ABSTRACT
The Peper Harow endeavour was a response to increasing recognition that previous disciplinary regimes, such as Approved Schools, had produced little change in those who had been sent there. The youngsters believed that they had been sent for punishment and this directly affected their response. Accordingly, they remained resistant and resentful to the well-intended efforts of even the most enthusiastic adult. Staff ran well-resourced trade-training departments, stimulating mountain and canoe expeditions, demonstrated personal interest in the youngsters through pastoral programmes and psychiatric consultancy, as well as experimenting with activities such as education within the local community. In the best of those institutions, discipline, while strict compared with the peer group lifestyle outside, was generally fair. At first sight, therefore, it was astonishing that the success rate, measured by re-offending and by the numbers remaining employed in the trade for which they had been trained for more than a year, was often less than 20 per cent. Staff were demoralised by such failure and often became cynical and mistrustful of the youngsters. There were institutional systems for rewarding co-operation and progress by the youngsters, though there was no concept that youngsters and adults should share an equal commitment to the institutional objectives. Instead, the general relationships between these two groups were emotionally superficial rather than psychotherapeutic.
