ABSTRACT
Much contemporary academic discourse on the operation of the youth justice system or on the punishment of young offenders reads as if we are now more punitive and less concerned about the welfare of child offenders than at any time in the recent past. We have, however, only to look back a little over a century to see a time when children were not only punished by imprisonment but, on occasion, were subjected to transportation and even the death penalty. In fact, it is really only in the last 150 years that there have been discernible differences in the ways in which adult and child offenders have been treated by the criminal justice system.
