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. 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...