“A SHORT HISTORY OF TIME” CHARTING THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT SERVICE DELIVERY TO ENHANCE CHILD JUSTICE 1996-20061

The starting point of this article has been selected as 1996 for several reasons. That year wascharacterised by three signal events in the history of child justice in South Africa. First, 1996heralded the adoption of the Correctional Services Amendment Act 14 of 1996, now infamous ashaving re-paved the way for the incarceration of children aged below 18 in prisons whilstawaiting trial. This was a step taken to address the (by then) well-known difficulties caused at apractical level by the previous amending legislation of a year earlier (Skelton, 2005:396-403),which sought to prohibit altogether the detention of children in prison after an initial 48-hourperiod prior to appearance in court