No- 16.
11
Neglected Children & Juvenile Offenders Act (1905)
ACT No.
XVI., 1905.
A.
Act to make better provision for the protection, control, education,
maintenance, and
reformation of neglected and uncontrollable children and juvenile
offenders; to provide for the establishment and control of institutions
and for
contribution by
near relatives towards the support of children in institutions ; to
constitute children's courts and to provide . for appeals
from such courts ; to
provide for the licensing and regulation of children trading in streets and in
certain places open to the public; to amend the State Children Relief Act, 1901,
the Children's Protection Act, 1902,
the Infant Protection Act, 1904, and
the Crimes Act,
1900 ; to repeal
the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Act, 1901 ; and for purposes
consequent thereon or incidental thereto. [Assented to, 26th September, 1905.]
PART I.
Preliminary.
1.
This Act may be cited as the " Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders Act, 1905,
and shall come into operation on the first day of October, one
thousand nine hundred and five.
2.
This Act is divided into the following Parts:— PART I.—Preliminary—ss.
1-5.
PART
II.—Institutions—ss. 6-8. PART
III.—Children and children's courts—ss.
9-33. PART IV.—Children in
institutions—ss. 34-46. PART V.—Licensing
of children—ss. 47, 48. PART VI.—General
and supplemental—ss. 49-52.
3.
The enactments specified in the Schedule
are to the extent therein mentioned repealed.
4. (1) All
persons appointed under
any Act
hereby appointed repealed, and holding office at the commencement of this
Act shall be deemed to have been appointed hcreunder.
(2) All schools declared to
be reformatory schools or schools or public schools or public industrial
schools, under any Act hereby repealed, shall continue to be such schools,
subject, however, to the provisions of this Act relating to institutions
constituted thereunder.
5. In
this Act, unless
the context
or subject-matter otherwise indicates or requires,—
" Age
" means, in the absence of positive evidence as to age, the apparent age.
"
Asylum " has the meaning given to that word in the State Children Relief
Act, 1001.
"
Board " means State Children's Relief Board.
"
Child" means
boy or girl under sixteen and over
five years of
age.
"
Court " means children's court established under this Act and includes a
magistrate or justices exercising the jurisdiction of a children's court.
"Institution"
means institution established under this Act, and includes a* reformatory and a
public industrial school established under the Reformatory and Industrial
Schools Act, 1901.
"
Justice " means justice of the peace.
"Juvenile
offender" means child who has committed an offence.
" Local Authority " means council of a municipality, and includes the governing body of a local government area, constituted or to be constituted.
"
Maintenance" includes clothing, support, training, and education.
"
Near relative" means, except as regards an illegitimate child, father,
mother, stepfather, or stepmother of the child; and as regards an illegitimate
child—the mother and the person admitting himself to be or adjudged by a
competent court to be the father of such child, and the husband of the mother of
such child if born before their marriage.
"
Neglected child " means child—
(a) who is
in a brothel, or lodges, lives, resides, or wanders about with reputed thieves
or with persons who have no visible lawful means of support, or with common
prostitutes, whether such reputed thieves, persons or prostitutes are the parents of such child or not; or
(b) who has no visible lawful means of support or has no fixed place of abode ; or
(c) who begs in any public
place, or habitually wanders about public places in no ostensible occupation, or sleeps in the open air in any public place ; or
(d) who
without reasonable excuse is not provided with sufficient and proper food,
nursing, clothing, medical aid or lodging, or who is
ill-treated or exposed
by his
parent:
Provided
that such neglect, ill-treatment, or exposure
has resulted or appears likely to result in
any
permanent or serious injury to the child ; or
(e)
who takes part in any public exhibition or performance whereby the life or limb of such child is endangered; or
(f)
who, not being duly
licensed for
that purpose,
is engaged in
street trading ; or
(g) whose
parents are habitual drunkards, or if one of these be dead, insane, unknown,
undergoing imprisonment, or absent from the State, whose other parent is an
habitual drunkard ; or
(h) who,
being a female, solicits men or otherwise behaves in an indecent manner, or
habitually wanders at night without lawful cause in a public place ; or
(i) who is
in any place where opium or any preparation thereof is smoked ; or
(j) who is
living under such conditions as indicate that the child is lapsing into a career
of vice and crime.
"
Offence" includes any matter punishable summarily or by indictment.
"
Prescribed " means prescribed by this Act or by regulations made
thereunder.
"
Proclamation " means proclamation in the Gazette.
"Public
place" means road, street, thoroughfare, court, or alley to which the
public have the right of access, or which the public are allowed to use, and
includes any part of premises licensed under Part III of the Liquor Act, 1898,
which is open to the public.
" Shelter " shall include a place of safety within the meaning
of section twenty-five of Children's Protection Act, 1902.