their borstal schools. There are no borstal schools in any of the
union territories.
Ireland
In
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
the Criminal Justice Act, 1960 (Section 12) removed the term "borstal" from official use. This was part of a policy to broaden the system from reform and training institutions to a place of detention for youths between 17 and 21 for any sentence which carried a prison term. The only borstal in the state was based for most of its existence in
Clonmel, in
County Tipperary
County Tipperary ( ga, Contae Thiobraid Árann) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. The county is named after the town of Tipperary, and was established in the early 13th century, shortly after t ...
. Founded in 1906, it finally closed in 1956, when the remaining detainees were transferred to the newly established
St. Patrick's Institution in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
.
Industrial schools performed a similar function to borstals.
In popular culture
Literature
*Irish writer
Brendan Behan
Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) ( ; ga, Breandán Ó Beacháin; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican activist who wrote in both English an ...
wrote of his experiences in the English borstal system in his autobiography ''
Borstal Boy
''Borstal Boy'' is a 1958 autobiographical book by Brendan Behan. The story depicts a young, fervently idealistic Behan, who loses his naïveté over the three years of his sentence to a juvenile borstal, softening his radical Irish republican ...
'' (1958). It was later adapted into
play
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* P ...
and
film versions.
*
Alan Sillitoe's short story "
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" (1959) is included in the
book of the same title. A boy's period in a borstal for robbing a bakery is recounted. The
film version followed in 1962 in which
Tom Courtenay starred and the director was
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director and producer whose career spanned five decades. In 1964, he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film ''Tom Jones''.
Early ...
.
*In
Roald Dahl's children's book ''
Matilda'' (1988), Hortensia initially refers to the school as "borstal" on Matilda's first day.
*Alan Figg's book ''Borstal 80'' gives a personal account of time served 1980 to 1981 at
Portland Borstal.
Cinema
*The British film, ''
Boys in Brown'' (1949) stars
Richard Attenborough,
Dirk Bogarde and
Jack Warner. It looks at life in a borstal and the challenges faced by those who go through them.
* ''
Scum'' (1977), a once banned ''
Play for Today'' and its cinema remake ''
Scum'' (1979) are set in a borstal.
Ray Winstone
Raymond Andrew Winstone (; born 19 February 1957) is an English television, stage and film actor with a career spanning five decades. Having worked with many prominent directors, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Winstone is perha ...
, in a very early role, features in both versions.
* Young
Raymond Briggs
Raymond Redvers Briggs (18 January 1934 – 9 August 2022) was an English illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist and author. Achieving critical and popular success among adults and children, he is best known in Britain for his 1978 story ...
is threatened with being sent to "Borstal" by a police officer after being suspected of trying to steal "valuable billiard cues" from a golf club in the animated film ''
Ethel & Ernest'' (2016).
* ''
Scrubbers'' (1982) British drama film set in a girls' borstal, directed by
Mai Zetterling and starring Amanda York and Chrissie Cotterill.
Television
A ninth series episode of the BBC television show ''
Father Brown
Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who is featured in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by English author G. K. Chesterton. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intui ...
'', titled "The Wayward Girls" and first broadcast in January 2022, was set in a borstal.
''
Dog Borstal'' is the title of a British television series in which dog trainers address challenging behaviour by dogs.
Music
* The British rock band
Faces
The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affe ...
recorded a song (written by
Rod Stewart,
Ronnie Wood
Ronald David Wood (born 1 June 1947) is an English rock musician, best known as an official member of the Rolling Stones since 1975, as well as a member of Faces and the Jeff Beck Group.
Wood began his career in 1964, playing guitar with a ...
, and
Ian McLagan
Ian Patrick McLagan (; 12 May 1945 – 3 December 2014) was an English keyboardist, best known as a member of the rock bands Small Faces and Faces. He also collaborated with the Rolling Stones and led his own band from the late 1970s. He was i ...
) called "Borstal Boys" on their final studio album ''
Ooh La La''.
* The British punk rock band
Sham 69 had a top 40 hit single with a song called "Borstal Breakout" in 1977.
* The British rock band
Humble Pie recorded a song called "
30 Days in the Hole" that included the lyric "Some seeds and dust, and you got Borstal."
* The British singer-songwriter
Richard Thompson included a song called "I Can't Wake Up to Save My Life" on his 1994 album
Mirror Blue, which included the lines "Things I done make my dreams turn bad, like borstal boys coming home to Dad", an image similar to "chickens coming home to roost".
* The German punk band
Oxymoron released a track titled "Borstal" on their 1995 album "Fuck The Nineties...Here's Our Noize".
* The British synthpop band
Bronski Beat featured a mince pie-eating competition in Borstal with lead singer
Jimmy Somerville
James William Somerville (born 22 June 1961) is a Scottish pop singer and songwriter. He sang in the 1980s with the pop groups Bronski Beat and The Communards, and has also had a solo career. He is known in particular for his powerful and sou ...
winning the contest in the music video
music video
/ref> of the cover song " It Ain't Necessarily So" from the album '' The Age of Consent''.
* The Borstal is a punk rock band from Jakarta, Indonesia.
* Borstal is a heavy hardcore band from London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, with Brujeria
Various types of witchcraft and occult religious practices exist in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean cultures, known in Spanish as (pronounced ). Influenced by indigenous religion, Catholicism, and European witchcraft, the purpose may range ...
and Knuckledust members (including lead singer, Pelbu).
See also
* Her Majesty's Young Offender Institution
His Majesty's Young Offender Institution (or HMYOI) is a type of prison in Great Britain, intended for offenders aged up to 18, although some prisons cater for younger offenders from ages 15 to 17, who are classed as juvenile offenders. Typically t ...
* Young offender
A young offender is a young person who has been convicted or cautioned for a criminal offense. Criminal justice systems often deal with young offenders differently from adult offenders, but different countries apply the term "young offender" ...
* Youth detention center
In criminal justice systems, a youth detention center, known as a juvenile detention center (JDC),Stahl, Dean, Karen Kerchelich, and Ralph De Sola. ''Abbreviations Dictionary''. CRC Press, 20011202. Retrieved 23 August 2010. , . juvenile de ...
* Clonmel Borstal
St. Patrick's Borstal Institution, Clonmel, was established in Ireland in 1906 as a place of detention for young male offenders aged between 16 and 21, and located in Clonmel, County Tipperary.
History of the site
The Clonmel Institution is si ...
References
External links
{{wiktionary
Specialized "Borstal" website, contains many unsourced and questionable claims about unofficial corporal punishment, also tends to lump borstals together with Approved Schools
* ttp://www.isleofportlandpictures.org.uk/Grove/ Archive pictures of Portland Borstal, 1920s and 1930sbr>"Borstal changed my life" – BBC website
27 photographs of the first Borstal, Kent, in 1902 - Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
*[https://www.nytimes.com/1908/12/27/archives/new-reform-for-girl-criminals-english-scheme-which-is-educational.html Elizabeth M. Chesser, "NEW REFORM FOR GIRL CRIMINALS; English Scheme Which Is Educational Rather Than Punitive" (article about extension of borstal system to include girls), ''The New York Times'', 27 December 1908]
Imprisonment and detention
Youth detention centers
Juvenile law
Prisons in India
Youth in the United Kingdom