The primary task of this thesis is to explain the establishment of the 'correctional institution', the Ottery School of Industrues, in Cape Town in 1948 and the programmes of rehabilitation, correctional and vocational training and residential care that the institution developed in the period until 1968. This explanation is located in the wider context of debates about welfare and penal policy in South africa. The overall purpose is to show how modernist discourses in relation to social welfare, delinquency and education came to South Africa and was mediated through a racial lens unique to this country. In doing so the thesis uses a broad range of material and levels from the ethnographic to the documentary and historical. The work seeks to locate itself at the intersection of the fields of education, history, welfare, penalty and race in South Africa.

The primary task of this thesis is to explain the establishment of the 'correctional institution', the Ottery School of Industrues, in Cape Town in 1948 and the programmes of rehabilitation, correctional and vocational training and residential care that the institution developed in the period until 1968. This explanation is located in the wider context of debates about welfare and penal policy in South africa. The overall purpose is to show how modernist discourses in relation to social welfare, delinquency and education came to South Africa and was mediated through a racial lens unique to this country. In doing so the thesis uses a broad range of material and levels from the ethnographic to the documentary and historical. The work seeks to locate itself at the intersection of the fields of education, history, welfare, penalty and race in South Africa.