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Rehearsing Citizenship:The Governing of JuvenileDelinquency in ColonialMalayaPeter Triantafillou & Afonso MoreiraPublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Peter Triantafillou & Afonso Moreira (2002) RehearsingCitizenship: The Governing of Juvenile Delinquency in Colonial Malaya, CitizenshipStudies, 6:3, 325-340, DOI: 10.1080/1362102022000011649

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Citizenship Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2002

Rehearsing Citizenship: The Governingof Juvenile Delinquency in ColonialMalayaPETER TRIANTAFILLOU and AFONSO MOREIRA

This article traces the sudden problematisation and governing of juveniledelinquency in British colonial Malaya in the decade preceding independence in1957 whereby a juvenile court system, a network of institutions for delinquents,and a series of training and disciplinary practices were set up to rehabilitate thedelinquent in order to turn him into a responsible citizen. Drawing on theanalytics of disciplinary and ethical practices conducted by Michel Foucault, itis argued that the governing of juvenile delinquency in colonial Malaya may beseen as a fundamental element of a wider assemblage of normalising techniquesseeking to recast subjectivity from that of immature individuals into active andresponsible self-governing ones, and that these techniques were highly dividingin that they produced not only what is taken to be good citizens but alsodelinquents . It is shown that Malaysian independence, far from leading to abreak with these power-laden practices of citizenship, instead leads to theirfurther development, dispersal and institutionalisation .

Introduction

Since independence in 1957 struggles over citizenship in Malaysia have increas-ingly centred on general civil liberties and political rights in a political systemthat which in many respects seems to have grown increasingly authoritarianduring the 1990s.1 Human rights activists, NGOs, and members of the politicalopposition have time and again criticised the three-party coalition,2 which hasbeen ruling Malaysia almost without interruption since independence, for re-stricting civil liberties (such as freedom of speech), political rights (such asfreedom of assembly and association), and substantive participation in politicalprocesses and institutions .

These claims for political rights are, in our view, both very understandableand legitimate. However, the quest for civil liberties and political participation

Peter Trianta� llou, PhD, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copen-hagen Business School, Denmark; e-mail: pt.ikl@cbs.dkAfonso Moreira, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of International Development Studies,Roskilde University, Denmark; e-mail: afonso@ruc.dk

ISSN 1362-1025 Print; 1469-3593 Online/02/030325-16 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/136210202200001164 9

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based on ideals of active citizenship is not a natural drive to freedom. InMalaysia, like any other modern society, the mode of freedom implied by activecitizenship had to be invented, machinated, and governed. The subjects ofMalaysia had to be trained in the art of citizenship. In the period between theending of WWII and Malaysian independence, the British colonial administra-tion launched a series of programmes, reforms, courses and institutions thataimed to train the colonial subjects in the art of citizenship. This included civiccourses for adults, reformation of the schooling system and the penal system,and the making of a system for the governing of juvenile delinquency.

It is our contention that one may gain important insights in the machinationsand techniques for making up citizens in contemporary Malaysia by studying thetreatment of those subjects whose conduct were taken to deviate from the normsof good citizenship in the decade before and the decade proceeding indepen-dence. Rather than suggesting that the Malaysian citizen sprung out of theexperiences from reformatory institutions , we are hypothesising that the study ofthe governing of the ‘bad’ boys may highlight some of the dividing andexcluding political effects of the ethical practices of citizenship.

Citizenship as a Practice of Freedom

The development and struggles over civil, political and social rights have for along time been the key focus of political theory and philosophy dealing with thephenomenon of citizenship (for example, Marshall, 1950; Turner, 1986, 1993).In this line of theory there is a tendency to make a strict distinction betweenbeing a subject to government and being a citizen depending on the extent towhich individuals are allowed—through civil and political rights—and actuallyenabled—through social rights—to engage in a dialogue with those who exercisepower over them. While this is a both relevant and pertinent research agenda inany society, particularly so in political regimes where authoritarian modes of ruleare prevalent, the usefulness of this distinction may be questioned to the extentthat participation in political processes is a matter not only of individual rightsor personal autonomy, but also of practical and technical devices wherebysubjects are urged to participate in political and social life and thereby constitutethemselves as proper citizens.

Another group of citizenship studies has been guided by rather abstractanalytical categories, such as nation-state building (for example, Brubaker, 1992;Mann, 1993)3 or shifting interrelations between class, territory and capital (Isin,1997). Notwithstanding signi� cant differences in terms of theoretical assump-tions and normative foundations, these studies of grand societal transformationstend to provide insuf� cient room for addressing the ways in which administrat-ive reforms, petty institutiona l machinations, and speci� c social and psycholog-ical knowledges serve to provide tools whereby the individual is urged toconstitute her/himself as a citizen.4

From the point of view of the purpose of this article, these accounts howeverhold at least two serious limitations . First, by posing the problem of thecitizenship as one of a developmental relation between social formation andself-formation, they are � rmly caught up in the sociologica l structure–agency

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dilemma whereby subjectivity is seen as a more or less contingent outcome ofthe relation between internally de� ned agency and externally de� ned socialnorms and institutions impinging on individual conduct. Second, by holding theambition of providing a general theory of the development of citizenship and,thereby, seeking at least in principle to establish a general truth about thehistorical antecedents of our present conduct, they are establishing a certainclosure from an ongoing problematisation of the strategic and mobile inter-actions between governmental interventions and self-practices.

Freedom, Power and Government

This article assumes that Foucault’s analytics of the relation between govern-ment and ethical practices may provide an analytical framework that does notsolve but simply transcend the structure–agency dilemma by abandoning thepresupposition of the autonomous subject circumscribed within a set of externalsocial forces. Moreover, by dropping the ambitions of general theoretisation ofthe development of civilised conduct in favour of a tentative history of contem-porary ethical practices, Foucault’s analytics may open up for renewed prob-lematisations of the ways in which petty disciplinary mechanisms played out inconcrete institutions in a speci� c historical period came to inform and interactwith technologies whereby individuals were urged to constitute themselves asfree citizens.

If, following Foucault (1994) and more recently Tully (1999) and Rose(1999), we address freedom not in terms of rights, autonomy, or the set-up ofpolitical institutions , but as a set of ethical practices imbued with certainrationalities, informed by particular bodies of knowledge, and guided by variouspolitical interventions, it may be possible to propose an analysis of thoseconcrete techniques and knowledges whereby the Malaysian subject is urged toconstitute him/herself as a citizen. This analysis is not that of the (historical)sociologica l account of a social structure seeking more or less successfully toin� uence individual behaviour, but rather a historically speci� c analysis of theways in which individuals govern themselves. It is inspired by what Foucault inthe second volume of the History of Sexuality termed a history of ‘ethics’, inother words, a ‘history of the way in which individuals are urged to constitutethemselves as subject of moral conduct would be concerned with the modelsproposed for setting up and developing relationships with the self, for self-re� ection, self-knowledge, self-examination, for the decipherment of the self byoneself, for the transformations that one seek to accomplish with oneself asobject’ (Foucault, 1992, p. 29).

Fundamental to this analysis is the conceptualisation of the relation betweenfreedom and power. On the one hand, freedom is analysed as a practice that isalways exercised under the presence—rather than the absence—of power rela-tions. Freedom then is not a question of personal autonomy denoting the absenceof power, but of the practices by which we constitute ourselves as subjectsinformed by and in strategic interaction with—but not reducible to—historicallyspeci� c political technologies , bodies of knowledge, and norms seeking to shapeour conduct. On the other hand, power can be exercised only over free

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individuals in the sense that these individuals are provided with a certain levelof choice of whether to accept, resist or problematise the political technologies,bodies of knowledge and norms seeking to shape their conduct. Howeverunbalanced, there must be on both sides at least a certain form of liberty in orderto exercise relations of power (Foucault, 1994, p. 12).

These sorts of relations of power do not exclude but rather depend on thedevelopment of a sense of co-ordination of individua l actions according tocollective room for manoeuvre. At this level Foucauldian inspired analytics ofethical practices seems to be closely related to the symbolic interactionist sdealing with similar issues (for example, Becker, 1963; Goffman, 1963). Yet incontrast to the latter approach, which tends to discard from the outset thepossibility of individuals willingly submitting themselves to disciplinary prac-tices, we emphasise that it is perfectly possible to conceive of self-fashioning aswork of the self upon the self without viewing these as a derivation of collectiveempowerment or emancipation. The formation of the citizen as individualpractices of autonomy, self-control and con� dence are thus correlating with andinformed by but not reducible to political technologies of personhood. In brief,in the context of rehearsing citizenship we designate the word freedom neitherto individual ‘autonomous’ acts (devoid of power relations) nor to singularsamples of collective norms or states of mind, but to the individual constitutionof modern subjects informed and supported by collective arrays of practices thatare more or less aligned to normalising codes of civil and moral conduct.

It is within such a conception of freedom and power that we seek to addresspractices of citizenship taking place in what may termed a ‘total institution ’(Goffman, 1961, p. 11). However, in contrast to Goffman’s approach, whichtakes total institutions as ensuring a general societal function by repressing andmortifying subjectivity , we seek to do the reverse by addressing the reformatoryas so many instances of productive power/knowledge relations seeking to spuron speci� c normalising modes of self-subjecti� cation. While repression andunequal power relations certainly are a crucial aspects of the reformatory, itfunctions above all by urging the inmates to subjectify themselves as law-abiding, productive and responsible individuals by rehearsing them in theexercise of those modes of freedom proper of good citizenship, until the lattercan be played by ear and known by heart.

While Foucault’s analyses has informed a bulk of studies on the objectifyingand dominating effects of Western epistemologie s in colonial and post-colonialsocieties, his analytics of ethical practices have inspired only few studies of theways in which modern political technologies have interacted with practices offreedom. Whatever the reasons for this, we assume that in as much as the aimis to provide a critical problematisation of the functioning of modern power/knowledge relations rather than claiming that modern disciplinary powers aredisseminated from developed to developing societies according to some dubiousteleological and globalising logic, Foucault’s genealogical analyses may serve asa source of inspiration for examinations of the ways in which ethical practiceshave interacted with modern disciplines and governmental technologies in totalinstitutions in speci� c historical and societal contexts outside Western Europe.This would enable one to include, side by side with the above-mentioned

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objectifying effects, the subjectifying practices and their respective effects in themaking of capable citizens as a matter of ethics. By the same token it woulddisplay how epistemologies—or ways of knowing—are recast into ontologies—or practices of being through training and rehearsal.

The Problematisation of Juvenile Delinquency

From the end of the nineteenth century the British colonial administrationestablished a number of institutions aiming to turn the youth into a disciplined,healthy and productive subject. No doubt the school system was the mostimportant of these developments. Legislation was put up in two of the FederatedMalay States during the 1890s requiring four years of mandatory schooling forMalay children, though this was often not enforced and enrolment rates remainedrather low until the 1920s (Roff, 1967, pp. 127–8). The key objective of colonialeducation in the early twentieth century seems to have been to instil a certainmoral conduct that would facilitate the development of his productive faculties,but also to instil into the youth a certain sense of civic virtues in relation to whatwas coming to be seen as a Malay political community (Milner, 1995).5

Likewise, a number of voluntary youth associations emerged from the beginningof the twentieth century that in some way or another sought to improve the moraland physical � bres of the young person. The � rst Boy Scout troops were formedin 1908 in Selangor and during the next decades the movement graduallyconsolidated itself and spread to the other States of the Malay peninsular.Finally, voluntary recreational, cultural and sports clubs for Malay youths,such as the Rotary Clubs, started emerging from around the 1920s, thoughtheir number remained quite limited until WWII (Malayan Union, 1947; Roff,1967).

Notwithstanding the importance of these developments for promoting modesof ethical conduct conforming to liberal norms of citizenship, our assertion isthat the deployment of technologies of citizenship was quite limited in colonialMalaya before 1940 and that it was only with the ending of WWII that one seesa systematic dispersal of these in a wide array of institutiona l settings. Inparticular, in contrast to prevailing practices in Great Britain and other Europeansocieties, there was no system ensuring that the Malay errant youth wassubjected to disciplinary procedures aiming to turn him into a law-abiding andproductive citizen.6

In the end of 1946, a Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Welfare Committeewas appointed to make recommendations to the government of the Union ofMalaya on the legislative and other action required to deal with juveniledelinquency and welfare. In its report issued in February 1947, the JuvenileDelinquency and Juvenile Welfare Committee argued:

Juvenile delinquency � rst made its appearance in the MalayanUnion during the few years immediately preceding the Japaneseoccupation and then only in a very mild form. It is not surprisingtherefore to � nd a complete absence of legislation covering

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Juvenile Delinquency … The Japanese occupation has completelyreversed this happy state of affairs and from being no problem atall Juvenile Delinquency has become a most serious one. Thebreak-up of homes and family ties, the constant battle to makeends meet, the removal of parental constraint at a time when it ismost wanted, and the closure of schools have all contributed tothe present situation. (Malayan Union, 1947, p. 3)

The committee made a wide array of recommendations for the taming of theproblem of juvenile delinquency, notably the setting up of a juvenile courtsystem, a probation system, remand homes, approved (reformatory) schools,juvenile welfare committees in all major towns, a men’s service league, and boycamps. Most of these proposals would be more or less effectively implementedover the next decade.

Needless to say, these recommendations were relying heavily on experiencesfrom dealing with delinquency in Great Britain. There, an elaborate system ofjuvenile courts, probation, remand homes, reformatory schools, and variouscorporal disciplines had been developed since the very beginning of the twen-tieth century (Bailey, 1987). While it is tempting to view the establishment ofthe system of governing juvenile delinquency in Malaya as a transplantation ofthe British system, any model of evolutionism or diffusionism should beavoided. What is to be analysed is not the extrapolation—in time and space—ofan ideal-type model to handle the governing of delinquency, but the concreteproblems to which the setting up of such an apparatus in Malaya sought toprovide an answer.

Three distinct but interrelated events served to shape this dramatic change inMalaya, namely, the general transformation of the British Empire’s colonialdevelopment and welfare policy, the preparation for independence, and theirruption of communist insurgency in Malaya. During the 1930s, the generaldevelopment policy for the entire British Empire underwent a signi� canttransformation that precipitated in the enactment of the Colonial Developmentand Welfare Act 1940. In contrast to the Colonial Development Act of 1929,which essentially aimed to develop the colonies’ economic production and tradewith United Kingdom, the new 1940 Act would also include the promotion ofthe health, nutrition, education, and general social services for the colonialsubjects. Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that quite substantia l � nancialresources were allocated for the development and consolidation of socialservices in the British colonies following the ending of WWII, including Malaya(Porter, 1975). While a system for public health and hygiene, and publiceducation had been established from the beginning of the century in the MalayStates, it was only with the opening of the Department of Social Welfare (DSW)in 1946 that systematic efforts were inaugurated to see to the welfare of orphans,widows with young families, aged people, vagrants, handicapped, homeless, andjuvenile delinquents . Within the next decade, the DSW either directly or throughvoluntary associations developed a set of programmes and institutions that, albeitfar from matching the standards of European societies, sought to improve thesocial welfare of the people of Malaya (DSW, 1946–1955).

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After the ending of World War II, during which the Japanese had conqueredpeninsular Malaya with remarkable ease in 1941, the Malay States were retainedunder British control. Yet the combination of a radical shift in the geopoliticalterrain and the increasing demands for independence by a growing nationalistMalay movement made it increasingly obvious to British Parliament and theColonial Of� ce that the (Federated and Unfederated) Malay States could notremain British protectorates. A key question in the preparations for indepen-dence was the question of citizenship. Already in the 1930s, Chinese immigrantsin the Malay States, who outnumbered the Malays only a decade later, startedagitating for civil and legal rights. The British colonial administration feared thatwithout legal jurisdiction over the local Chinese community, it would have littlediplomatic control over the possibility of the Chinese government interfering inthe affairs of her overseas nationals. These concerns were given an answer withthe Malayan Union Citizenship in 1946 (Lau, 1989). However, this scheme washeavily criticised by Malay groups who feared that they would become apolitical minority, and thereby loose their special preferential status. TheMalayan Union Citizenship was consequently dropped in 1948 in favour of amore restrictive Malayan Federation Citizenship, and by the same token theBritish colonial administration committed itself in an agreement of 1948 toprepare the way the Federation’s independence.7

The steps towards independence however came to be deeply in� uenced—andpossibly protracted—by the eruption of communist insurgency. The in� uence ofviolent communist activities, which caused Malaya to be declared in a state ofnational emergency from the period 1948 to 1960, precipitated the need for themaking of mature citizens able to function in a liberal democracy. In order to� ght communist guerrilla activities, which included the assassination of estateowners and police of� cers, and sabotage of infrastructure facilities, almost halfa million mainly rural Chinese dwellers were resettled under the auspices of theBritish military into more than 500 New Villages in the period 1950–1952.These events precipitated the need to ensure the loyalty of inhabitants of theNew Villages to the virtues of democracy, rather than supporting the doctrinesof communism. Hence, the � rst popular elections were held to the local VillageCouncils (including the New Villages) in 1952 and three years later about halfof the million inhabitants of the New Villages had elected political representa-tives that were subsequently granted � nancial autonomy in matters relating topublic health, development of infrastructure and water supply. Simultaneously alarge number of the inhabitants of the New Villages participated in a series ofcivic courses informing them about the bene� ts of liberal democracy andteaching them the civic duties that every citizen must be ready to perform forsociety (Milne and Mauzy, 1978, pp. 284–5).

It was in this context of heightened concerns for the population’s socialwelfare and what was deemed as the inherent limits of the state apparatus’capacity to the monitor and control the population that there emerged a suddenpreoccupation of the capabilities of the colonial subjects to conduct themselvesas mature and responsible citizens in a liberal democracy and by the same tokenhow one can handle juvenile delinquents in a way that will most ef� cientlyrestore them as proper citizens.

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The Governing of Juvenile Delinquency

In its report from 1947, the Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Welfare Com-mittee had suggested that a juvenile court and probation system be established.Together with three new types of institutions , namely, remand homes, ApprovedSchools, and one advanced Approved School (Borstal), a complete system forthe governing of juvenile delinquency was envisaged.

The Juvenile Court, the Probation System and Remand Homes

Enactment of the Juvenile Courts Act 1947. Its enforcement by 1 December1949 effectively established the juvenile court system dealing with all personsbetween the age of seven—later raised to 10—and 18 years, who have commit-ted offences against the law, are in need of care and protection, or are broughtbefore them by parents as ‘beyond control’.

A juvenile court made up by a Magistrate assisted by two advisers who advisethe Magistrate the treatment programme suitable for the juvenile was estab-lished. Furthermore, a probation of� cer is also providing advise to the court byproviding a social background report on the juvenile (containing information onhis general conduct, home surrounding and family situation, school records, andmedical history), and the availability of suitable treatment facilities.

The offender, not the offence, was the locus for the juvenile court’s delibera-tions. It was the social and family background, the mental faculty, and moraldisposition of the youth that was to be targeted rather than the act of crime.Hence, the stress from the outset to make a strict separation between the juvenilecourt and rehabilitation centres on the one hand, and criminal courts and prisonson the other. Proceedings were to take place in camera from which both thepublic and the press are excluded in order to avoid stigmatising the offender inquestion. In particular, young offenders were not to be sent to prison as thecontact with hardened criminals would most likely serve to further deterioratethe young person’s moral character (DSW, 1948; Juvenile Courts Act, 1947;Malayan Union, 1947, pp. 6–7).

The Act also inaugurated a probation system for supervising and advisingyoung offenders. The probation of� cer was required to visit the probationer’shome, observe his behaviour and general mode of life, change the attitudes andbehaviour of dif� cult parents, arrange schooling and organised recreation, � ndfoster homes, and obtain employment (DSW, 1948; Malayan Union, 1947). Theprobation of� cers were trained through an increasing number of courses in casework, relevant legal frameworks, elementary psychology, the psychology ofadolescence and citizenship, and home visits (Federation of Malaya, AnnualReport, 1950, p. 136). These psychologica l and social knowledges told socialwelfare of� cers that delinquency, while to a certain extent based on heritage,was above all a ‘social’ problem caused by various environmental in� uences,notably by family and peers. Hence, the potential for rehabilitation by submittingthe young offender to proper in� uences and the correct means of training.

In 1949/1950 the � rst three Remand Homes/Probation Hostels opened inMalacca, Penang and Trengganu, respectively—together with Homes of a

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temporary character in the other States of the Federation, and by 1965 Malaysiahad eight permanent Remand Homes/Probation Hostels (DSW, 1965; Federationof Malaya, Annual Report, 1950, p. 138). From the mid-1950s it was decided forpractical reasons, in contrary to the advise of 1947 Report of the Committee forJuvenile Delinquency and Welfare, to use these institutions both for delinquentsin remand awaiting a pending case, those in transit to an Approved School, andthose on probation and after-care (DSW, 1958).

For the juvenile spending only a short time (a few weeks) at the Home, forexample, before admission to an Approved School, would mainly be subjectedto observation and questioning regarding his background. The ones on remandor on probation, who may be placed at the Home for up to 12 months, were notonly offered care, protection and counselling, but also academic studies,vocational training and various recreational activities. Finally, once dischargedfrom Approved Schools, the young person would be placed on licenseaccompanied with the after-care supervision by a probation of� cer. Only afterhaving undergone a successful period of after-care in which the young personreturned to his home—or if conditions there were not suitable to a RemandHome—would he be considered truly rehabilitated.

Approved Schools

The opening of the Approved School in Taiping in the State of Perak in February1947 was the � rst school established solely for delinquent boys in the Federationof Malaya. The following year, the Sungei Buloh School was opened in Selangorand by 1965 the number of Approved Schools rose to � ve (DSW, 1947, 1948,1965).

With the objective of rehabilitation and improvement of his ‘character’ in away that will prepare him for ‘re-integration into society’, a young offender maybe submitted to an Approved School by the juvenile court is for a period of threeyears. Good behaviour could make way for the Board of Visitors to decide onrelease on license before the ending of the three-year period. Serious offencesmay result in cancellation of home leave or reduction in the grades that wouldallow for earlier release from the school. In general, misconduct would be dealtwith not by coercive disciplinary measures, such as caning, detention and lining,which were avoided as far as possible. Instead discipline was maintained througha system of rewards and privileges in which ordinary misconduct would resultin the deprivation of pocket money or leisure time activities (DSW, 1947, 1965).

The Approved School sought to enable the young offender to recast hisexercise of freedom by showing him trust. For example, the gates of the SungeiBoys School, like most other Approved Schools, ought not to be closed.Although this did cause some boys to escape, ‘the response of the boys to thetrust reposed in them has been well rewarded’ (DSW, 1947, p. 17). While thisopen gate policy was later to be revised in favour of more regulated forms ofinteraction with the world outside the school, the principle of openness remainedcrucial. In fact, social intercourse between the offenders and their peers outsidethe Approved Schools was seen as a positive thing and promoted. For example,sports activities and national ceremonies are often organised jointly by the

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Approved Schools and various youth organisations (for the ‘good’ boys) in orderto facilitate the offenders ‘re-integration into society’ (DSW, 1965, p. 25).

The schools conducted a series of education and training activities by whichthe boys were to be instilled norms of good conduct, hard work and acceptablesocial intercourse. These activities included academic studies, religious andmoral education, vocational training, physical activities (in the form of ‘sports’),and various leisure activities. The aim of vocational training—which for boysincludes carpentry work, motor mechanics, tailoring, agriculture and animalrearing, and welding; and for girls cooking, tailoring, embroidery and handi-craft—was not only to provide training for employment. It was also ‘to help theboys and girls to persevere and achieve success in activities which depend onhard work and industry’ (DSW, 1965, p. 25). By increasing the youth’scon� dence in their own abilities, they would ultimately ‘exchange anti-socialconduct and attitudes for more acceptable ways, which will enable themeventually to re-adjust successfully into society’ (p. 25). Likewise, the aim ofsports and physical exercises was not only to create a healthy body, and allowhim to have an outlet for frustrations and ‘excess energy’. It was also to instilin the offenders a respect for rules and certain codes of behaviour (p. 25).

It is signi� cant that breaches of school rules were as far as possible dealt withby the boys themselves, rather than through decisions taken by the schoolmanagement. This meant, in the case of the Sungei Besi School, that the fellowinmates under the supervision of the ‘Housemaster’ would decide on a suitablepunishment of the boy who had breached the rules. In this way, correction wouldimply not an external imposition of punishment moving from the schooladministration (the top) down to the offender (bottom), but an internal procedurewhereby the boys would negotiate the consequences of violating the rules. In thissense, what took place was not so much an imposition of rule as an activation,negotiation and ascription by the boys themselves to a particular code ofconduct.

Advanced Approved School (Borstal)

In 1950 the � rst Advanced Approved School was opened at Telok Mas to servefor ‘harder type’ delinquents between the age of 14 and 21.8 Under dueinspiration from the British Borstal institutions , the school was organised on the‘House’ system with a Housemaster and Assistant Housemaster in charge ofeach House. In 1952 there were six Houses, each with a House Captain. EachHouse is divided into four groups with a Prefect to each group. It utilised apersonal record system to obtain a complete picture of any of the boys up to thetime of his admission to the school and his progress thereafter (Department ofPrisons, 1952).

To assist in general administration the two boards and two committees wereset into operation. First, the Central Committee to which the inmates electedtheir own representatives. The electoral system was similar to that used atMunicipal elections and was designed to give the inmates a sense of civic dutiesand responsibility to the community. The committee was responsible for generalwelfare in the school, canteen, library, sports � xtures, and entertainment. Each

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aspect of the school’s activities was the responsibilit y of a sub-committee thatin a certain sense was largely self-governing. Thus, no of� cer of the school wasmember of the committees but once a month the latter would meet with theSuperintendent and Housemasters and put forward subjects for discussion andproposals for improvement: a ‘most pleasing feature of this system’, accordingto O.V. Garratt, Commissioner of Prisons Federation of Malaya, ‘has been theunsel� sh interest in bringing about improvements to the school and the esprit decorps which was manifest. Many valuable suggestions were made by the inmatesand some were implemented’ (Department of Prisons, 1952, p. 22).

An intricate system of procedures and committees for the promotions ininmate status and eventual release was established. A House Committee consist-ing of the Housemasters, House Of� cers and Instructors and would decide uponthe promotion in grade and recommendations for release. A school boardconsisting of the Superintendent and Housemasters would subsequently discussrecommendations from House Committees for promotions to ‘Blue’ and release.Finally, recommendations for release, if approved, would then be forwarded tothe Institution Discharge Board—consisting of prominent local business men andothers interested in the school—which would meet once a month to consider allinmates recommended for release and arrange employment and after-care.

Several prominent � gures visiting the Telok Mas School had strong praises.For example, N.R. Hilton, Director of Penal Administration, England and Wales,found it a case of ‘progressive administration in penology’ that had establishedan institution for the training of youths in which ‘the workshops and tone of theinmates are of the highest order. Courtesy, respect and discipline among theyouths—Excellent’ (Department of Prisons, 1952, p. 25). And Robert K. Bradyfrom the British Council in Malaya exclaimed that ‘as long as work such as isbeing done here can � ourish there will be ever increasing hope. Boys come intocontact with what is best in our way of life … Here the boy � nd he is wantedand that is the secret of reform and the surest way of making a good citizen ofthe future’ (p. 25).

While the establishment of the apparatus for dealing with juvenile delinquencyclearly presented a signi� cant break with previous ways in which errantjuveniles were conceived and dealt with, the ef� cacy of this apparatus should notbe exaggerated. Surely the praises of the Approved Schools quoted above wereseeking to provide an image of effectiveness that probably often had littleresonance with reality and evidently the reformatory system in Malaysia nevercame to match that of Western European countries neither in terms of numbersof institutions and inmates, nor in terms of the application of human technolo-gies, such as IQ tests and psychotherapy, based on expert knowledges. Thuswhat emerged was not a pervasive colonial apparatus of control and administra-tion of the Malaysian youth, an assertion that would be ludicrous, but a speci� cproblematisation of the ways in which one might most effectively promotemodes of freedom proper for a citizen informing and supported by a series ofdisciplinary techniques and institutions . The ef� cacy of the problematisation ofthe norms of conduct proper for a free citizen may be indicated by the fact thatthe normalising disciplinary techniques targeted not only the youths who wereconsidered on the wrong side of the law, but also those on the right side, given

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that the normal young citizens were ‘produced’ along the same rationalities asthose who were considered deviants.

Disciplining the Good Boys

Outside the walls of the Approved Schools and the prisons, both young peopleand adults were submitting themselves to a series of activities aiming to instil inthem an understanding of the workings of liberal democracy and a sense of civicduties. In the following, an indication is given of some of the most importantgovernmental initiatives addressing the non-criminal youth in the decade pro-ceeding WWII. Perhaps the most important development pertaining to theambition of socialising the youth took place not inside the total institutions , inthose facilities designed to handle those deemed to deviate from the norms ofproper upbringing and care, but rather in those movements which the ‘normal’young person could voluntarily join.

In its report of 1947 the Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Welfare Com-mittee had recommended that youth movements such as the Boy Scouts andBoys Brigades be encouraged and supported by government. For the committeeas for the Chief Social Welfare Of� cer there was a clear relation between thesystems for handling the delinquent and that targeting the non-criminal youth. Asystem of services for the non-criminal youth was thus seen as a cost-effectivemeans to reduce the number of adult recidivists who were � rst drawn to crimein adolescence. In fact: ‘Every $1/- of the taxpayers’ money spent constructivelyand wisely on the community’s youth will pay far bigger dividends than any$10/- poured out later in trying to punish, reform or deter a criminal, rehabilitatea social mis� t, or convert or suppress a political agitator’s dupe’ (McDuall,1953, p. 1).

One of the � rst steps was to establish a Federal Youth Council in 1949 withthe Chief Social Welfare Of� cer as the chairman with the principal aim ofencouraging the formation of State Youth Councils and facilitate the establish-ment of youth organisations. In a memo to the Minister of Industrial and SocialRelations, the Chief Social Welfare Of� cer of the Federation of Malaya, J.C.McDuall, explained in 1953 that ‘the co-ordinated encouragement of these[youth] services should be given very high priority. For even in a peaceful andpolitically developed country the Youth Services are an essential counter-attraction to the excitement and lure of anti-social activities, and provide the bestpractical opportunitie s for young people to develop into useful and self-reliantmembers of society’ (McDuall, 1953, p. 1). Moreover, the Youth Serviceswere seen as complimentary to universal schooling in enabling ‘young people tolearn in their leisure time the ways to social maturity and to accepting theresponsibilitie s of good citizenship and good neighbourliness ’ (p. 1).

Youth Leadership Training courses for the leaders of the newly formed YouthService Teams in the various States was to be a principal means of establishingself-reliant youth clubs. One of the key tasks of the Youth Services, which wereestablished in 1953 under the DSW, was thus to organise and help sustain theYouth Service Teams in their efforts to develop youth activities all over theFederation of Malaya (Federal Co-ordinating Committee for Work in New

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Villages, 1953). The Morib Youth Leadership Training Centre was opened in1954 in order to offer a number of training courses for youth leaders from thevarious States of the Federation of Malaya. Its training programme was steppedup during the late 1950s in order to cope with the accelerated growth of youthclubs. Youth leadership training was given high priority not only because of thegrowing number of youth clubs, but also because of the need to ensure, throughproper training, the right type of leaders who would be equipped with suf� cientpractical knowledge and club administration, and leadership techniques. Thecourses—taking the form of lectures, discussions , forums, practical work andorganised group activities—would deal with club organisation and administra-tion, programme planning, leadership, community service and civic rights andduties (DSW, 1960, p. 8).

The formation of youth organisations could not be left to the spontaneouswills of the colonial subjects, but had to be facilitated, though not dictated, bysystematic government intervention. The Chief Social Welfare Of� cer explainedthat: ‘any particular Youth Service that tries or is left or is forced to becomeself-contained cannot succeed. Practical co-operation and mutual interest be-tween all Youth Services at all levels must be achieved. Government can helpin achieving this, but it is essential that there should be no appearance of anyof� cial domination or discipline’ (McDuall, 1953, p. 6). Whether or not due tothe support of Federal and State DSW, the number of youth clubs virtuallyexploded: from less than 100 in 1950 to more than 700 in 1960 of which about70% were situated in rural areas and small townships (Allen, 1955; DSW, 1960).Also the number of Boy Scouts increased rapidly after the ending of WWII andby 1960 there were over 28,000 scouts in the country (DSW, 1960).

In sum, the establishment of the youth clubs and young people’s movementswere largely facilitated and in some cases even directly created by the Federaland State governments. However, once inaugurated the clubs were largelyadministering themselves, though some level of � nancial support from thegovernment usually persisted. Hence, it would be equally wrong to see thesedevelopments either as spontaneous deliberations of some metaphysical ‘civilsociety’, or as the mere extension of a State apparatus seeking to control itssubjects. Rather, these organisations were urged to and � nancially supported ingoverning themselves according to a set of norms revolving above all but notsolely around civic duties and responsibilities .

Conclusion

In this article we have tried to show that it is methodologicall y valid, at least inthe case of colonial Malaya, to include total institutions in the analysis ofcitizenship formation practices in as much as the latter modes of self-subjecti� cation were circulating in the wider social fabric. We have arguedmoreover that by adopting a mode of analysis that is couched neither in termsof rights nor in abstract categories such as State formation or capital, but insteadfocusing on the strategic relations between disciplinary and individualisin gtechniques and norms circulating in various reformatory institutions on the onehand, and political problematisations and interventions informing these on the

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other, it is possible to enhance our understanding of the role of citizenship incolonial and developing societies.

We have tried show that the attempts to deal with delinquency in post-WWIIMalaysia were directly linked to concerns for the making of responsible citizens.This assertion may be further substantiated by the fact that Malaysian indepen-dence in 1957 did nothing to abandon the techniques and institutions forgoverning juvenile delinquency inaugurated by the British colonial administra-tion. On the contrary, the number of institutions for dealing with the ‘personal-ity’ of juvenile delinquents—rather than the crime itself—such as the ApprovedSchools, has increased steadily since independence (Approved School, 2000;Dass, 1992; DSW, 1994; Kandiah, 1983).

However, in contrast to symbolic interactions inspired studies we believe thatthe persistence of these institutions—in Malaysia as well as in other modernsocieties—can hardly be understood by viewing them solely as repressivemechanisms ensuring the functioning of (capitalist ) society. One must also takeinto consideration the ways in which the disciplinary practices whereby theyoung Malaysian is urged to scrutinise and act upon himself in relation to normsof civil conduct and activism at the same are time enabling new modes ofresistance and self-fashioning . The point here is not that of the individual’sability to protect and maintain some innate element of individual ‘autonomy’through various petty games of counter-tactics, but that the ef� cacy of thereformatory institution depends on the individual freely constituting himself asan ‘autonomous’ citizen. The disciplinary techniques seeking to promote indus-triousness, cleanliness, punctuality , self-esteem, activism and self-reliance maybe there to produce a docile body, but if this constantly fails it may be due notto the lack of control and surveillance but to the resistance made possible by thepractices whereby the delinquent is constantly urged to freely subjectify himselfas an active, self-reliant and responsible individual .

If it is correct that the disciplinary techniques are conditioning and facilitatingas much as they are regulating and constraining the juvenile’s particular modeof knowing, scrutinising and conducting himself , then what is most problematicabout these techniques may neither be that they recurrently fail with respect totheir stated intention of producing good citizens nor that they serve as instancesof social control, even though these aspects are certainly reasons enough toscrutinise the functioning of the Malaysian institutions for juvenile correction.What may be the cause of the gravest concern about these techniques ofcitizenship, which were brought into play both in a wide array of both open andclosed institutions only half a century ago by a crumbling colonial regime, istheir inherent capacity to create what is taken to be delinquents, namely, thoseindividuals who are deemed unable or unwilling to adhere to a set of contingentnorms of citizenship. For these youngsters stigmatisation and possibly forcedinstitutionalisatio n and rehabilitation programmes are awaiting.

Notes

1. Malaysia was labelled so in 1963. From the end of the nineteenth century to 1941, the Malay peninsula wasmade up by the following three political units: the Federated Malay States (British protectorate consisting

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of the States of Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak and Selangor), the Unfederated Malay States (Britishprotectorate consisting of Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu) , and the Straits Settlements (aBritish crown colony consisting of Singapore, Melaka, Pulau Pinang, and Labuan). In 1946, the Union ofMalaya was established consisting of all of the above-mentione d States except Singapore and Labuan. TheUnion was turned into the Federation of Malaya in 1948. The British colonial administration relinquishedits sovereignty over the Federation in 1957. The present article deals with the development s in all of Stateson the Malay Peninsula except Singapore.

2. The three-party alliance is made up by the dominating the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO),the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), and the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC).

3. For studies of the relationship between struggles over citizenship and nation-state building processes in thecontext of developing societies, see Chatterjee (1993), Mamdani (1996), and Kamali (1997).

4. A notable exception to this is Norbert Elias’ meticulous analysis of the development of the literature onmanners and its prescriptions concerning a variety of behaviours encapsulating The Civilizing Process(Elias, 1994/1939).

5. However, it is only after the ending of World War II that one sees, in relation to the preparation forindependence , the reformation of the school with a view to create active and politically engaged individualsthat are urged to take up a certain responsibility for the proper functioning and developmen t of Malaysiansociety (Kee and Hong, 1971; Seng, 1975).

6. Young delinquents were submitted to the Reformatory in Singapore for rehabilitation from the early 1920s.Yet, there was no legislation or correctional institutions on the Malay Peninsula outside Singapore beforeWWII (Straits Settlements Annual Report, 1920–1930).

7. Citizenship was restricted to subjects of the Malay rulers (the Malays), persons who had completedcontinuous period of 15 years of residence in the Federation, or persons who were born by a father whohimself was born in the Federation.

8. From the beginning of the twentieth century to 1950, young offenders—usually de� ned to be between 14to 21 years of age—who had committed serious criminal offences were placed in prisons for adult criminals.From the late 1920s a special section of the Muar Prison in the State of Johor was reserved for youngoffenders in order to keep them separated from the ‘degrading’ in� uence of the hardened adult criminals,but apparently they were not subjected to a separate training programme (Annual Report of Johor,1928–1938).

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